Starting out in inline skating can be a little daunting unless you have instructors or experienced skaters to guide you. The first question that gets asked is how do you stop?, which means you probably assume you can actually move forwards! It's rare that people ask about turning, assuming that it's easy to do and usually involves a panicked-wobbling-stepping kind of affair that neither looks cool, nor gets you round the corner that you're hurtling towards that one time you decide going doing the hill outside your house is a good idea.
So I hope that this guide will help you find a tried-and-trusted path through the skills you'll need. It's based on my experience from teaching various levels of skaters and you'll probably find that you fit it reasonably well. Obviously everyone is different so, whilst you may be tempted to skip bits, I suggest you at least give a little try of all of these skills, just to make sure you can skip them.
A quick side note on stride
You're going to hear stride 1, stride 2, and stride 3 and I can guarantee you'll either not understand or misinterpret them! So let me just try to clear it up:
- When you were a toddler you'd walk in a particular style. In the world of inline skating instructors that is called stride 1.
- A few years later you start walking like an adult, striding confidently down the road. This is like stride 2, where you've gained more control over your legs and posture, and have built a strong rhythm.
- Finally you start running (or if you hated PE at school like I did it's more of a slow jog!). Welcome to stride 3 in inline skating, where you are probably skating over 15mph and have no problem skating for miles.
Skating strides imagined as a line.
If you imagine these strides as a line, along which your skating ability moves, the first thing to realise is that they are not discrete points: they a long sections of the line and the edges between them blur. You may spend weeks getting through stride 1, starting from a shakey beginning to a rhythmic wobble. Or you may fall into a stride that is somewhere between stride 1 and stride 2 from the first day you put on your skates.
That's the other important thing to realise about these: everyone is different. As a toddler you walked differently to anyone else and spent a different length of time doing so; the same is true of these strides. So be patient as you will, eventually, get through them all.
There's a fourth stride called double pushing which you can equate to Olympic 100m sprinters who have considerable control over their body and have been heavily trained. It's unlikely that you'll reach this stage unless you're a serious competitor, like a speed skater, or have spent considerable time skating, purely because you don't actually need it to get around.
The absolute beginner
In my experience a large proportion of people start at this point, but only a few of those need to actually spend a long time working through this bit. It starts on the grass, or carpet, where the wheels of your skates don't roll so easily and allows you to find your feet, so-to-speak.
You want to learn several things:
- Your shins should press into the tongues of your skates, and if you were in a lesson with me and didn't do this I'd be saying bend your knees or, more likely, relax your knees and ankles. Relaxing you knees and ankles gives you stability, suspension (like in a car), and greater flexibility and is all important in skating.
- Your weight should be towards the heels of your skates and your toes should be wiggly (meaning you aren't clenching them when you skate). Skating forwards requires you to push with your heels.
- When you lift or place your skates on the ground they are flat, with all wheels lifting or pressing on the ground at the same time. This is unlike walking, where you stride heel-toe: heel hits the ground, then toe, then heel lifts before toe.
- Learn the ready position, scissor and safe-T stance, they're either foundations for other skills or offer safety.
- Your skates have edges: they can lean in, they can stand upright, they can lean out, and they can lean towards the same side (left or right).
If you step (carefully) out onto a surface that will cause your skates to roll there tend to be two types of people: one type simply moves their feet in a natural (for them) manner and off they go; the others freak out, wobble a lot or tend not to lift their skates off the ground (they kind of shuffle). If you fall into that second category you should start by learning stride 1: you'll feel like Frankenstein / Thunderbirds puppet / an idiot, but at least this gets you moving and used to the sensation of rolling.
The roller
It's at this point that you're moving forwards in whatever style you have; it might not be quick or pretty but at least you're going. Now to learn to stop:
If you've got an experienced skater (who's not an instructor) with you I can pretty much guarantee that they're recommending you to learn the T-stop. Don't. Not yet anyway. I'll bet that, in 9-out-of-10 cases, your skates lean inwards, onto inside edges, and this makes it extremely difficult to learn the T-stop (more than likely you'll find the skate you drag pulling itself around to return to something like a ready position). Instead learn the heel brake stop, which is far more forgiving and easier to learn.
