Know This BEFORE Buying Roller Skates!

Hey skaters, I'm Dirty Deborah Harry with the Dirty School of Skate and Sugar Roller Skates. I'm here today at Wicked Skatewear to talk to you about three to four things you definitely need to know before you buy your first pair of roller skates. What I'm going to talk about today is going to help you decide on a particular skate. I am not going to tell you to buy this brand, buy this model. I'm not endorsing anything. I am here to help you make your own intelligent decision. It's going to be all up to you, but I'm going to give you three to four things to look for to help you make the proper decision for you. Because I want you rolling and I want you rolling so that you are loving skating. I know that there's a ton of information out there right now and it can be overwhelming when you're thinking I need to buy a pair of skates. I don't know what to buy. I will consult the internet and then you do and you just get overwhelmed. It isn't really that difficult. Okay, so I'm going to break it down. Now for those of you who like a long format video, I mean really long, I'm going to link another video about buying roller skates that goes really in depth. Okay, but this is going to be the quick and dirty version. All right, let's take a look at some skates. All right, skaters, so you want to buy your first pair of skates, right? Let's break it down. Think about the type of skating you think you want to do. Do you want to skate indoors? You want to skate outdoors? No problem, honey. Any of these skates will do. Just switch the wheels. There's going to be harder wheels for indoors, softer wheels for outdoors, harder wheels for skate parks. Okay, you just got to know that any skate you have, you can just switch out wheels. So that's not a big deal. You don't have to have a completely dedicated skate to skate outdoors or to skate indoors if you do both. But hey, buy two pairs of skates. Doesn't bother me. I love it. The real deal that you have to consider is the height of the heel. If you are going to be in your mind, you're like, I'm going to be the world's greatest roller derby player, okay, or I'm going to be a speed skater. You are going to need a different kind of skate with a different kind of heel than as if you were like, I want to skate at the boardwalk at the beach. I want to skate outdoors. I want to skate in the roller rink. Okay, so let's just talk about the heel. Now, if you get a skate that looks like this, you're going to see that the heel is really minimal, right? See how small that heel is? Now, if you look at other skates, let me just put this down here so it doesn't fall off. Let's look at this one. The heel is much higher. You see how big that heel is? Here's what happens when you're wearing skates. If you've got no heel, your foot resides like this in the skate. If you have a higher heel, your foot resides like this. Now, in skating, the vast majority of time, you're going to have your body weight on the ball of your foot. Ball of the foot, it's going to be right here above your front truck. Now, when you have a heel on your skate, boom, like that, you're already where you need to be. Your weight's over the ball of your foot. You're ready to go, okay? If you get a skate with barely any heel, your foot's like this. Your body positioning has to compensate. That means you have to get low and you have to exaggerate and get more forward to get the weight over the ball of your foot. So, if you're going to be playing roller derby, roller derby is a sport where often, almost the entire time, we are down low. Get a boot with virtually just a bit of a heel like this or no heel, you're going to be good to go. Now, understand, when you first wear these, you're going to stand and you're going to feel like, oh my god, my skates are coming out from underneath me. When that happens, adjust your body posture. Get down and move your body posture forward, okay? For all the other types of skating, including skate park skating, this jam skating, skating at the roller rink, skating outdoors and all that jazz, you're generally artistic skating, obviously. You're gonna want a skate with a heel, okay? So, I've done every genre of skating, every discipline except hockey. I'll tell you this, I wore skates with no heel or just a tiny heel for roller derby. I really like it for outdoor skating when it's more aggressive. I like it with little to no heel, but I've tried to do artistic skating with these on just for fun, like full-on figure skating jumps and spins. It is difficult, okay? So, I would be better suited at the rink if I just threw on a pair of rentals because the rentals would have the proper heel height. That's what makes it so important, okay? So, figure that out. Do I want no heel or do I want a heel, okay? That is going to eliminate a ton of choices for you and narrow it down. Next thing we need to talk about is when you look at a skate and you look at the toe stop feature, okay? So, let's take a look at that. When you're looking at skates and especially a skate that might be attractive much for its pricing, you look at that and you're like, oh my god, that skate's only, you know, X amount of dollars as compared to everything else. Everything seems super expensive. Oftentimes, you'll turn that skate over and you're gonna look at the toe stop. This is your toe stop and you're gonna, they're gonna more than likely have what's called a bullseye toe stop and when they do, that means that the center screw right here goes straight down the center of the toe stop, okay? This is a non-adjustable toe stop. When you look at a skate and it has a non-adjustable toe stop, it is generally more on the price-friendly side, the more affordable size, the real entry-level size. It's gonna have that. This toe stop is going to stay in this fixed position. You're gonna have no ability to make the toe stop closer to the floor or higher up towards the boot. Now, when you get involved in skating, you're trying different kinds of tricks. You're doing different things. Sometimes, you like your toe stop way up by your boot. Sometimes, you like it real down low somewhere. You like it somewhere in the middle. You have options. When you get a skate that has a non-adjustable toe stop, you don't have options, okay? You just don't have options. It's stuck in one place and that's just where it stays and oftentimes, I gotta be honest, the compound that these are made of isn't really surprisingly conducive to stopping. It's kind of just hard and you try to use it for stopping and it's not that great but I'm not gonna hate on it because oftentimes, this comes on a very price-friendly skate and if that's how you're getting into skating and that's how you're gonna start, I love it for you but if you think, hey, I think I'm gonna do this for real, start looking at skates that have adjustable toe stops, alright? So, let's look at what an adjustable toe stop looks like. It's gonna have a toe stop. It's gonna have this kind of lock nut and bonus, it's adjustable, okay? Now, sometimes, it'll have a set screw right here. Sometimes, you