SIDE SURF Roller Skate Tutorial (Beginner Move)

A lot of people when they first start a surf, they don't have this position with the feet. It's too splayed out. So you can start by just making small circles. Or as big as you want. Whatever it takes to get around. It doesn't have to be very straight. So with those, the front foot, I'm mostly pressing into the inside of the heel. So when I'm going left, on my left foot being forward, I'm pressing into the heel. And on the right foot, I'm more pressing into the toes. So I'm kind of just letting these heels slide around, drag around. You can really bend if you have to, if that helps you. So if I'm going to the right, then I'm pressing into the heel of the right skate, inside mostly. And the toe of the left. And when I'm pumping, more into the back of the toes. Make the circle bigger. Here's a stretch you can do off skates to help you stretch out your hips a little bit more. So when I first started the surf, and even kind of now, my feet didn't open that wide. So I actually had to compensate with my back foot. If the front foot was going to straight, I had to make this back foot do this. Kick the heel in a little bit in order to keep my parallel feet. Also I had to get very low. So I had to be pretty low like this. So a lot of my weight is on the front foot. When you start to straighten out the surf, you're going to find that you're still in that on the heel in the front foot. And more on the toe in the back foot. But I find that the toe side is more keeping me straight than it is where I'm weight bearing. So I could do it with one foot up. Because a lot of what's doing the work is that front wheel. So I feel like you're using the back one just enough to keep you going straight and feeling balanced. Over time, the more you do it, the more that your hips are going to become flexible. And you're going to start to see that you can get your feet more straight together. Maybe to emphasize feeling the weight in that front leg, you could try lifting the heel of the back leg. Just to sort of give you a feel of how much you're on the front. Then you can start to balance them out. I'm still able to lift that. For some people, it doesn't help as much to push into the toe of the back foot. It helps to think of pushing into both heels. So you could try that too if the other one isn't working. Now I'm going to push into both heels more. Everyone has different bodies and different flexibilities. So when you're starting with that circle, you kind of get a feel for what you need to lean into to balance yourself. Everybody's going to be a little different. For you, instead of overcompensating by pushing that heel forward, you might need to turn out the front foot. Learning side surf can help you with a lot of different moves. So here are a few dance drills that you can do to incorporate side surf. First is dribble with side surf in the middle. So right foot, dribble, dribble. You can also do crazy legs with side surf in the middle. If you watched my crazy legs tutorial, you'll also see what crazy legs is. It's about to get really loud here. So I'm just going to show you how surf can lead to also open book transit by getting that flexibility in the hips.