SKATING 101: Posture

Hello, I almost whipped myself with my own braid. Today we are going to talk about posture. There are pretty much three things that I repeat regularly. And if you have ever taken a lesson from me, a workshop, if you have been a member on my site or here on YouTube and you have watched any of my classes and tutorials, you've probably heard these things multiple times. Number one, bend your knees. Number two, flex your core or engage your core, tighten your core. And number three, roll your shoulders back. This position is super, super important in skating. And the really amazing thing is that you will benefit in life if you work on your posture. We sit a lot in a day. I don't know about you, but I have to drive far distances. I like to sit when I work on certain things. I like to sit on the couch. That is one of my favorite activities is to just sit on the couch and watch something. And all of that sitting is not necessarily wonderful for us. To counter that, I work on my posture a lot. And when we roller skate, we have heels built into our skates. So skating and walking in heels are very similar. Now, I understand that not everybody wears heels every day or even often. I honestly do not wear heels very often, but I do wear roller skates a lot. But when you are walking in heels, just imagine your posture. Close your eyes and roll your shoulders back and just imagine how you would walk if you were feeling super, super confident. Imagine walking down a runway. I actually have skated down a runway and it's pretty much the same thing. We were skating alongside models and our posture, our appearance, everything was the same, except they were like a foot taller than me. Your posture can really tell a story and it can dictate how you even carry yourself through life. So if you want to be more confident, if you want to feel confident, if you want to look confident, if you wanna take charge and own the room, posture. You will never see someone who is confident and is engaging and lighting up a room. You will never see them like this. Never. You'll never see someone walk like this that is super, super confident. Always just up, just up a little bit. It doesn't need to be this, it doesn't need to be this, it's just up. In order to build those muscles, because that is what it is, it's muscle to know where to put your body, you have to build and engage the muscle consistently. So in order to do that, because I always say, okay, like roll your shoulders forward or hunch forward, now roll your shoulders back and they should sit into a pocket. A really good way to do that is to literally hold weights in your hands. I don't have weights right here, but I do have roller skates. Hee hee. Reminder that your weights don't need to be literal weights. Taking weights in your hands and putting your hands down, if you just hold onto weights for five minutes, your body will tell you where you need to gain muscle. So if you're just holding something like this, the muscle's right here, right in here. And if you tell me you don't have muscle, number one, you're lying because I know you can stand up straight. They may not be super engaged muscle, but I know that it's there. You just have to wake it up and remind itself of its job. But right here in your back, that is where you need to engage. And it's not engaging and being tense up like this, it's engaging and letting your shoulders drop. Now, a lot of us are super, super tense right here. I find that most people carry their stress right here or in their hips. I carry it in my hips, but right here is very, very popular for our stress. And we like to be up like this and tense. If you can use weights to kind of pull that down, and I know it may be annoying at first and kind of not fun, but over time, this will become normal, I promise you. So I tell kids, adults, but I tell mostly kids because I want them to flex and like feel super strong. It's basically, if you are to flex, if you're to flex and push your elbows like down, so you're flexing not just your arms, but your back, that right there is skating position. When I was younger, people used to tell me to arch my back. It's not an arch, it's you create an arch in your back when you do it, but it's not arching your back. It shouldn't be pain in your lower back. If you feel pain in your lower back, you need to engage your upper back. You need to actually focus on those muscles, pull your shoulders down, engage your back muscles at the top of your back. But trust me, your life will get a whole lot better if you start carrying yourself like this. So if you find yourself sitting in a chair and you're hunched over, just think posture. Just think of me going posture and remember to sit up straight. You don't always have to sit up straight. You don't always have to walk through like this door, like a supermodel, you absolutely can if you want to and I highly recommend it. But if you just carry yourself with a little more confidence and if you do it, you will start believing it. I promise you, you will start believing that you are a confident person, even if you're not. And that is super, super helpful in moments when you are doubting yourself and you absolutely shouldn't be because jokes on us, nobody else cares what we are doing. We are so consumed with what we are doing and nobody else cares. So if you can just walk through life with a little extra confidence, life is about to get really, really good. The other cardinal rule, the other main thing that I say if engaging your core, we are working on that within the membership this month. There's a brand new drills video on core mobility because when we skate, we're not just, that's been sticking out the whole time. When we skate, we're not just skating like this in a straight line, we have to rotate and turn our core and in regular life, we don't do that that often. So we are working on that in the membership. So please check out the membership right here on YouTube or on my site, thatnicolefiori.com. And just imagine every time you pull out your phone, if you're sitting at your desk or if you're sitting in your car or if you're standing, whatever you're doing, when you pull out your phone, instead of opening Instagram, you can still open Instagram, but think posture because I used to send texts to my students when they were like sitting in school, probably tired and bored. So I would text my students when they were in school or at work, and I would just send posture. And they said, every time they would see it and be like, dang, so it's not being here, it's being, all right, have a lovely day. Hello, I didn't close this, if you got it, flaunt it.