Your Problem Could Be Mental
The Practice Session
P yramid structure of a practice sessionStructure your practice session, part 2
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The key is to set up a practice schedule that makes sense and involves more discipline and less obsession. This section builds on the ideas that were touched on before, in the "eyes off the board" section, about working the crowd and not the board. A proper practice will cater to the audience. Watching a good skater's practice as he or she warms up, works on progressively harder tricks finally reaching high speeds and unbelievable distances can be a thrilling experience as good as watching an actual competition or exhibition. In fact, it is an exhibition, as the top skater makes a practice into an event that will attract an audience.
Practice in a pyramid shape
The way to set up a practice is to have it shaped like a pyramid, using your skills and tricks as blocks. The pyramid shape works two ways. The first resemblence to a pyramid is in the distribution of the blocks. The blocks at the bottom should be basics and easy tricks. Therefore the most time is spent on perfecting easier tricks, and adding speed and flow to them. The blocks at the top should be harder tricks and less time should be spent attempting them.
The second way the practice resembles a pyramid is the way the practice feels over the course of a couple of hours. You should feel like you're climbing up the pyramid, working hard at first on the skills you know best, and gradually adding harder and harder elements. Eventually you get to the top of the pyramid, where the view is great and the excitement is high. Then you head down, for a descent that is less physically taxing but still requires concentration.
Bottom level and middle level; basics and harder basics
Bottom level pyramid tricks should be nearly 100 percent makeable. You should have very few mistakes, except when adding a lot of extra speed. I'll leave it to you to decide what your basics are. Whatever is used in the most tricks that you do, and that is very easy for you. Second level tricks you will make 2/3 to 1/2 the time. These are your harder tricks that you've made before but are trying to polish.
Pyramid top; time for hard tricks
You should time your energy and the time available so when you reach the top of the pyramid it is in the exact middle of the workout. You are going to do your Second level tricks going fast and jumping high. You are going to attempt your hardest tricks, the ones you can't make yet or can barely make. You should be loose and warmed up. You should have built up some endorphins and be somewhat resistant to pain. Your confidence should be running high because you have made all kinds of easy tricks and perhaps have drawn some attention from the crowd.
You want to make about ten or twenty attempts at your hardest tricks, at low speed. Then take the speed up a notch and go for it. Try a few times and then back off. Then go to another hard one and repeat that pattern. When you start to tire, the top of the pyramid is over and you have to go down the down slope. Dont spend more than a half hour to an hour in this pyramid top phase. Hopefully you will be in the zone the whole time and you will be successful on one third of your attempts.
Now, goof off for a while
While you're about to come off the pyramid, you're pretty loose and have been concentrating hard. Now would be a very good time to screw around and have some fun. Just skate hard and don't think about it. Do something stupid, if you feel like it. You probably won't get hurt when you're this warmed up and when you've gotten past the tough tricks. This was the fun I told you about. It's about 10% of your time.
The 10 percent rule
Most people expect so great a percentage of fun, their fun ends up a mess. I work hard to perfect my skating and surfing, but I know that when I'm having fun, it's more fun after all that work has propelled it to another level. I'd rather work 90% of my skate time if I knew that for 10% of the time I was going to be doing bigger, faster, and cleaner tricks than I did last week, with maybe some goofing off thrown in. Maybe after you practice this way, you'll agree with me that 10% fun when you're skating really well is worth 90% fun in a rut, week after week.
Downhill side
The last part of the pyramid, the downhill side, is also a return to basics. But you should not do the same easy basics as you did in the early part of the session. You have come too far for that. Instead, you perform tricks that are more technical and less dangerous than your hardest tricks. Or you switch to your weak side and practice your regular tricks switch stance.
For example, if it's the last half of my workout and I've already done the tricks that would normally scare me and take the most guts, I would work on some complicated footwork, say, that I had been meaning to try. I know I'm not going to get hurt doing it, but it's going to take some serious concentration. Or if I'd been doing my hard tricks regular stance and fast, I would slow way down and go switch stance, breaking down the tricks into components and just trying to add these tricks switch to my repetoire.
Audiences prefer the pyramid practice
The pyramid shape practice is so much easier on the audience than the obsessive practice, there's no comparison. The audience will see an hour of clean skating on either side of the top of your pyramid. The top, the middle half hour or hour of your session may look pretty brutal to an audience, as you will be missing tricks and falling. You may scare them, but if you make a hard trick at high speed, you may thrill them as well. You are unlikely to bore them, and people will have a better impression of your abilities.
Go obsess in private
Having said all this, I realize it's important sometimes to obsess over a hard trick, just to get over that hump. You may have to spend a boring amount of time to get so you can pull off a particularly hard move. One option is when it's time to do this hellish repetition of your hardest trick, you still make it in the middle of your pyramid, only you go off in the corner somewhere, to the other side of the skating spot, park, wherever you are, and work the trick to death for a half hour out of everyone's sight. Then, when you have it, or almost have it, come back into the center ring and just absolutely pull the stops out, right in front of everyone. Believe me, you will have a powerful effect on people in your audience and your fellow skaters if you seem to show up after a little break and start throwing down. So you can think of this version of the pyramid as climbing the pyramid, going behind the Sphinx to obsess a bit, then coming back and going all out on the peak.
