We have loads of dedicated athletes training with Roller Derby Athletics all the time. But every now and again, someone comes along and knocks our skates off with their dedication and determination. And we can’t help sharing our #rdaallstars success with the world!
Introducing: CoCo Sparx, proud member of Burning River Roller Derby!
Coach Maloik nominated CoCo Sparx, long time RDA client and current group training client with Burning River Roller Derby. She’s been a very important member and leader with BRRD since its debut season, is currently starting her 14th season with them, and is also current captain for Ohio All Stars Roller Derby. Coco owns BRRD’s local skate shop, Next Level Skate Shop in Cleveland, and is extremely involved in the skating community. She’s recently come back to active competition from a pretty long term knee injury, and she’s crushing her workouts in the group with consistency and intensity. Congratulations CoCo!!
photo: used with permission from Hispanic Attack
Q&A with CoCo Sparx
What do you get up to when you’re not playing derby? LOL… I own and operate my own skate shop so even my professional life revolves around roller derby. But sometimes I do manage to make some time to go camping and hiking.
What are you working towards in derby right now? We keep working on building stronger zone defense and trusting our teammates to defend their zone so we don’t skate all over each other.
Any big successes or milestones for you in derby recently? Not anything very specific… being able to still be playing this game after 14 years feels like a pretty big success in and of itself.
How has off-skate training contributed to your derby experience? Off skates training has done the obvious stuff of making my muscles stronger, but it’s also taught me a lot about my limits. I really LOVE interval training and it’s taught me a lot about how to expend energy, how to conserve energy, how to recovery quickly, and how to know when I really am spent. I feel like with interval training, I’m much better at knowing how much gas I actually have in the tank.
What is your favourite thing about training with RDA? The variety of workouts. I have to admit, I’m not super creative and I’m super susceptible to falling into a workout routine where I do the same thing every day. I’ll focus on my quads and forget my hamstrings, for instance. RDA helps keep my workouts well-rounded and complete.
Do you have a favourite RDA workout?Not one specific workout, but I really like the Suns Out, Guns Out challenge. I’m super guilty of neglecting my upper body and that really helped me to focus on those muscle groups. It was surprising how quickly I saw improvements!
Anything else you want to tell the world about your derby or training experience this year? I guess just that I’m really glad that I can still do roller derby, and I definitely owe some of that to RDA for giving me the tools to train my body to play this sport safely.
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Congratulations to CoCo Sparx (aka Sparx, Sparky, Spanky, Spanx, and/or Sparkles)! Thank you for being such an awesome addition to the Derby community!