What it means to be fresh meat

When you're getting ready to try out for a team, you have such focus, clear goals, and drive. Once you make the training team, everything is different. The practices are harder than you could have imagined, you are told that you need to practice 5 million different skills, and you start noticing how so many people on the team with you look like they were born on skates. This was, at least, my experience.

For a long time after I started team practices, my body was in shock. I had never done anything really athletic before. My body didn't know how to handle the strange new things I was making it do. We would start every practice with half an hour of floor exercises. Half an hour, no big deal, right?? OHH no. During this half hour, which felt like eons, I was in a constant battle with my body not to give up. We did planks, pushups, crunches, suicides, squats, wall sits, and pretty much anything else you can think of. This lasted about two months. I've always thought this was the part where they try to intimidate us into quitting. As painful and scary as it was, it had a wonderful effect on my body, and showed me that I was tough enough to endure. Then the second phase started. We started really focusing on skills. Everything from pace lines, to falling, to whips and pushes, to pack skating, and now, finally, to blocking.

One of the tests we have to pass in our league is agility. This consists of doing 40 line jumps in 30 seconds, 14 slaloms in 30 seconds, and the traditional 5 laps, but in 50 seconds. I passed the slaloms first, but was way off on line jumps, and 4 seconds away from the speed requirement. Luckily, my league is awesome, and offered plyometrics and strength training classes. A few weeks later, I was able to pass line jumps. Finally, I was one second over on laps. On Sunday, I passed. I was so proud I started to tear up. I think of all the things I've improved on, and how drastically. I think of how hard everything was, and how much I had to push myself. Then I think of how far I have yet to go.

To me, being fresh meat is learning your boundaries, and pushing them. It's learning what you're capable of, and learning how to work and how to think. I know so much more about myself now than I did when I started this adventure. I am so much stronger than I ever thought possible.