Casual Clinic | Make Skating More Fun By Learning Different Techniques For Going Fast

I'm just going to take you on a skate with me. I chose the wrong path here. I should have not taken the sidewalk and hopped out. Well, I'm going to go to a little school track and show you the difference between what happens when somebody learns recreational skating or urban skating on rollerblades versus somebody who's been taught how to speed skate and happens to develop a very good feel for it, a good flow for it and what that looks like and how you can make that differentiation yourself and understand a couple of things that you can apply to your own skating no matter what kind of skater you are that will just enhance your experience. That will make commuting on your skates or setting up a trick if you're an aggressive skater, for example more interesting because you can create easier speed and overall just make you more excited to be on your skates. That's the reason I like to teach. It has nothing to do with creating more speed skaters or trying to convert anybody from one discipline to the next. For me, I really enjoy skating and I want to share that with people. I think if you can be more comfortable on your skates and enjoy that experience a little bit more then you'll be on the same page as me. It's wet. It rained a lot yesterday so I have no idea if the track is going to be dry or not. A little groggy. I don't like skating in traffic but I'm a little groggy. I haven't had a chance to really wake up too much yet. But here we go. There's a school around here somewhere. Oh, fresh pavement. There it is. That's the stuff. That's nice. I put some windscreens on my 360 camera. Some dead cats. Those are the fluffy things that you see wherever the mic is that produce a nice clear sound when there's wind noise or would otherwise be wind noise when there's wind. I put some little foam guys on my camera and I'm hoping I can get some usable audio out of that because oftentimes when I do a de-noise on my audio for my vocal I lose the sound of the skates or sounds of cars and those subtleties. So I think this is the school right here. Let's pop in and see. Pretty close. Close to home. There's a lot of decent places to skate in Montreal that are relatively close to where I live. That's nice. Last time I was here there were puddles on the track so I anticipate that being a thing again. We'll see. It's not that important. I just needed a decent straightaway to show some differences in movement. And yep, there are puddles but not too bad. It's decent enough. That'll do pig. That'll do. This is a decent little track to just put in some easy laps. I'd be kind of afraid to skate fast here because there's some cracks some humps. The small humps are what get you when you're hauling and you hit a little mini hump in the middle of a turn or something and you don't get good purchase with all your wheels on the ground. It feels like you're on a rockered frame. If you come from hockey you probably know what that is. If you come from urban you definitely know what a rockered frame is. But speed skaters, especially inline skaters have no idea what rockered frames are. I didn't at all. Same concept as an ice skate or an ice blade where you have a nice radius to the wheels and it's interesting with the newly invented discipline of wizard skating relatively new there's more of a need for these heavy rockers to do really nice transitions and spins and just maintain momentum and flow to the skating. I skated a 490 rocker recently and it's so fun. It feels like hockey skates like ice skates and you can just kind of whip around but for speed skating it is not a good call. The same way that a long track blade for example is relatively flat compared to a hockey skate. That's how it kind of feels when you're comparing what a rockered inline skate feels like compared to a speed skate. This is completely flat. All four wheels are on the same level of the frame and so they should all have contact at the same time on a flat surface. Rockered frame usually means the front two wheels are back, two wheels are touching, middle two wheels are touching at a time and you have essentially the front wheel and the back wheel are a little bit higher off the ground maybe a millimeter, two millimeters, I don't know. I'd have to do the research on that and figure out exactly what it is. What am I talking about? I came here to teach you. This happens all the time. I came here to teach you the difference between what a traditional rollerblader would do, urban skater that's recreation style would do out the gate. You've got some rollerblades, you've been skating for a few months and you're starting to feel your flow. You're watching other skaters maybe, you're skating in a group and you're starting to pick up some of their movements and after doing the Big Apple Roll, doing the Montreal Roll-O-Rama, which was awesome by the way the thing I'm picking up when I watch people who don't come from a speed discipline is that the majority of the way they create speed is by dropping things down to the ground so try to keep the camera the same height off the ground as I show this and hopefully you'll be able to recognize the hip line going up and down relative to the ground so it looks something like this I'll try to find a straight path so you see the crack or the crease between the pavements up, down, up, down, up down, up, and I'm exaggerating that a bit to get the point across but essentially dropping the weight down to push the skate out away from you so I'm trying to get this skate to go that way I'm going to drop my hip line down to the ground and let that push the skate out out, out and this is the traditional method for how most recreation, urban, hockey skaters once hockey skaters start hauling and they get a feel for how to make speed down in position, you don't see it too often but more on the recreation, urban side