Ever wondered what shadowing Asha at work would be like?

Mini Summer holidays in UK Wow!! What lovely impressive and intense four days I spent in UK. Starting with the classic English weather, from which I had a taste of everything, misty rain, pouring rain, storms and glorious sun!!

I wanted to skate on Friday, but the uninvited rain turned up and changed all the plans. Asha had a private lesson and I wanted to see it!, I’ve never seen or done a private skating lesson and seeing it alive from one of the best was a chance I didn’t want to miss. The rain changed our plans… so that is still on my-to-do list.

The weekend was coming, and then the fun began, Asha invited me to attend her One-day Intensive intermediate workshop; six hours of skating with a break for lunch. I was going to be a student, instructor, and observer, depending on the skills. She had 15 students in total, from complete beginners to intermediate students, and also a student in quads!! How was she going to handle all that?????? Quickly everybody was moving, perfectly class handling, and all the students had assignments according to their levels and type of skates!!! Incredible. As an instructor I think I always have to learn new things, observing such an experienced instructor as Asha was a privilege.

[soliloquy id=”4253″]She was using every resource available to handle the class, using all the techniques a good instructor must have, taking into account all the different learning styles, levels, types of skates…, and the most important her class handling was safe, really Impressive.. But the class hadn’t finished yet. We advanced onto skating faster and I was in instructor mode!

I observed that most of the students were on inside edges, while doing various different scooting exercises, but Asha wasn’t giving any corrective exercises on that focus… weird. It’s one of things she usually pays more attention to. So I asked her about it.

The mysterious answer I got was, “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it later”.

So the “later” arrived, students started working with crossovers, it was the first contact with outside edges for most students and it’s usually scary for most of them, after practicing for around 10 minutes, Asha asked them to try the very first exercise we had used to learn to skate faster, and… MIRACLE all the inside edges had disappeared, and all the students were on a perfect center edge when gliding…

Unbelievable, I was simply without words.

Being a Instructor in English has been a surprise, I have a solid background in English, as I’m an English teacher but It was hard to make myself understood, and use the exact words students needed. When Asha is teaching in Spanish and gets tired, she makes funny Spanish sentences at the end of the day… now I knew exactly how it feels!!

I closed the weekend with a glimpse of Asha’s smart street skating lesson, and the Sunday stroll, both amazing experiences… despite London’s tarmacs.

A word of warning for Spanish people who do the Sunday Stroll… Remember English drive on the left…

I truly understand now why Asha loves skating in other cities in Europe!! I want to end saying that I’m really grateful to Asha Kirby not only she is a great instructor (the best in my opinion), she is also a wonderful person, next to whom I keep on learning not only about skating… also about life.

So if you are in London and want to improve, advance or learn more, book yourself onto any of Skatefresh’s lessons!!! You will simply love it!!