10 THINGS NOT TO DO ON INLINE SKATES!

Hey guys, welcome back to the This Is Soul Skate Shop YouTube channel. I'm Ivo and we are here right now in the This Is Soul Skate Shop and I'm gonna tell you 10 things that you should avoid doing on inline skates. With the first thing being, avoid skating on soft boots that are really cheap. I have a cheap soft boot here. This is of the Roaches brand, but Rollerblade, K2, most of the big brands, Powerslide, they all have a cheap soft boot like this. And with cheap, I mean something like that's below 200 euros for sure. The soft boots that are so cheap, they don't offer enough support. And you can see that by how flexy this is here. And if you hold this, you can move this side to side a lot and it should really be stiff. If you take a good solid hard boot skate, FR skate right here, it's a lot more stiff. So I cannot push it in at all. And if I move it from side to side, it only moves like a couple of millimeters. So the sideways support is really stiff and it cannot bend. Best option to buy a skate like that is about 200 to 250 euros. These are all hard boots. If you wanna get a good soft boot, then you need something like this, which is made out of carbon. Having a cheap soft boot makes it that you have less control because the boot flexes so much that the frame under your foot has kind of like a mind of its own. So you're not really in control. It's kind of like driving a car and the steering wheel is loose. Every time you do something with your foot, the frame is just slow to response because there's no stiffness in the boot. Also, if you push off and try to make speed, a lot of your energy is absorbed into the bending of the boot instead of having all your energy transferred into foot motion. Second thing to avoid is bad protection. Let me tell you what not to get. Here's our protection wall. And we, of course, only have good protection. I think we have one set here in the back that we never sell. We have some ones that you should definitely avoid. It's kind of like the fitness type style knee pads. They are a little bit pointy like this. And that means that if you fall on it, they either go like this or they go like that. And that's not what a knee pad should do. It should stay on its place, a good knee pad. Also, you can recognize a bad knee pad if there's not a good sleeve in the back. So this sleeve has openings here. You really want to have a sleeve that's wrapped like totally from one end to another. Third thing to avoid on inline skates is cleaning your bearings. We have a jar here filled with cheap one-euro bearings. And they're so cheap, I would just replace them. We also, of course, have the oil and lubricants and all the stuff that you need to clean your bearings. But it's a mistake that you think that it's really necessary to do so. Bearings are so cheap. They're more like a replaceable product than a maintenance product. When is a good moment to replace them? Normally, if you spin a bearing, it shouldn't make a sound. After a while, especially if you skate in the rain, they start hissing, so then you spin it and it makes like this hissing sound. That's kind of like the beginning of the end in that when it starts making that sound, it starts to destroy itself. So you can still skate on it. It's fine, but the noise means that there's no oil in the bearing. And that means that the metal and metal, they rub against each other, and thus the bearing will slowly destroy itself over a matter of your upcoming skate sessions. Another good reason not to clean your bearings but to replace them is there's no other bearing better than a new bearing. New bearings are always the best. And if you clean them, you can never clean them to be as new. You can re-lube them, of course, and take the dirt out. And you can definitely make a bearing last a lot longer, but the time and effort you put into that is so much, opening it up, taking the dirt out. It's a whole process. And then even if you take the time to do that because you have enough time in your life, it's also kind of like a skill that you need to master because you can also put in too much lube and then you think you're finished, but then you start skating and your skates are super slow because you put in too much lube, for example. So it's also something you need to learn and you need to refine it a little bit. And that's hard. My advice is avoid all that and just get one euro bearings, 16 euros and you're done. All right, that's it for the hardware part of the things to avoid. Now let's get down to the techniques. The first thing that we teach beginners is the right stance on skates. And the thing that you should avoid is having your ankle on 90 degree with your leg like this with knees that are locked. A lot of skaters stand up straight and you should avoid this at all times. So also when you're just standing still, chilling or when you're going fast, when you're doing techniques, always bend your knees over your toes. Skates have a screw here and attached to it is the cuff. And the cuff can flex forward and your cuff should also be flexed forward and never be in the backwards position at all. So always flex your cuff forward, press onto the tongue of your skate and have your knees over your toes. Next thing to avoid is to go out and skate without practicing your falling techniques. And there's of course three falling techniques that you should definitely know before you go out to anything else. So first thing that you need to do is kind of like become friends with the ground. If you lose your balance, you should be able to get down. First way that we teach is the proposal technique. It's called proposal because you're in the same position as you do like a marriage proposal. Your butt is on your heel. Your foot should be next to your knee here. And then you should always wear knee pads with this technique. And then you can make a slide and come to a stop. The second technique is the rock star where you have two knees on the ground, obviously also with knee pads. And then my favorite technique that I always do is the mermaid technique. And in this technique, you sit on the ground like a mermaid like this straight up, no elbow on the ground, heels close to your hips like this and one hand on your lap. If you do the mermaid techniques, you're not falling on your knees, so you don't need knee pads. For all these three techniques, we have a YouTube video. So check out those and practice this before you do anything else. In general, the thing you wanna avoid with this is to start tap dancing when you lose your balance. You should not stretch, but you should get down to the ground and then go to the ground in one of these three techniques that I just showed you. And in general, you should think of it like the ground is your friend and he's there to help you. Because if you're scared, you should go to your friend and the ground is always there to comfort you and to save you. But if you look at the ground like your enemy and you're scared of the