Small Space Roller Skating Tips - Things YOU Can Practice In Your Home

With the arrival of winter for most of us, it's meant that we've had to come inside to practice and I know rink time is quite a premium. But it doesn't mean you have to stop practicing because even if you've got a little area in your house, we can still do some small space practice which will help you gain control of your skates and get your balance for when you can skate again and then you'll be even more fabulous than you were before. So our first small space skill is going to be like a little slide shuffle. So if you stand hip width apart, have your arms out or you can hold on to something and all you're going to do is slide one foot forward and one foot back and then bring them back and the opposite way. So to stop your legs from going too far apart you have to keep a tension in your legs and to bring them back together you've got to squeeze your thighs together and then relax, let the tension stop them from going too far and then to bring them back you just squeeze the thighs back together again. So tension so don't go too far and squeeze. So this one can be done moving and this is great because it gets you used to the position of a stagger and it's also great for a cruise because you do the same position when you're cruising. So this is a great one to get control of and you can do it nice and fast when you get better and you can do it to music, to the beat of the music, make it a bit more fun. For safety on this one is it's important to keep your feet hip width apart because you can kick your other foot and kick them out from underneath you so just be careful with that that they're not too close. So the next one is going to be a little slide forwards. So this is great for getting the feel of the weight transfer. I'm going to slide my left foot forward so to be able to do that I had to put all my weight on my back leg, bend the knee and you can feel the release of this leg and then you can slide it forwards. Then come back to centre, weight on both feet, slide the weight to the other foot and then you can release like this. And then what's really nice is you can do slide slide so you can get like a little routine going. The next one is a little side step. Now this looks incredibly easy but don't be fooled. If you don't put your foot down completely flat and you put a front or the back the skate will start to roll so be careful do this slowly at first and bend your knees. This is going to help you get so much control because you're going to keep your weight dead over your skate. It will make a big big difference if you can get this like a little crab step. Once you've got control of this side stepping and your wheels aren't rolling you can try doing a cross in place. Nice bent knees, hold on if you need to and what you're going to do is cross the foot over. So what you're doing is as you put this foot down the weight transfers onto this foot, lifts off of this one and this one goes back because what you don't want to do is kind of have both feet on the floor together like this. It's almost like a swap of feet so I'm swapping my feet and they're not really doing that. I'm swapping. With this little cross one I think there was a TikTok video a while ago that called this the strut or the TikTok strut so it's quite fun you can get it going really really fast but one thing to be very careful of is that you keep your foot flat because anyone who's seen my Instagram will see me doing this and I put my foot down like that it ended badly so keep your foot flat and you can get like a little jump and put a little bit of energy into it. All of these skills will really really help you to get balance and control of your skates because I'm sorry I do make them look quite easy but when you start trying them as a beginner they're actually quite tricky so do be careful hold on to stuff and if you're in your house be careful because obviously you're going to have tables and chairs and things you can bang yourself on so it's still a good idea even though you're indoors to keep yourself safe. So when you do get to skate outdoors again or you get some time at the rink a lot of these skills you can do moving as well so I'm going to quickly show you the moving too. A great way to drill these ones is to put on some music and just enjoy yourself. I'm Katie you've been watching Skatee and I'll see you next time. Bye!