How to SKATE BACKWARDS for beginners w/ Estro Jen

Welcome to the Moxie Skates YouTube. My name is Estrogen and today we are going to be learning how to backwards skate. Skating backwards can be a little challenging because we're literally taking everything that we know about skating forwards and flipping it backwards and we need to activate different muscle groups and body parts to get us going in the right direction. So to get us started I have a couple of balancing exercises that I've prepared to reinforce some key concepts that will help us learn to skate backwards. So I want you to clasp your hands in front of you like this and I want you to close your eyes and we're going to take our right hand and follow our nose with our right hand all the way to the back of the room. Now with your eyes closed I want you to shift your body weight into the right side and then lift your left foot to meet your right knee and hold it for as long as you can. Alright, keep your nose pointed to the back of the room. Okay, bring your hands back together. Now I want you to open your eyes. So last time we were closed eyes, this time open eyes. Now I want you to follow your nose with your left hand to the back of the room. Now I want you to shift your body weight to the left side and then lift your right foot to meet your left knee. Okay, that should have been way easier. Alright, the next one we're going to do is I want you to close your eyes, shift your body weight to the right side and then lift your left leg. If you have the balance, go ahead and clasp your hands around your left knee and bring it in tight to you. How are you doing? My ankle's aching. Alright, now open your eyes and put your foot down. Now with your eyes open, I want you to shift your body weight to the left side and then lift your right leg up, clasping at the knee. This is so much easier and it's because our eyes are open. Alright, now we're going to close our eyes and well, actually, first we want to check to make sure that we've got the room. So look behind you and make sure you've got a lot of room behind you. Now I want you to close your eyes and bounce backwards in a straight line. My imagination kicks in like crazy. Alright, now come back. Now look behind you and do it with your eyes open. It's so much easier. So when we're learning how to backwards skate, oftentimes we're extra concerned about the footwork and we forget that the most important part to get ourselves in the right direction is our head and our shoulders. So while we're learning how to skate backwards with our skates on, we want to make sure that our head and our shoulders and our eyes are looking in the right direction, which is the direction that we're planning on moving in, which is this way. So to skate backwards, we really want to twist at our torso and look with our eyeballs in the direction that we're moving. Alright, the next exercise that we're going to do is, so we're moving down from the head and shoulders to our hips and knees and our footwork. So when we're skating forwards, one of the best exercises to get ourselves moving forwards and comfortable rolling forwards is blowing bubbles. And some teachers call it scissors, but I like to call it blowing bubbles because I feel like I'm blowing bubbles. But blowing bubbles off skates looks like this. And we start in a V and then move towards an A. Backwards skating, this was the best exercise that I learned to learn how to go backwards. And I remember it being so challenging, but we flip it. So instead of starting in the V and going to an A, we start in an A and we go to the V. Alright, now I'm going to really show you why it's so tricky to learn to skate backwards. You don't have to put your roller skates on your hands. This is just for the explanation. But when we skate forwards, we pretty much stay in a V the entire time. So we lean into this knee and then we bend, I'm sorry, we bend the front knee and then we push off throughout the balls of our feet on the opposite side. And then we return into a V and then push in the opposite direction. And we keep returning to this V here. This is the motion that we're doing when we're forward skating. When we're backwards skating, we don't have the flexibility of our ankles to push throughout the balls of our foot. So we have this flick of our ankle when we're forward skating and we push through the ball of our foot. But when we're backwards skating, we don't have that. So what we do is we flip the V into an A position and we push off the ground and we return back to an A. And the way that we do that is we thrust our booties in the direction of the momentum of the push. So you really want your booty to drive the backwards push because you don't have the flick to follow through on each stride. So you want to push off the ground, starting in an A and then bring your feet together into a little A, shifting the body weight and then resetting the stride. And you do this by pointing your booty where you want to go and then pushing off the ground. So you point and then push. Point your booty, push off the ground. All right, the last thing I want to, the last concept that I want to prove is, before we put our roller skates on, is the direction that our torso should be twisting so that we can get our feet going in the direction that we want to go. So when we're crossing over, the foot that's close, so when we're crossing over, we want to take, we want to turn our torso, we're