ground, you think like, I'm not gonna fall. I'm gonna go escape, but I'm not gonna fall. Well, I'm gonna tell you something, you are gonna fall. And if you're scared of the ground, the ground's gonna slap you in the face and it's gonna treat you like the enemy that you treat him. So don't be afraid of the ground, go to it as your savior and it will always be there to help you. So the next thing to avoid on inline skates is having a tight upper body. All the control on your skates should come from your belly button down. I see a lot of students in the first lesson being really cramped like this, but you should focus on only using your bottom part of your body, your legs. This should be really strong and this should put in all the efforts and your upper body should be nice and relaxed. So practice this flowing a little bit and being just chill and not using your arms. This also comes to the next thing that you should avoid is what to do with your arms. A lot of people in the beginning, they use your arms to create balance. Like, let me say it like this, your arms are definitely useful to use for balance, but they should be a last resort. And if your arms are your first resort, you can no longer use them as a backup. So when I'm skating, I'm having my arms still like this, or I'm actively using my arms to increase my push capacity. Well, when your arms are still and you lose your balance, you can always do like this. You can just like make a sudden move and steer with your arms and counterbalance and react. But if you're already in extremities with your arms all the way here and you're using your arms as your primary means of controlling your balance, then you have no backup anymore. And if something happens, then you just fall and you fall hard. Avoid using your arms as primary means of balance. Keep your arms still. Nice little exercise is try skating with your arms in a Buddha pose like this, centered like this, and see if you can control them. And if you do that, you also immediately feel transfer your energy a lot more to the bottom part of your body. Eight thing to avoid on inline skates is to do the beginner technique, the penguin steps all the way. So obviously if you're a beginner, you're gonna first make step, step, steps. And if you do a first turn, you're gonna step into your turn like this, step, step, step, step. And that's basically how you start. All right? But you wanna get away from that as soon as possible and start flowing. So the only reason to lift up your foot is when you push off, but the rest, if you just stare or you break or anything that you wanna do, and even like pushing off, you can just keep your feet low. You wanna do in flow state. You just wanna flow and glide and be like an ice skater. We have a video about flow skating. Check that one out to learn how to do this so that we don't have to do all that in this video. Check that one out. And also while you're at it, subscribe to the channel because we make a new video every week. And if you wanna get better at skating, of course you can take a lesson at our skate school. We are here based in Amsterdam. Come to our skate school, This Is Soul Academy. If you wanna get some skates, go to our skate shop where we just were. And you can find us on thisissoul.com if you wanna go to our web shop or find more information about lessons. Number nine to avoid is you wanna avoid reaching for poles. And this is what beginners always do. They go like, ah, and then they grab onto something. So this is a lot of the conversations that I have with beginners go like this. When I ask them like, hey, do you know how to break? And they say, ah, no, I don't really know how to break, but I'll just run into a pole and then grab something and then I stop. All right. Seriously, stop doing this because first you make yourself look like a fool. And second, every time you do this, you're not practicing anything. And if you're ever in a critical situation, let's say there's a pole, but there's a little curb right before it. So you cannot really grab the pole because then you tremble and you cannot grab it because yeah, the curb is there. So every time you're in a different situation, you don't know if there's a pole or what the situation is. So you're gonna come into a certain situation where you cannot grab the pole and you're gonna have a bad time. So you really wanna practice your breaking and stopping techniques to avoid grabbing poles. Another good reason to avoid grabbing poles is because the pole is not actually gonna help you that much. The ground is gonna help you. You wanna be friends with the ground. So if you really need to make like an emergency stop, just do a proposal. Just put one knee on the ground, boom, and then you have your emergency stop. And the ground is a lot more reliable than the pole because the ground is truly your friend if you see the ground as your friend. But the pole, it can also slap you in the face when you think it's actually friendly. Because I've seen people grab poles and then the wheels of course roll and the wheels roll back and then you slide down the pole. Also walls are really bad at this because a wall you cannot grab at all. So if you stand next to a wall like this, you have no grip. So you cannot grab a wall. And I've seen people fall really badly and then still kind of like hold onto a wall and then smack to the ground. But if you would have instead grabbed the ground, then you would actually be safe. Once you're at the ground, you can no longer fall. If you really need to make an emergency stop, don't use a pole. Use the proposal technique, but mostly just practice your breaking and stopping techniques. We have a whole series on our YouTube of course with those breaking and stopping techniques. So go out and practice. And last but not least, number 10, avoid riding over bad surfaces without preparing yourself. So most common thing with beginners is that if there's a little crack in the ground here, they don't really know what to do and they just go like this, like, ah, and then something like that. Or they make like a weird like step, like some movement like that. While in fact, if they just would have practiced it, you can perfectly ride over stuff like that or make a little jump and also be safe. You don't always need to make a big jump. You can just, if you just lift up a little bit, you don't even need to like jump more than a millimeter, then you already like cross the section that you want and you're safe. If you wanna learn to ride over bad surfaces like this, be sure to watch the video about the predator and the scissor stance and learn the techniques, practice it and become a better skater. If you want help with that, of course, you're always welcome at our skate school or you can watch more videos. We make a new video every week. So subscribe to the channel, but leave a comment this time about what things you think that other people should avoid as well. And I'll see you in the comments and I'll see you in the next video. Bye bye.