the up, down the problem with that is every stroke you have to reset so as you're letting your weight do the work through the stroke, that's great, that's very efficient and effective what isn't, is what comes next and that's what people miss with skating often I'm dropping my weight down here, but then I have to pick it back up here drop down here, pick it up here and by drop down I don't mean just bend my knees, I'm locking that out and letting the fall of my body weight to the ground push my skate out to the side because I've created structure for my hip, my knee, my ankle if I just flop down for example, and I don't lock in my hip, knee, ankle and I just drop down, I get this, nothing happens my skate doesn't go away from me, but if I lock those out and I drop my hip down, I get forward momentum now as I mentioned the problem with that is that you have to lift yourself up between every stroke, that means if you do a great job creating easy speed by going like this, now you're very low you have to pick yourself up to do it again, to get to here and to here, and to here so every stroke, you're essentially doing a single leg squat of your body weight so a calisthenics exercise if you will, again and again and again and again of simply going like this over and over and over and over that's what you're doing if you skate traditionally like an urban skater or a recreational rollerblader would do the suggestion is keep your hips the same height off the ground a bit and try to find the same feeling, just rocking side to side, keep the stability from the hip knee and ankle, and let the momentum that you're creating side to side float into the skate under your control and let that push you forward, start there don't worry about outer edges, don't worry about double push, don't worry about any of that just go from dropping things down to locking your height and flowing a little bit more left right like a long track skater would look that's kind of where for me the obvious transition is from traditional rollerblading style to what will eventually be a double push is locking things in and using the momentum of your flow this lateral pressure to create your forward speed once you start getting that piece and you can feel that nice rhythmic transition we call that weight transfer once you start feeling that then you can start incorporating the under push where you're actually leaning against the skate to create forward speed, forward momentum, acceleration and that's when the big magic of wheels starts showing up on the ice you can't really flick this part of the push because you need to be able to turn the skate aggressively so you can do it on a hockey skate but then the conundrum is that the radius is so small meaning the rocker is so aggressive that the carve slows you down it doesn't allow the skate to travel under your control and create speed for you so being able to make the motion of an under push or double push does not equate to creating speed off of a double push or a motion of a skating so what I mean by that is just because I'm whipping my skates around right now I'm creating zero speed off of that but big edges, I'm just whipping them around in an S but I'm not leaning against them with any kind of structure when I start leaning against them and controlling the angle of my wheels with pressure then I start getting some speed and it's a little dirty so hard to show that, show it on the other side but then you start getting interesting accelerations per every stroke getting down and being able to lean against the skates gives you a lot more forward momentum and easier speed just by knowing how to control where your weight is going and what the wheels are doing underneath you so to reiterate what you're going to want to look for when you watch somebody on rec skates or on urban skates, aggressive skates watch for their hip line and see how much it comes down to the ground as they're going forward do they keep their hips like this stay in the middle, which is also bad so if the hips stay the same height off the ground and you don't have that lateral transfer that side to side feeling then you get kind of the hockey player that doesn't understand how skating works just staying in the middle and just bouncing your weight kind of off the walls but they're skinny skinny walls think about taking those walls and widening them and that's kind of what you're bouncing off of bounce off of that and that and that and that little travel, that's a weight transfer right there where you're allowing yourself to take the speed you created from the push and glide on it in a way that your momentum is carried, that you're actually moving forward you're not immediately doing something that's ruining that transfer so that all connects to a side to side movement which would be step 2 in the progression so the first step is understanding that getting your weight down into the skate is going to be your natural movement and it's probably what you're already doing some speed skaters even do this then from there you want to keep that same feeling of speed creation but use lateral flow and leaning into your skate a little more to make it happen not so much just dropping things down and picking them up and dropping them down and picking them up trying to keep things a little more consistent in the height and lean against that skate and lean against that skate at the same time I'm trying to manipulate my wheels to be a little straighter than they want to be and what I mean by that, and this is a key piece that I didn't mention earlier when you lean into a skate the right way, it'll want to turn for you, you'll get this, these whips this is what most urban skaters are exceptional at being able to hit edges that make them turn what they're not exceptional at is being able to hit edges that make them go fast and if you're not a speed skater you probably never had any reason to learn the