looking behind ourselves and we want to point in the direction of the turn. So let's say we're going to draw like an S curve here, a rounded out zigzag. And to go to the right, we look over our right shoulder and then our right foot is the one that crosses under and the flip comes from the pinky when we do the crossover. But we look to the right over our right shoulder until we start, until the turn ends. And then once you want to switch to the left, then you're going to switch the direction of your shoulders. So if you want to draw a left turn, you're going to point with your left hand to the left turn, looking at the left hand and then crossing under with the left foot and following through with the pinky toe. Does that make sense? Maybe it will make more sense when we put our roller skates on. Let's do that now. What's everybody saying in there, Miggy? Any questions? Is A-bomb on there? Yeah, cool. It's basically a roller ski turned into a bag. They're called the Over the Shoulder Boulder Rollers. On our website next week. I got my fanny pack in there too. Does anyone have any questions? Questions about backward skating? Which one? The one closest to the turn or the one on the outside? Yeah. So you can backward skate with or without toe stops on. We're not going to be using our toe stops to push in any way. What's that? I'm going to show them four exercises. I'm going to show them how to get some, just get comfortable going in the backwards direction while looking. And I'm going to show them how to do blow bubbles backwards. And then we're going to actually backward skate. And then we're going to learn how to backwards crossover. All right. Can I move around or? Okay. All right. Let's start this backwards skating on roller skates lesson. So the first thing that you're going to want to do is get comfortable moving in the backwards direction. And you want to look backwards. So we proved earlier that it's so much easier to find balance and stability if we look backwards. Okay. All right. We're going to have to pause this video. Okay. I like their jams, smooth jazz and kicking people out of places. Oh, it's cooled down. You want to go over here? All right. I'm going to put my bag here. All right. So the first thing that you're going to want to do when you're backwards skating is get used to rolling and stepping in the backwards direction. So you look behind you twisting at the torso. You're going to bend your knees for stability because our knees are our shock absorbers. So once we lose balance, we bend our knees. You're going to put your hands out. And you may want to actually point in the direction that we're going to be moving. And you just shift your body weight from the right and left. Resetting in an A formation. So your heels are a bit splayed out. And your toes are a bit, your knees are a little knocked. So once you've got that down, we're going to move on to blowing bubbles. So forward skating. You forward skate, you blow the bubbles this way. And the weight is in your heels. And you're lifting the weight slightly out of the balls of your feet so that you can pump forwards. And we're going to do exactly the same thing, except we're going to look behind ourselves, twisting at the torso. We're going to start in an A. And we're going to let our heels drive the motion. Make sure that you stretch your groins before practicing this. Because before your groins and hips get too open, you're going to want to pull the heels back together. And then reset the bubble by twisting or pivoting on the balls of your feet, lifting the heels. So drive the heels back and then twist the balls of the foot in. So you lift and pump with the heels while doing these bubbles. Also look in the direction that you're most comfortable looking at while you're going backwards. I spin to my right, so I'm almost always looking over my right shoulder. But you may spin to the left. So looking over your left shoulder, you're really going to open up your heels and then let the heels come backwards. And then twist and pivot on the balls of your feet to bring the heels back in. And then resetting the stride, twisting on the balls. Your knees are going to go in and out. Let me show you backwards. You look over the shoulder that you're most comfortable looking. Starting in the balls of your feet, you're going to drive your heels backwards and then bring the heels back together, resetting the stride in the balls of your feet. So let your heels come out and then drive the heels back in, resetting the stride in the balls of your feet. All right, once you've got the bubbles blown, then you're going to want to actually skate backwards. And when I mean actually skate backwards is, oftentimes people will think or I thought that this was skating backwards because I was rolling backwards. But it doesn't matter how fast you go. This does not look smooth. And you also can do crossovers while just blowing bubbles. So you're going to want to learn how to pick up each foot separately. And you can practice this by just getting strength in one footed skating. It's a really great drill to get comfortable just shifting your body weight into one foot. So when we're doing just actually skating backwards, we're going to do the blowing the bubbles, but we're skipping the middle part of it. So we started the A, we're going to push off and then point our booty. So when we push off the right foot, we point our booty over our left heel. So