The 5 Rules of good skating - Become a fast inline skater in one day!

Hello skaters, thanks for tuning in and welcome to my latest video. This video is gonna be about the first five things you need to learn if you're brand new to inline skates. However, everybody should watch this video because those five things are also the most essential and most important skills as an inline skater. So the five things that I find to be the most crucial when you want to get better or just want to learn how to skate on inlines is obviously you've got to be able to stand straight on your skates. Some of this is just a matter of balance and being comfortable in your inlines but a lot of it is also about the frame positioning. So that is the first thing you might even want to take care of before you put on your inline skates. Make sure that your frame and your wheels are positioned under your skate. Right in the middle of it, not too far out, not too far back. Some people might have a tendency to fall to the inside or even some to the outside so this is still a bit individual. The thing that I always recommend people is to put some scotch tape under the boots so you know where your frames are and then after skating for a little bit you kind of feel if you need to put it to the inside the outside and then try and adjust it and often you'll be surprised how little of a difference will make a big difference. So just before we get into the five steps there is the step number minus one to put on a helmet for safety reasons and to avoid concussions or whatsoever and just to feel safe wear a helmet. It might not look super cool but it could be worth it so don't hesitate to put on a good helmet. Once that's done we can get down to the fun stuff. Step number one we already got through it is to be able to stand straight in your skates. By this I mean there shouldn't be any falling to the inside, there shouldn't be any falling to the outside, there shouldn't be any falling backwards or forwards. So once you feel comfortable in that we can work on the basic position. Okay so the basic position is quite simple to explain but it should be practiced more often than you might think. I still do it personally because even though I managed to get it quite all right we're just standing here and showing you guys at the end of a race whether it's an ice or an inline it is very difficult to maintain this because it's kind of contradictory to what your body would assume it should be doing and obviously if your legs hurt why would you try and force yourself to be in a low and comfortable position that is just going to burn up your quads. Well it's going to make it more efficient and you're going to skate faster so forcing yourself to maintain this position even when you get tired is quite crucial. Anyways now I'm just going to explain how to actually do it. So first thing you want to do is you want to keep what we just spoke about that you want to be on top of your skate so no falling in no falling out. Then when you're in that position you go into a 90 degree. A good way to check this is if your elbows are right here you can touch your heels and if you can fit perfectly a fist under your knees you're probably in the right position. This is the position you want to be skating at the position you want to maintain when you're out skating. Many reasons for this. First off you're going to be more stable even though it could be uncomfortable at first just until you get used to it. When you're in that position you can also extend a lot more. If you're up here you can skate there. If you're down here you can push all the way out to the side like that. The next thing you want to make sure is that your knees are not falling inwards or outwards. A good way to do this is to always be able to have a fist here. If you can fit your fist this way in between your knees probably correct. The legs and feet should also be the same. Never have less than shoulder width or more than shoulder width when you're standing in this position. Obviously when you're out skating there's not going to be shoulder width anymore but we'll get to that later. Another important thing with this basic position is that you would want everything to point forward. Obviously you can't skate when running like this. I'm not going anywhere. So you need to create force and empower by pushing to the side and the only way to do that the wheels, the skates, the knees, the hips, the shoulders everything must point in the direction towards which you're skating. So don't open up when you push to the side and the best way to do this is to already when you're in your basic position have everything pointing straight forward. Now you got this right and you're trying to really take your basic position to perfection. A final thing that you could be thinking about just to have your center of gravity a little more correctly placed underneath yourself and then push a little more with your glutes get more out of every push is to make sure that you have shoulders knees and toes in a straight line. So if you look at me from the side you can see if I'm standing like this even though I'm down in the position my knees are too far back. I can also be standing like this my shoulders are too far back but if you're in a correct position I can draw a straight line and go all the way this way I can engage my glutes push straight to the side and skate fast. Next key point is your arm swing. When you're skating whether it's because you're not comfortable skating with your arms in the back or if you're comfortable skating with the arms on the back but you just want to go as fast as you can you're going to use your arms to generate more speed and to do this you need to do it correctly. So they got to be coordinated with your legs. This is the first mistake that I see in a lot of skaters even though it seems kind of simple when you explain it for some reason a lot of us get it wrong. So when pushing out away from yourself with one leg the opposite arm should go away from the body. Anyways it's