Categories:
Having worked for skateinstructor.com for the last 6 months, as an inline skating instructor, I've taken the bold decision to see if I can make it on my own!
So, here's a brief idea of what this site has and what I hope I can offer to you:
My biggest passion in skating is street skating: using my skates to commute around town. My primary focus is to pass the knowledge I have from this on to you. So I have several street skating related courses that I'll be running: from being able to do the Sunday Stroll, one of London's free organised street skates (in my Sunday Stroll course), through to using your skates to get about, avoiding the need for public transport (in my Street Skater course). The course I run to get people onto the Sunday Stroll has proven popular, so I'm hoping that the others will do likewise.
Some people get a pair of inline skates and just get on with learning on their own. They use Skate Patrol to get started, they ask friends, or they just try things to see how they work. Eventually they end up working out all of the things that an ICP qualified skate instructor, such as myself, can teach. However, they'd do better attending a group courses or getting private lessons: why reinvent the wheel when an instructor can get you there much quicker?
One of the most frustrating things as a skater is not being able to do something perfectly. The most common one is the heel brake stop, which is the first method of stopping that most people learn. If you pick up the manual for your skates, assuming they come with a heel brake, you'll probably find it reads something like this:
Bend slightly at the waist, lift up the toes of your skate so the heel brake touches the ground, then push down on it.
You'll be amazed to hear that this is actually the wrong way of using the heel brake effectively! But people do this, as it seems natural, and this is where my £5 clinic sessions come in: for £5 and one hour of your time, I'll correct the problems you have with any skill. One week I might focus on heel braking, as that's a common problem for people on the street skates, and the next I might choose parallel turns.
Learning with an ICP qualified instructor, whether that's in a group courses or through private lessons, is an excellent way to improve your skating. But how many times have you left a lesson and forgotten the advice of the instructor? Every one of my students gets access to a students area, which gives them a web page of their own that records their skating progress. It details how to do the skills they've learnt, what to practice, what to watch out for, and tips-and-tricks I've learnt skating. Rather than being a static, never changing, offer, this information grows and develops over time. All of that is included in the cost of lessons with me.
Finally, I like to keep up-to-date on what's going on in the inline skating world. Whether that's the latest pair of Rollerblades, the coolest skating video, or just websites with useful information. In the general stuff section I keep posting this information as and when I find it, along with contributing my own articles, reviews and information.
I hope that all of this, along with my passion for teaching, makes me a competitive inline skating instructor. Feel free to try out any other ICP qualified skate instructor (find them in the general stuff section of the site) and choose the best for yourself.