we push off here and then we reset the A by turning our booty to our right heel and pushing off with the left foot. Turn your booty to the left heel and then push off with the right. So you're alternating pushes while resetting the A. And again, it's much more comfortable looking behind you. Let me show you that from the backwards perspective. So to skate backwards, you start in an A formation with your heels out, your knees knocked in. You're going to set your momentum off by pushing off with one foot. And you're going to push off the ground in a half A direction while shifting your hip over the opposite heel and then resetting the A and then shifting the hip to the right side and pushing off the left heel, resetting the A, shifting the hips. Maybe these explanations are too detailed for you and I completely get it because I'm a visual learner. But not everyone's a visual learner. So I've had to break it down as bite size as I possibly can so that I can teach people effectively. What I feel without any details is I'm wiggling my booty and cutting the path that I'm rolling in like a knife is cutting butter in a snake formation. You'll see my booty is shifting right and left. OK, and I'll do it from the backwards perspective. So I'm wiggling my booty left and right. I'm trying to get my booty over the opposite heel. I really feel like I'm skating with my butt. Nice. You're really good at backwards skating, camera man. All right, anybody have any questions before we move into the backwards crossovers? Not sure. Anybody have any questions about backwards skating? Oh, good. I'm so glad that you're finding that useful, Raven. Yes, when you fall, you want to pick a cheek. You don't want to go straight to the middle. Tailbones are such a pain in the butt, literally, to heal. All right, we've got one more skill to learn. OK, Ariana, that's a really great question. When moving backwards. OK, Ariana, when I skate backwards, I start looking back and I end up going to the side that I'm looking at. How do I stop doing that? So do you mind holding this? So I think if you're not used to switching your torso, what you're doing is you're favoring the side that you're probably turning your shoulders to. And your weight is going to one side and you're actually doing maybe a crossover. So what I would practice first is doing these stamps very slowly. Turn the walking backwards into its own drill and try and do them slowly to even out your strength on that one side. So I definitely have a lot of people have a favored side. You're very blessed if you're ambidextrous and can do everything on the right side as easy as you can on the left. That is definitely a bless. I favor my right side. So I always have to practice twice on the left side even more so that I can even myself out. So you may want to practice doing long one footed strides on your weaker side looking over your weaker direction because you may unconsciously just be favoring one side and crossing over when you're trying to go straight. The more confident you are, the easier you can shift that body weight. So once you get used to really looking and twisting and you have the range and visibility, you start to get much more confident and you push into the stride. All right, I do want to cut before I go into crossovers. I want to go into how do you turn into backward skating. So there is a full tutorial about 180 turns in our intermediate lesson. The turnaround toe stop covers it a little bit and just 180s and practicing 360s, you can learn the 180. But one way to do that is by looking in the direction that you're trying to face. So when we flip from forwards to backwards, you want to point your butt in the direction that we're going to be moving in. So we start the momentum off by turning and you want to look behind you, which is your new forward stance. So point your butt in the direction that you want to be moving and then look over the shoulder that's comfortable for you. When you do the 180, make sure that you're in a staggered stance. You can turn your head first and do the 180 or you can also just look in that direction and then turn your booty in the direction of the backward skating to keep your head facing the direction that you're going to be starting in while skating backwards. So to recap that, you skate forwards, you do your transition, and you keep your head facing the direction by just shifting your booty in the direction of the backward skate. Then you start striding. All right. What's that? When you're backwards skating? Whichever way is more comfortable for you to turn is the direction that you should go. So when we're shifting backwards and keeping our head in this direction, sometimes it can confuse us when we want to go forwards because we're turning to the left and then our head's looking over our right and then we want to step right. So rather than doing a full 360 with our head turn, what I would suggest is get yourself backwards, look right and look left, and then decide which direction you want to look and then open a knee to land the turn. Is that helpful? So you want to stagger your stance and when you're ending the backwards skate, stagger the stance, pushing off the balls of your feet and stepping forward out of it. All right. Let's move into crossovers. So for the crossover, let's say that you're going to draw an imaginary turn, like a roller rink turn. So I'm going to draw a semicircle right here around Miguel, our