just one of the easiest ones just to think about it when you're out skating. Next up your arm swing should be natural of course when skating fast you're going to pull through if you want to go as fast as you can but the idea of this is that you're not working against the natural movement of the body and your joints. So try and practice it you really lose like this and this is how it should move. So obviously you want to be a little more engaged but it's going to be the same movements and the same lines. So don't try and force it forwards or too far backwards just wherever it would naturally go and that's how you skate. Finally the faster you go and the more power you put in the more lean you can get the harder it's going to be to maintain this position and what we talked about in the beginning to make sure everything points forward. Therefore you need to contract and engage your core so you can point everything forward even when you're really pulling a strong arm swing so it doesn't get you out of position up or down. Next up when you want to learn to inline skate is to be able to do the crossover movement. So everything I explained up until this point almost just goes for skating straight forward and straight line which is what most of us do most of the time. However we do have to turn at some point and in order to do this as fast as we can we do the crossover which is a special technique that feels a little uncomfortable at first but once you nail it and get comfortable with it you realize it's going to be a lot faster and you might even feel safer. So basically crossover hence the name it's crossing over. So when you skate it would be like this crossing. Anyways there's a few ways to get to learn this a little faster because it is really uncomfortable because you've got to get away from the center of gravity and when you do the crossover movement there's going to be a point in the movement where you feel unsafe. I mean you're tilting here and unless or until you put this leg down it really feels like nothing is going to catch you. So basically you crash kind of into every step but you catch it. So again everything from what we spoke about with the basic position still goes for this to point forward and then just cross. A good way to learn this at first is to either practice like I did here standing simply just getting used to crossing to the side. The big difference here is that you can't really imitate the lean you get and the pressure you get in a real turn. A way to get the lean in before you actually do skate in a turn is to do it on a staircase. Another way if you have more friends than I do you can hold on to a friend, a comment or another skater and then let him create that counterbalance and resistance so you can move to the side. Of course as you get better you can allow him to hold you a little more and you can lean more. One last thing that I want to point out here before we get on to the next last point is that you should really try and work on finishing your pushes. This is such a bad habit that a lot of skaters get early on in their career is that they don't really finish the pushes and they just fall backwards and this is usually skating. It takes a lot of time and no speed. So always finish pushes to the side. I actually made a video on crossover techniques so if you want to get down into all the details of the crossover movements you should look that up. I think I can put a link somewhere on the screen. I don't know if I'm smart enough for that but if I can it'll be here. Finally out of stop. I mean everything we've done is about getting faster and learning to create speed correctly but at some point we'll have to break and this is pretty important because you can get hurt if you don't know how to do it. There's a bunch of ways so you can pick which ever feels more comfortable to you and whatever you like doing the most. First off I'm gonna go with the t-break. It's not what I would use. It's not what I would recommend but if it's an emergency or you just don't have the time to break down fast enough the t-break is super efficient. However it's not the greatest for your knees and definitely not for your wheels because you are just gonna burn your wheels in front of your break. Next up is I think what I use the most. This is the v-break. It's a bit like skiing. So you go forward and then tilt your skate inwards. Put more and more pressure. So basically how you would skate backwards. Ultimately slow down by doing like tiny jumps in a slalom movement. This one might be a little awkward but if you have enough time to slow down that's what I use and it's what we use on ice as well. So yeah you can pick whatever you feel comfortable with. That was my final point of the five of them. I really hope you found this to be useful. It's always fun making these videos and it is super cool hearing all your feedback and all the people that enjoy watching them. So I'll keep making more. If you need more help to get into skating or to improve your skating I do online coaching. Individual online coaching and help a handful of skaters there. I have new spots opening up at the end of the month. So why not sign up for that? I try and do some video analysis of all my athletes and I do that because I think this is the most important part of skating. But it's full training programs with everything you'd need to figure this cool sport out. Also I have made a few template programs that you can download. It comes with an app for just $50. It's a single time purchase and then you have them for life. So you can start whatever you want and you can do them over. There's one on weightlifting for skaters full season weightlifting program and the other is it's just on how to get fit how to skate a marathon takes 12 weeks if you follow the plan. That's all of me now. If you want to look into how I train you can check Strava links below. You can follow me on Instagram and all the usual. It's been a lot of fun and see you for next time. 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