difference but for speed skating we want to go the fastest, the easiest so we're taking those hard carves and we're redirecting them we're not just letting the skate push us around we're then controlling the direction of the wheels, meaning am I just letting my ankle lock in and push me around or am I doing a little bit of hip movement hip work to control the direction and you have to do a little bit of hip work to control that direction so to elaborate when you lean against the skate if you control the direction to be a little straighter than it wants to be because we know that if you lean against it it's going to make you want to carve, you'll feel it catch you'll feel a little wall of pressure being created then it's your job to control how that wall travels away from your centerline that's what good skating is create the wall, control the wall so create it by leaning against the skate, control the direction of the wheels a little straighter than they should be and then using your hip that's how you regulate the skate traveling away from your body so traditional style again, hip opens up body comes down and up, up, down up, down, up, down and the foot is opening up quite a bit to create the speed control the direction of your wheels keep your hips a little more under control in terms of the height and then use that side to side feeling more like a long tracker to learn the traditional push from there you do that same thing twice per stroke, one to the inner, one to the outer so I'm leaning this way controlling the direction and also leaning that way controlling the direction so here I'm controlling the skate to be a little straighter than it wants to be and I'm still leaning against it with good structure and then I repeat that process on the other side lean, keep it straighter, control it lean, keep it straighter, control it. I do that twice per stroke one on the under push, one on the regular push and that's the double push that gives you speed and not just a movement so that would be my suggestion to start looking for and I will do a follow up that is much more in depth slow motion, lines on the screen but I want to make you aware that these things exist and start making your brain think about what you're doing a little bit on skates and when you're watching other people skate see if you can pick out some of these pieces that I'm talking about see if you can see the recreational skater with the more up and down and it's going to be a little bit more subtle, it'll be more kind of like this where the hips are dropping a little bit and then the speed skater, usually speed skaters that are learning will tilt their hips and rock like this because they know they're not supposed to drop them up and down so you'll see some rocking like this and a great speed skater will keep the hips more flat and be able to do what I'm talking about and control the wheels while leaning against the skate so I hope that sheds a little bit of light on the differences at least on the surface level and I went a little bit deeper than I probably wanted to on this first explanation but I don't think being aware of these things is a bad way to approach it just do your best not to try to fix it overnight just start looking for these details in other people skating start thinking about what the feelings are and ask yourself, am I doing this up and down or am I getting more of a side to side flow and if I am getting the side to side flow how can I then upgrade that to more of a double push where I'm actually getting speed out of this part of the stroke if you're on a rocker frame you're not going to be able to create good speed off that under push and you're not going to be able to create great speed off the traditional push either there's just not enough meat, not enough purchase to the wheels to the ground to really get into this part and get these angles but you can do it on a much more conservative scale thinking about keeping things a little bit closer to you and just try to find that feeling a little bit but you're never going to feel amazing in terms of creating speed on big rocker frames it's just not realistic so keep that in mind that even though these things are applicable to pretty much any skate types they work much better on flat frames than they do on rocker frames that doesn't mean you can't practice them and be aware of them and grow your skill set for the future if you decide you want to skate on a flat frame versus a rocker frame doing work in the morning so I really wish I had somebody to just skate in front of me all day so I didn't have to hold this damn selfie stick to make videos like this it looks so much better when somebody else is filming for educational stuff like this but that's just not a possibility for me so I'd rather create content with this thing that is a little fisheye you know has that 360 sports camera look versus not creating any content at all alright well hope you enjoyed that this will be a single cut basically I'll just cut out where I fumbled words if you'd like to let me know I'll do more of these if you hated it let me know why but I can have good turn around on videos like this basically in the same day so I can shoot this, edit, and upload it all in the same day with these easy tips, kind of skate along with me, learn a couple things but it's not going to be overly detailed that'll come later once a month or so those take a lot longer for me to do just a one man band shooting, writing, editing doing all the overlays on the screen that's all me if I had help I could probably churn out quite a few more but I just don't right now and that's the reality so if you like this content let me know if you don't let me know I'm always trying to make stuff that you guys appreciate, enjoy, learn from that's also somewhat entertaining and not mundane not always the easiest thing to do because I'm not a very exciting guy but anyways, catch you next time