I'm not suggesting you don't learn the T-stop, I'm just saying that learning the heel brake stop will give you a good way of stopping that will help you feel safe, so you will progress quicker. You'll need to learn to control your edges before you attempt better stops.
When learning to turn start with the A-frame turn but very quickly go onto learning parallel turns. The second turn is a little more difficult for those of you who struggled at the start, but it looks a lot better; the first isn't safe, in my opinion, at speed. Make sure you get comfortable making both left and right turns as you can't guarantee you're not going to need the one you don't like making (trust me, you'll find one easier than the other).
Skating muscle memory over time.
Regular practice is the key to improving. I tell my students that, if they are having a lesson at the weekend, getting out on Wednesday for an hour-or-so of practice is a good idea: over that week (when you're just starting out) your muscle memory fades and by reminding it half way through you improve your learning rate.
As you get more experienced the time between practices can get longer. For instance, when I first learnt to skate I found I spent a good 15 minutes, each time I put my skates on, remembering how to skate if I left it for a week. Now I can go weeks before I notice that I have to think about skating, and that only lasts a few minutes.
You might want to throw in learning swizzles but I tend to skip this with my students and push straight for learning stride 2. Stride 2 makes skating forwards much easier and is all you'll need to keep up on a street skate like the Sunday Stroll.
The world is your oyster
From here you're pretty much able to choose your own path through skating skills, but I'd like to offer some advice:
You'll notice that I described the skills in terms of movement-stop-turn: you learn to move forwards, then to stop, finally to turn. Keep that philosophy. For instance, learn stride 3, T-stop, lunge turns. It doesn't always fit, but at least it gives you a guide as to how to feel safe and build your skills.
You might want to learn to skate backwards. Start with backwards swizzles, then backwards half swizzles, backwards criss-cross, and finally backwards crossovers. Each of those builds on the preceeding skills, and you'll learn quicker and be more confident.
Get out on a marshalled street skate. There are many, around the world, that follow a similar style to the Sunday Stroll, LondonSkate and London Friday Night Skate. Not only are they great fun but you're also putting miles of skating under your belt, which improves your technique and confidence. Don't attempt them too early in your learning: if you really have to spend all of your time concentrating on your skating then being in the midst of a crowd of other skaters gets very distracting.
Try slalom, hockey, aggressive skating, anything. Each of these gives you something different for your skating: slalom teaches control and flow; hockey will improve your agility and stopping; aggressive skating will scare the pants off you but helps you understand you environment. Push yourself but know your limits. Try everything once and see what you like.
Look for instructors
It's worth trying to find an instructor, especially if you get into a particular discipline. They've got experience and will be able to fix problems you have because they've seen it before (probably in themselves!). If you have to travel make sure it's worth it, and I highly recommend the following instructors in the UK:
- If you're into slalom then Naomi Grigg is the person to travel for. She's something like world #4 in womens slalom and is an extremely good instructor. Do her week long slalom camp and I guarantee you'll come away wanting to learn more (her enthusiasm is infectious).
- If you want to skate faster, or more efficiently, then Mike van Erp does a wonderful course. One part of it is a video review: Mike rides his recumbant bicycle and videos you, then provides you with comments on your technique and how to improve it. You would not believe how useful it is to see how you skate!
And I would be remiss not to mention myself! I like teaching street skating courses but have a patience that makes me a great instructor for those of you that are nervous or struggling.
Outside the UK I've heard extremely good things about the course that Experts in Speed run in Sardinia. Lots of the London Speed Skaters Team have gone to this week long course and got a lot from it. I've even heard stories of a girl going from no skating experience to one of Europe's top female speed skaters, only a year after taking the course. You can read a review from Mike van Erp from 2005 for more of a feel.
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