Glasgow Roller Derby is excited for our upcoming Harder Better Faster Stronger Bootcamp on 31 May 2025 (9.00 – 14.00). If you’re a newer, scrim ready, skaters with three or fewer games under your belt, we are here to tell you why coming to this Bootcamp will make a difference in your derby career.
1. You get a dedicated day of endurance building derby
A jam might only be two minutes long (even if it feels longer sometimes), but being able to be competitive jam after jam after jam takes endurance. The more time you spend on skates, practicing your skills, the more your body will learn to power through the physical pressure of gameplay.
Normal practices can last about two hours, but this bootcamp is five hours of skating, learning, and talking about roller derby. That’s long enough to see a great amount of progression in your derby skills all in one day and long enough to build up your endurance for all the future games where you’ll be using the skills you learned and developed.
‘Can’t believe I had skates on my feet for so many hours, I feel invincible now’ – 2024 Bootcamp attendee
2. You’ll gather new skills and fine-tune existing ones
Bootcamp lets you learn a lot in a short frame of time! Whether you’re a blocker, a jammer, or a pivot (or want to learn a bit of everything) there is something for you to learn and practice.
Some of the skills that you’ll be focusing on in this year’s Bootcamp include:
Catch tactics
Blockers – focus on catching a jammer approaching at speed
Jammers – focus on avoiding being caught by the blockers
Containing tactics
Blockers – focus on working as a unit to contain a jammer within the wall
Jammers – focus on breaching and weakening the wall
Offence skills – work on individual skills to get your jammer out
Coping with offence – skills to stop offence interference
Jam starts
How to stretch properly and prevent injury
To top it all off, there is a directed scrimmage aimed at helping you put all these skills into practice with other derby players at your level right away – without having to wait for your next chance to play a game.
‘I learned so much, and had a great time with a bunch of wonderful people. I went to normal training yesterday and felt like I had this little edge of confidence too…?! Love it.’ – 2024 Bootcamp attendee
3. Connect to your derby community
Roller derby is a team sport, and being a part of this community is one of the things people like best about joining a team. Lucky for you, being part of the community can also make you a better skater and coming to bootcamps like this one are an awesome way to get all the benefits of the derby family.
First of all, there’s getting to be coached by a great team of skaters with a wealth of experience to pass on. Sometimes you can get stuck on a skill for ages and it just takes one coach to explain things in a slightly different way than you’ve heard before for things to just unlock.
The GRD Bootcamp coaches, Devil’s Advoskate, Snax, PanicBurn, Mötley Bruise, High Voltage, and Dodjem have years of derby experience (including past and present experience on Team Scotland) spanning all the positions to pass on helpful tips and guidance to our Bootcamp skaters who have less in-game experience.
It’s not just the coaches who have something to offer. Bootcamps are a great opportunity to meet skaters from other teams who each have their own unique experiences they can pass along. Just like a coach can explain something like you’ve never heard it before, all the other skaters have gotten guidance from their own coaches that could be just the thing you need to hear to finally nail those hockey stops.
Lastly, it’s a whole day with roller derby people! You can gush about derby with people who know exactly what that excitement feels like. You’ll never have to explain to your fellow attendees that there’s no ball in roller derby or that you don’t punch each other in the face like Smashley in Whip It.
Get good coaching, make friends with people coming up in the sport just like you, and get yourself even further into this great community of humans.
‘Thank you and the whole crew for running a brilliant boot camp. 10/10 would recommend to a friend…!’ – 2024 Bootcamp attendee
So how do you sign up?
If you’re all in on attending GRD Bootcamp this year, you can buy tickets here. Hope to see you then!