The Foundations of Skating:

HOW TO GET GOOD

There are techniques to becoming a good skater.

Now, that doesn’t mean you have to study them… you can free-wheel and figure things out along the way. 

But trust me when I say, that having good foundations will make your learning journey a lot smoother. 

“Bend your knees like this”

Some good habits to have_

• Good neutral posture

• “Soft" knees

• Staggered stance

• Safe falling/recovery 

• Breathe~ 

Some good Skills to have_

• Confident stop(s)

• One-foot balance

• Weight transfer

• Taps / ⅛ pivots 

• Manuals

• Be able to look around confidently

It’s all connected

Let’s look at a basic, heel-toe, two-foot spin. 

It requires good balance, posture, upper body control, a staggered stance and soft knees, and that’s just the set-up. 

Then you need a good heel-toe manual as two-foot spins on roller skates are done on two trucks*; front heel and back toe. 

(*For the average skater. i.e. Artistic skaters have another method of dragging some of their wheels, which is why they go for ones with less friction and they have a technique of shifting their weight into their edges)  

A solid heel-toe manual could also lead to a few jam moves like; the splits, pivot+split, turns/transitions, crazy legs, crab walk, and pumping a spin. 

Then we have moves like the downtown. It has techniques to make it actually roll vs just being static. And if I said the key is to have one-foot balance, weight transfer and soft knees, would that make sense?

Then a little further down the line, it’ll help with confidence of not needing all 8 wheels on the floor to be stable. So when you take your lil’ trips and falls, you can recover in very creative ways. 

About the exceptions

There’s always going to be exceptions to everything.

The special cases, also known as the talented ones. 

But if you think about it, their talent is not just luck, part of the reason for their success can be found in their past. 

a.k.a they did put in effort, just earlier

For example…

The Dancer vs the non-active

Non-Actives >

If you did no physical activity before skating, and the most your agility was tested was when you’d try to catch your phone as it fell, then your body will be in the waking-up phase during the learn-to-skate part of your journey. 

That usually means it’s a longer journey cause when was the last time you used this much core strength to try and balance on wheels attached to your feet? 

Probably not in a long while…

Compared to the dancer >

They took classes or danced regularly for fun. Meaning they are a little more agile, used to moving and controlling their body in more than the basic range of motion, and often they have a decent core strength / balance. 

They’ll be comfortable being active, even if it’s only a little bit, so they can skip the waking-up phase and simply begin to transfer their skills over. 

Not to mean it’s easy!

It simply means that those who are used to being active will have one less obstacle to overcome. 

As in the theory of gendered socialisation of why boys were better at sports than girls, being because boys were used to playing rough and running around as it was encouraged and a part of their everyday life, whereas girls stereotypically did not play rough and weren’t as encouraged to be daredevils. (a big shame tbh)

It’s all a domino effect, and guys often just seem to progress faster and do more daring tricks, or the person who went gymnastics can throw in an amazing splits after 3 weeks of skating! …doesn’t mean it’ll be the same for everyone or even that they’ll carry on progressing at that speed. 

Everyone has to put in some king of work.

Skating IS a sport.

So strength and mobility will help you out a lot! 

And that’s not to say, all those who were previously active will be better at sports, you probably have enough real-life examples in your everyday life that’ll tell you that’s not true. 

In summary, it means those who have the strength, and agility, are active and have a courageous mindset, will find fewer obstacles in their path to being a roller skater. 

Having a grasp of the foundations will at least give you the confidence to feel stable on your skates in most scenarios. 

TL;DR

In turn, that means you’ll be less fearful of falling and thus willing to challenge yourself more. And growth is found outside the comfort zone.

All you need is a good foundation to build on. 

Some References:

https://us.humankinetics.com/blogs/excerpt/reasons-for-gender-differences-in-youth-sport

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3498324/