Stopping With Toe Stops vs Jam Plugs on Roller Skates

Hey skaters, I'm Dirty Deborah Harry with the Dirty School of Skate and Sugar Roller Skates and I'm here at Pigeon's Roller Rink in Long Beach, California. This amazing spot is so fun to skate and so it's going to be great to bring you today's video about stopping with toe stops and without toe stops. Today's video is brought to you by PigeonSkates.com. You can go online or you can come to their brick and mortar shop here in Long Beach, California and you can buy everything you need for skating. Do you need skates, wheels, plates, bearings, apparel, bags, laces, all sorts of cute stuff to support your habit? Well go online and use my promo code D-I-R-T-Y with a big old dollar sign. Save yourself a couple of bucks. All right skaters, let's get started with today's little tutorial about how to skate with your toe stops but more importantly, when you get to that point where you're like, hey I want to take them out and I want to skate without them, what happens? All right skaters, so listen up. When we're talking toe stops versus no toe stop, I don't even like the versus thing, okay? It's not two ideas pitted against each other in a battle of who's a better skater if they wear the toe stop or don't wear the toe stop. Toe stops are tools in your arsenal just like you have a couple of different sets of wheels when you get pretty good. Different wheels deal with different surfaces. Toe stops are a tool. There are certain jumps and spins and stops and terrains that absolutely call for a toe stop not only for performance but for safety, okay? I mean literally there are movements in skating that you cannot even do without a toe stop, okay? So if you're in the mindset of you're not a good skater until you can skate without a toe stop, I beg to differ because you can actually do amazing and very difficult maneuvers but you need a toe stop. What I'm trying to help you understand today is that oftentimes when we start in skating you will buy a skate that has a rather large toe stop. It's like bolted through to the center. It's big and chunky. It hangs low on the end of the boot real close to the ground and sometimes that will make it more difficult as you try out different moves particularly things like dance skating where you want to get really far over on your front truck. You'll find that your toe stop just gets in the way and you think well I need to take this thing out. I'm talking specifically about stopping with toe stops versus stopping without toe stops. In the description box of this video I'm going to link my playlist which is all about stopping so that you will be able to understand if you're new to skating how to stop with your toe stops, okay? So when we're looking at, I'm just going to give you quick examples. Using our toe stop when we skate forward I'm talking like dragging your chest up to a nice stop, okay? You can do that with your toe stops and then when you get a little bit more advanced you start skating around and then you say oh I'm going fast. I'm going to turn and I'm going to skid on both toe stops, okay? That's how we use our toe stops specifically to stop. But what if you tell yourself, hey look Dirty, I can already do those two things and I want to get into dance skating and I want to do other things that require me to get on my front wheels truck more deeply, more inverted. In that way I think the toe stops are giving me, you know, a problem. You can do one of two things. You can go for a smaller toe stop and screw it all the way up in the plate and make it real tiny or you can take them off completely and put in a jam plug which is what I'm going to do right now. Alright skaters, so as you can see I have different skates on. They've got no toe stops. They've got little dance plugs or jam plugs in there. That's what a little jam plug looks like. Some of this one is a particular size. You get ones that are thinner for different styles of plates but that's generally what it looks like. So for those of you who don't know, these little plugs can be used for realistically they could be used for stopping like when you're skating back and you put your toe down you're going to get a little bit of rubber meat in the road and it'll help you stop. It's not the ideal thing but it's just there. But one other feature to understand that for most roller rinks they need you to cover up the metal from your plate. We don't want that exposed metal because it can dig a big old divot in the wood floors and it can scratch floors like this. Okay so it's a little bit of protection for the floor you're skating on. Okay so let's talk about how to actually stop once you take your toe stops off. Now when you take your toe stops off trust me there's going to be a little bit of you just skating along and going like this. You're going to think that you can push off of your toe stop. Surprise! It's not there anymore. Okay so you have to be mindful right off the bat that you no longer have toe stops. One of the things you're going to focus on with your skating is put your feet in a v position. Drop your hips and start feeling out your inside edges and start pushing off of them. When we feel out our inside edges what I'm talking about is you're in this v position. You dropped your hips. You got your chin up. Shoulders straight across. Neck area tight. You're going to take your knee of the foot that's going to be pushing off of the knee of the leg of the foot. You know what I mean. Anatomy. You're going to drop it down. Push your knee over your big toe. When you do this you are now you are now focusing on the power of your inside edge. Meaning knee over big toe. Pressure on the inside of the boot. Pressure on your wheels. Pressure on the edge of your wheels so that you can push off. This is important to do so that you don't do something that you probably used to do which is pushing off on your toe stops to gain speed. You know