Roller Skate Gear - Anatomy

Hey skaters, I'm Dirty Deborah Harry with the Dirty School of Skate and Sure-Grip Roller Skates back at the Fountain Valley Skating Center here to bring you a little tutorial about your skates. Here's just a few things you need to know about your skates to keep them in good working order and to keep them safe for you and to be a little bit more performance oriented. This is going to be a very simple video in that I'm not going to go super in-depth on everything about your skate because if I do we could literally be here for hours. So I'm going to give you five things sort of like a checklist for you to check out on your skates, maybe adjust, maybe replace. This is just a jumping off point. In subsequent videos we will go in-depth about just wheels, just bearings, just cushions, etc. So let's just start at the very very beginning. Oh, the business of YouTube. You gotta share, like, and subscribe to this video please. I don't know if you know this but it really really helps me and what helps me helps you. I can make more videos if you guys help support me and I really really really am so grateful when I get comments. I love interacting with you. I want you to know I read every single comment. So please keep them coming and we'll keep doing this kind of back and forth thing and see where we go. Okay, let's talk about skates. Number one thing. Your plate needs to be firmly attached to your skate. When I say firmly attached to your skate this might be something you take for granted. Of course it's firmly attached. It's got screws and nuts on it and all that. Short story. I had a girl who told me, I suck at roller derby. I'm terrible and she was an extremely good skater and I said, honey, let me see your skates and I turned it over and I noticed that she was actually missing not only the nut but the screw that held her plate to her skate. Well, every time she was skating that plate was moving somewhat independently because the four points of contact were not functioning. She had actually two. One was missing here and one was missing here. So when she was skating it was hard for her to feel stable and have power and momentum. All right, so let's just take our skates. You can do this at home. Flip it over. Let's take our thumb and our forefinger and make sure our nuts are tight. Okay, you're gonna go around. We'll look at this rental skate. It's got a little nut and a screw right there. Let's just make sure with our thumb and our forefinger that these are on here nice and secure. If they're not, take it to your local shop or your local roller rink. You can get this replaced no problem but we need to make sure it's nice and secure. Okay, that's number one. Number two, let's talk about the part of your skate that falls off the most. That would be your toe stop. The reason why your toe stop falls off generally is because you haven't tightened it up regularly. Every single time I put on my skates I do this thing where I'm talking to someone and I am touching my skates, feeling it out. I'll just be talking to someone and doing this and then once I get my skates on, I do a little shake and I'm listening for things. I want you to do this too. I want you to pick up your skate. Number one thing, make sure that toe stop is on there nice and secure. Toe stops go on three different ways. You're either, you can come in close on this, you're either going to have like a washer and a lock nut. You're going to have a bolt that goes through the middle or you're going to have an allen screw on the side. You need to have all of this hardware, all of it. You can't just have a washer or just a lock nut. Okay, you need to have both of those parts and this needs to be this bolt right here. I have had literally people when this axle nut is gone, they'll tell me, oh mine didn't come with one. No honey, it got loose and then it fell out and then you never knew. The danger of having your toe stop not firmly attached to your skate is, number one, they fall off, someone else trips over them, that's no good. The other thing is that as far as the skate goes, in the plate, this piece right here is where the toe stop screws in. If the toe stop constantly has a lot of movement, I'll go ahead and loosen this one up. If it has a lot of movement and you're using your toe stop and it's spinning around like this, sometimes it'll get cross-threaded within the plate. When it gets cross-threaded, two things happen, well one of two. It either gets stuck or it falls out constantly. You could try to re-thread the inside, get new toe stops, see if that works. Sometimes that doesn't work and you have to buy new plates. I would hate to think that just because you didn't make sure that this was constantly on every single time you skated nice and tight, that you end up having to spend hundreds of dollars on new plates. Okay, so make sure this, I love this, Rydell makes this, it's called a three-way tool. When I tighten up my toe stops, if I have a situation like this with a lock nut and a washer, I just turn the skate over like this, push it into my snack area, take this section, put it on the lock nut, righty tighty, nice and firm. Okay, you get it down there nice and firm, at the end I give it one last little push. Okay, get it down, crank it nice and tight, make sure it doesn't come off. All right, that's two stops. All right, now moving on, let's talk wheels. A lot of times people will have problems just skating around the floor and I can see they look awkward to me. I think, why are they pushing, you know, in this kind of bizarre manner that looks like they're being constantly halted. So I say, hey, you know, how long you've been skating? We have a little conversation and then I say, you know, looks like you're having a little trouble building momentum and speed and they're like, yeah, you know, it's because I'm this and that and they're all blaming themselves. I say, honey, let me take a look at your skates, take your skates off. This is the number one thing I see. They will take their skates off and I go to spin their wheels and I'm like, okay, let's close up. This wheel, not spinning. Okay, the wheel should be spinning a little bit more freely