cameraman. And when I'm doing this crossover, so I'm going to be making a right turn around the camera and I'm going to have my right foot behind my left in a staggered stance and what I'm going to do is reach for ground from the outside of the circle and then pull it behind as the front foot heel crosses over the left toe. And I'm going to be pushing throughout, pushing throughout the ball of my foot and rolling my pinky off of the ground and then resetting the stride. You can do this first. You can practice this just by doing one foot. So not so much worrying about the front foot. You'll see that my shoulders are in the direction of the turn here. All right. I explained that as a circle around you. Okay, what's that? Yeah, if you have any questions, please leave it in the comments after the video so that I can answer them after the video. All right, so the right, if you're going to be spinning a right circle, you're going to take your right foot, you're going to grab for ground from the inside of the circle and then pull it out in a cross pulling position and then to help you keep the turn, you're going to reset it. You'll see that my heel keeps re-situating itself in this backwards crossover. So the inside foot is almost turn, almost making a diagonal line. The inside foot here is almost drawing a diagonal line back and then this heel that naturally spins out is reset to draw another one. All right, let's go to the left. So if we're making a left turn, we're going to turn our shoulders parallel to the left turn to the circle that we're drawing. Then we're going to grab ground with the left foot on the inside of the circle and we're going to pull it and draw a diagonal behind our front right foot and then the right foot is going to be resetting. It's really hard to do here. Yeah, like in a zigzag after I do the left one, yeah. Could you just maybe stand right there? All right, that's what I wanted to show you. All right, if you wanted to just do like a right cross and then switch to a left one, the ticket to this one is turning your shoulders when you want to turn the turn. So all you have to do is turn your shoulders and you'll start to go in the opposite direction. And for the purpose of teaching, this is exaggerated, but if I wanted to do this, I would just shift my body weight and do really exaggerated backwards skating. So I would coast it, maybe do one cross and coast to the opposite side. But I'm definitely looking over my right when I want to go to the right and my left shoulder when I want to go to the left. Anything else I should demo? Let me be your monkey. A straight crossover. What, going forward? Oh, I know. I think the chat is teaching me something that I have seen Coco do before. All right, any more? All right, I think that's it for the backwards skating tutorial. Let me check in with you all. Which part, Sage? Which part do you want me to go over? Oh, thank you. Thank you. I was really figuring it out based on your direction. So once you get this, like, once you get the regular backwards stride and you teach yourself how to do, like, just the simple crossover, you know what I think may be better? How about this? Okay, so this is definitely how I would want to learn anything. I would put the camera in my mouth and then show you my, I'm not going to put it in my mouth. Not that I could get anybody sick here, but I'm just not going to do that. But let's see if this perspective works. So y'all can see my feet, right? So if I was doing a right turn, I would look over my right shoulder and then take my right foot and then put it under and draw a diagonal line. This is what I'm talking, when I say diagonal line, this is the diagonal line I'm talking about. And then I would keep pushing, like, onto the ground until my pinky toe was the last to leave. And then this front foot, this front heel would come in a bit. I think I ruined the orientation. Kayden, is this helpful at all? All right, and then here's how I did the last one. All right, I'm really getting experimental. Oh, thank you so much, Kayden. Thank you so much for coming to the backward skating lesson. I'm trying to make these more succinct as we move on. So I think I'm doing pretty good being under 40 minutes. A lot of my videos are turning into, like, one hour, two hour long conversations with you all because I love being on here now. All right, can I do a backflip? Yes, I can. Should I do a backflip? Maybe in my jackboots. I've got my lollies on right now. All right, thank you so, so much for coming to the backward skating lesson. I hope you enjoyed it. Please be sure to like, comment, subscribe, and hit the notifications bell. And I really mean each one of those things now that I understand what those mean. If you have any comments or want to learn more skills, please put them in the comments section after this video ends. I read every single one of the comments and I'm going through all the bunny comments and I really love them and I appreciate you so, so, so much for coming onto our channel and watching our daily videos. You want to say goodbye, Miguel? It takes a minute, but it works out forever. It's really fun. Keep trying. Yeah, Miguel's really good at backward skating. I'm not, but I try. Yeah, show them. Come on, show them. Check out Miguel's backward skating skills. Whoa. Thank you very much, Barbara. What else you got? All right. See you later, everyone. Have a lovely Wednesday and a great rest of the week.