just use a tool and it's gonna come in and out. This can go closer to the floor or higher up to the boot. The cool thing about this is you also have options with the toe stop. This can come out and if you want a toe stop that's much larger or smaller, you can take this out and you have options. You have a lot more options too for aesthetics, honey. If you just want something that looks really cute and it's shaped like something you like, a heart, a flower or whatever, you're gonna have those options. Whereas, when you have a fixed toe stop, you may have options for colors but that's it, okay? So, if you think you're gonna be in skating for a long time, if you want to do different kinds of skating, I would suggest highly that you start eliminating the skates that have non-adjustable or fixed or bullseye toe stops, okay? The next thing, I don't know why I'm struggling with this rack so much. Another clear indication that a skate is going to not be able to take you to the next level is if the ability to adjust your trucks is minimal. When we talk about adjustment of trucks, we talk about the action of your truck. Let's just talk about what a truck is. How about that? This mechanism here that holds your wheels, your axle and your wheels to your plate, to your boot, this thing right here is called a truck. When we talk about action, we're talking about the ability of this truck to move side to side, okay? It's going to be tight action or loose action, all right? Or it can be somewhere in between. Now, if you get a skate, let's look at this one right here. I need you to look real closely because if you get a skate that has this piece right here, I ain't gonna get real technical with you. I'm just gonna point this stuff out, make it super easy. Again, if it's got this piece right here, this little thick little nut right there, okay? Just know that your ability to have a wide range of adjustment is going to be limited. You're still gonna be able to adjust it, but your ability to get it real loose and still have it functioning properly is gonna be difficult. I encourage you to look at your skate that you're thinking of getting and look at the plate and see where it meets right here. It is now missing that big nut, right? And your adjustment is right here. Trust me when I say it's super easy to adjust this and you will have much more range of movement so that you can discover what you like, okay? And how this can move with you. Again, if you want to know the ins and outs of adjustments, I'll actually link another video in the description of this box so you can really dig deep into that. But if it's got that nut, you're gonna be limited. If it doesn't have that nut, you're gonna be a little bit better off. Now, let's just talk about the actual plate itself, which is right here. This is a lightweight nylon plate, which is nice. It's lightweight, right? Usually you want something that is aluminum, right? Some of these skates that are in the friendlier price range, they will have a metal plate, but this metal plate will be real heavy, real heavy, okay? I would suggest highly that if you're just getting into it, we're gonna look for something with a nylon plate, okay? Because when you upgrade beyond, you're going to get an aluminum plate, but it's going to be something that is probably somewhat significantly more expensive and it's going to be much lighter, okay? Sometimes the starter skates with the metal plates can be very heavy. Just know that. If I were you, I would look for something, I thought I was gonna fall, that is nylon. So, we've gone over the idea of choose your heel, right? We've gone over the idea of choose your toe stop, adjustable, non-adjustable. Choose your truck. Does it have that nut? Is it going to not be able to be adjusted like I really want it? And probably the last thing you're gonna really need to think about is the fit of the boot. Now listen, when you get roller skates, your foot needs to be comfortable in the boot, but you can't think about it as like, it needs to fit like a slipper and it just needs to be comfortable right off the get-go in that it's really comforting my foot. What it really needs to do is fit properly, but it's not going to necessarily feel luxurious, right? Especially when you're in the entry levels of skates. Things you need to really watch out for. Let's say these are your toes and this is the end of the boot. If your toes are fully hitting the end of the boot, that boot will never get longer. You need to go up in a size. If the width of your boot right where your toe and the ball of your foot is, is pinching your foot, this will never get better, okay? Your foot really needs to slip in there. It shouldn't have any alarm bells going off right away. You shouldn't put it on and be like, well, that hurts. Well, my toe hurts. Ball of my foot hurts. That bunion I have is real acting up, okay? If that's right, then that's not the boot for you right from the get-go. And this is just now we're going into what is Dirty's just straight up opinion. Whenever I was selling skates to people, I try to get people into suede. If you're going to wear a heeled skate, let's get you into a suede boot. They might be a little bit more expensive than your standard entry level, but for me, the comfort value is there and they give a little bit with the foot and kind of form to the foot a little bit better. For some of you though, you're going to be like, no, Dirty, that's not for me. I want support in my boot. You can have that. Even an entry level boot, you can have support in your boot. Just make sure that the support isn't like painful. Okay. How much should you spend? You should be spending at minimum. I want to say like 130, 140, 150 bucks for your entry level skate. If you can push it, push it. If you go 250, 300, trust me. If you look at those aspects that I just talked about and they check all those boxes and you like the way it looks, it's going to be a better made skate. Okay. The boot is going to be of a higher quality. Everything, even the wheels and the bearings and all that, as you go up in price, those things do get to be higher quality. Okay. So if you can push it, push it. But listen, if you're looking at me like, yeah, no, Dirty, I only got X amount of dollars and that's what I'm getting. Get it. But I have my strict no. If you are going to a department store and you're buying, uh, you're at Walmart and you're buying some random skate at Walmart, it's not going to work. It's good for a costume. It's good for a laugh. It's not safe to skate in. Okay. You need to buy an actual real skate, whatever aesthetic you have. And the choice that you make is for you. I'm not here to tell you, buy this brand, buy this exact skate, but I'm not going to tell you that. Okay. I want you to be able to make those choices for yourself. And I think with these just bits of simple information, you'll be able to at least eliminate the vast amount of choices and narrow it down to something that's going to work for you. All right, you guys. So I hope you like this video. Of course. We'll see you later. Go practice.