like this wheel. They have it cranked down too tight. The other thing I see is when, so you can use your three-way tool for this as well, sometimes they have the nut, this is called an axle nut right here, axle nut. They have it on too loose to the point where, hear that, the wheel is too loose. If this happens long enough, the nut falls off, the wheel goes flying and you go flying. That is not good. The way that I like to make sure, first of all, I spin my wheels every time before I put them on, make sure I feel like it's got a good roll to it and then I go like this. Now, I want you to come close. This wheel, just a little real small, it just got a tiny bit of movement in there, right, so that it spins freely but it's not too loose. Okay, so make sure of that. Now, on to some, two of the most important things about your skates and again, I will make subsequent videos about this at length but we've got to address it right now. This part right here, see this pink section right here, these are called cushions. See the orange ones right here, these ones right here, these white ones, these are called cushions, sometimes they're called bushings. All right, these cushions are basically the shock absorbers, like in a car. They help you skate with comfort, they help you hold on to your edges and then when you release the weight, they rebound to help you create momentum and power. If you buy a pair of skates, generally the cushions they put on there are just kind of these general cushions, they may not be the right ones for you. Based on your body weight and the amount of pressure and force you can put on a skate and the kind of skating you're doing, you can really tweak it and kind of customize your skate to get a cushion that will help support you and help you get momentum and power and more performance out of your skate. They're so important and the craziest thing about it is these cushions, right, there's different types and sizes, they have, they're like 10 bucks, 10 bucks, 15 bucks, it's not a big deal, okay. Subsequent video, I'll teach you how to change them out and all that jazz but you got to have good fresh cushions. I skate all the time, I change mine every three months. I know you're out there going, Jesus, I've been skating for, you know, five years and never changed my cushions. Change your cushions, it'll change your life. Now, next part, last, we're going to talk about how to adjust your truck. This is called action. Action means the tightness or looseness of your truck, all right. Now, spread this out because this is real important. So, come closer, real close, I want you to look at this. Okay, hold right there. This is called an action nut. It's very important, all right. Now, you can have the action or the movement of your truck very loose, see how this is real loose, or you can have it tight, nice and firm like that. Later on in a subsequent video, I'm going to go in depth about how this relates to your cushions and your pivot cups and all sorts of stuff, but here's the deal for now. When you flip over your skate and you take your hand and you feel your truck, let's just get a feel for is my truck super loose or is my truck tight? Now, if your truck is really loose, you may have more movement in your skate, but you will also have less control. If your truck is really tight, you may not have as much movement or agility in the feel, but it will be powerful and the transfer of energy will be direct. So, I say when you're not sure and you're like, I don't know what I need, let's err on the side of a little bit of safety first, okay? So, we're going to take the bigger part of our three-way, hold it up in your snack area, turn this thing to the right, crank down on your action nut, get it nice and snug, not too snug, just get it down there, but don't overdo it. Make sure it's nice and snug, and then once that happens, I back it off just a little bit, a turn or two, so that there is some movement in this truck. So, see how you can come a little bit closer if you like, see if there's some movement in this truck, but it's not wild. One of the biggest problems I see is these trucks being super loose to the point where they're just moving around and the average skater has no control. So, I need the truck adhered to the plate with some firmness, but a little bit of movement so that you can turn. Now, a good way to understand or feel for yourself as to whether or not your trucks are too tight or too loose is I want you to skate forward in a straight line and then I want you to lean and skate around the corner. If when you go to skate around the corner, you lean into the corner and it feels out of control, you may need to tighten up the truck a little bit. If you're skating down the floor and you try to lean into the corner and your skates want to just keep going straight, they're too tight. Loosen them up a little bit, okay? So, again, we're going to go in depth about all of these things, but when you put your skates on for now, I want you to make sure that they're safe and that these small adjustments have been made. So, number one, is your plate attached to your boot firmly? Is your toe stop on here nice and tight? Are your axle nuts holding your wheel in place with just a tiny bit of movement so the wheel can spin freely? Are your cushions the right cushions for you? Again, another video. Have they been replaced anytime within the last year? If not, let's talk about your make and model of skate and ordering new cushions so that you can have a better, more fluid ride and more supportive ride on your skates. And then lastly, are your skates adjusted or your trucks adjusted so that you have the right control and power? All right, so essentially that's all I've got for you today. I hope that this just gets you started on the ideas and the small, easy, simple concepts of what is underneath your boot. In the comments section, give me your questions. I will do my very best to answer them individually for the group or in subsequent videos, okay? So, you guys, thank you so much for watching this video. I really, really appreciate it and I can't wait to see you at the rink. So, strap on your skates, people, and go practice!