we kind of push off like this all of a sudden they're not there and there'll be that one moment where you fall forward. I ain't gonna lie. The first time you take off your toe stops is gonna be one of those experiences in skating where you're going to tell all your friends what happened. You're gonna fall. So listen the first time you take them off do it in do it in a safe space. Okay. Don't go on the busiest night of wherever it is. Don't go you know to something that's going to be super challenging. Try it out in a safe space by yourself so you can get the feel of it. So again I want you get your feet like this in your v position. Drop your hips and get used to pushing off of your inside edges nice and easy so that you don't end up pushing forward on your toe stops. Now let's talk about how you absolutely stop. We're going to start in a t start position. A t start same as a t stop. One foot behind the other. It doesn't have to be fully exact. We're not being judged by the judges. I just need your feet in a t position Drop your hips. Look forward. I want you to take your knee and push it over your big toe to push off. Push off. I need you to stand up. Drop down. Shift body weight. Extend and drag. Please know that in everything in skating weight on one foot moves another. So if I put weight on my left foot to do a t stop with my right foot the weight on the right the weight on the left foot is supporting the right so the right hip can come up. Turn out and I can drag my foot. You guys when I drag my foot I ain't doing no rollerblady stuff. Shout out to the rollerbladers out there. You know we love you but we can't do this. It's very dangerous. You need to slide with all fours. You can slide with just the outside wheels. Put it down like that. Press down on your baby toe. You can do it with just the front trucks. Push down with your big toe and drag. All right so let's try it again. I like to start out in the t start position and in the t stop position so that you have something that you can do in repetition. You know I love practice and repetition. Ready? We're gonna go five six seven eight go side side side down move your body weight over turn it out and slide you guys whenever you're going to pick up a foot in skating if you only want to pick it up a little bit just like when we do when we do a t stop just pick your foot up with your hip bring your hip around hip around so that way it's not a big jump okay so that's the first way to do it now let's talk about if you're going backwards when you're going backwards and you have no toe stops on and you're used to absolutely pushing back and stopping it's going to be a jolt to your system that you no longer have that toe stop there okay but you saw me just do it right here right all i did was drag my little jam plug and drag actually the tip of my boot but you know you may care about your skates you might not want to be dragging the leather of your toe across the floor but i'm telling you it's possible right i can just push it straight back and stop but it's not the ideal way to do it you know how i like to do it is like this i'll be skating backwards bend my knee draw a big c and put it behind me okay you want to draw a big c shape how do you do that i'm going to put weight on my left foot i'm gonna rise up with the hip just a bit to get my foot in this position with my right and let it flow backwards so we're up down shift i'm going to lift up my hip a little bit to move my foot and push it back the trick is in lifting this hip just a little bit why because it takes the pressure off the skate okay let's look at it again so i'm skating around backwards minding my own business having a good time right and i see someone and i want to talk to them and i'm like hey what's up i put weight here roll it around back there and come up i can now skate forward okay let's look at it one more time because this one's really important and i need you to get this because this is going to be relevant whether you're skating indoors outdoors and whatnot okay so we're skating backwards chin up shoulders straight across i just shift shift my body weight lift my hip up a stop feet are together we're ready to go okay let me tell you just one other thing about stopping backwards people always oh my god how do you stop backwards how do you stop backwards can i give you this one tip stop moving meaning stop moving your feet just settle into a nice comfortable position we're skating people like how do i stop how do i stop just stop moving get down low shift your body let it flare out a bit and have it come around rise up and you're gonna look fantastic all right skaters so listen make sure you hit the subscribe button and the notification bell because i'm going to bring you a lot of videos on this topic it's wide and it's varied i'm going to give you videos on tricks that you can do with toe stops so those of you who traditionally don't wear toe stops might actually be able to have like whole new world of things that you can do with your toe stops right these are fun challenges you can have with you and your friends also i'm going to give you a little bit of uh well not a little bit i'm going to give you a lot on this hot topic going fast turning around and stopping this is a biggie because you need this both indoors and outdoors so make sure you hit that subscribe button also can you please in the comments start writing down right now i need you to write a topic that you feel like i haven't covered and i don't care if it's just a talky topic or it's a skating topic something related to skating that you personally want me to make a video about listen i'm all about making these videos and i can talk forever that's obvious right i love it and i want to help you so please in the comments take a moment right now i'm gonna go skate here we got class starting up real quick so you know what i need you to do i need you to go practice see you next time