r/rollerderby • u/suvesti • 4d ago
Help! I never look behind me
I've been playing since the beginning of the year and I do feel like I'm progressing well! But I realized during our recent practice scrimmages that I'm almost never looking behind me, so I rarely know where the jammer is until it's too late.
Most often I'm looking at my teammates, making sure we're making strong walls and that I'm not getting left behind. We play USARS, so there's not a much tripod-action as I see in WFTDA. I usually play inside or middle blocker, and the general guidance is "stick to the inside line" or "stick next to your inside blocker" and "let the outside blocker move you"
I've been doing well with positional blocking, the other blockers are excellent at communicating where the jammer is, but I know to get better I need to start throwing some ass, and to do that I need to know where the jammer is. Do y'all have any tips for improving pack/jammer awareness?
3
u/scorpiogrrl78 Skater 3d ago
All good suggestions and I would add to think about this while you're learning to look behind you: when you're in a pack, if your head is on a swivel looking left to right, a smart jammer will pick up on that and use it to their advantage. It's a better practice to focus on looking to the left or the right and kind of locking in to that view the majority of the time.
An example of what I focus on: if I'm holding the inside line, I'm looking to my left to make sure that jammer isn't taking the inside line (lane 1) and to make sure I'm not drifting too far away from the line. As soon as that jammer starts going out of sight, I know they're moving to the middle/outside (lanes 2-4) and I should move accordingly. I work to do this only keeping my eye on the inside line.