How to Lace Your Roller Skates CORRECTLY (Without Hurting Your Feet)

If your toes are going numb, your heel keeps lifting or your skates just feel uncomfortable after 10 minutes, it might not be the boot. It could just be something as simple as how you're lacing your skates. And in this video I'm going to show you three different ways to lace your skates so they feel supportive, comfortable and secure no matter what type of foot you have. I'm Tracy, I'm from Suns Out Skates Out and I teach adults how to roller skate with confidence both in person and online. And lacing is one of those small things that make a huge difference to how your skates actually feel. I see this all the time with my students. Someone will say their skates feel too tight, too loose or their heel keeps lifting and the first instinct is to blame the boot. And they're pulling at the laces as tight as possible from the top thinking that tighter means more secure. But that usually just creates pressure in all of the wrong places or sometimes it's the opposite and their skates are barely done up to relieve the pain and seeing this just terrifies me. But before we can blame the boot or convince ourselves we need a brand new pair of skates which is very tempting, let's just check something as simple as the lacing first. So let's start with the basics. First make sure both sides of your laces are even. If one side is shorter than the other you never get even tension all the way up because you'll always be yanking at one side more to get the bow even. But laces tend to sit nicely and spread pressure evenly across the top of the skate versus thinner laces. And if you have heard of wax laces they hold tension better so they're less likely to loosen or come undone when you're skating. So that can give peace of mind knowing your laces are less likely to come undone when skate but it also means that you need to be a little bit more intentional with how tight you pull them. And the length of your laces actually matter too. So you don't want them too long that when you get to the top of your boot you have to wrap it around a couple of times before you can even tie them up. This restricts the ankle and cuts off circulation and if they're too short you can't distribute the tension properly and you'll struggle to tie them into a bow. You just want enough length to lace comfortably and tie a bow easily without wrapping it around your skate two or three times. So these laces that I love are about a 86 inch which when I tie them to the top of my boot I really struggle to get it into a bow. And then these laces that I have here are about 106 inches and for my size of skate and the way that I like to tie my skate these laces are perfect for me. Standard crisscross. There are two ways this can be done. Overlacing and underlacing. Overlacing is when the lace comes over the top of the eyelet before it crosses. Underlacing is when the lace feeds up from underneath the eyelet before crossing. In terms of feel overlacing can feel a little more secure and underlacing tends to sit flatter against the tongue and can feel a bit gentler across the top of your foot. For most thick inner skaters either one is completely fine it just depends on how sensitive your feet are. But what matters more than over or under is that your tension is even all the way up. Now the most common problem I hear about is wide feet. Students saying my skates feel too tight across the front or I feel like my foot is being squished which we don't want. This will affect the way that you skate and it'll probably make you want to chuck in your skates. And the instinct is usually just to loosen everything but when you loosen everything you lose support through the ankle and then the heel starts lifting. So instead what you want to do is keep a little more room through the forefoot and create support higher up. This means you don't need to strangle the widest part of your foot let it breathe a little here but you don't leave it completely loose. You want comfort at the front and control at the back. If you've got bunions or naturally wider feet sometimes a small adjustment in the middle rows can make a big difference too. Now the other really common one is heel slip and this is a big deal because if your heel is lifting inside your skate when you bend your knees or push you're going to feel really unstable. You might start gripping with your toes without realizing that. People say I just feel wobbly or I don't feel in control. Now to fix this instead of tightening everything from the bottom to top what you need to focus on is locking in the heel. This usually means making sure the midfoot is snug and the last couple of eyelets before you hook are firm. You don't need to crush your toes and if you've ever skied or snowboarded before if your heel leaks in the boot you lose control and power so it's the same thing on roller skates. So if you're feeling unstable before you assume it's your balance check your heel but if you do think your trucks are too loose and that's why you're struggling to balance I do have a video on how to check your skate setup which I'll link down below. Now here's the biggest mistake I see people lace their skates and they yank from the top. When you do that all the tension sits in your ankle and the bottom stays loose. That's how you end up with heel lift and crushed ankles at the same time. You want to tighten section by section start at the toes pull gently then move your way up one row at a time. We want to smooth out the tension upwards so don't rush lacing your skates. So if you take anything away from this standard crisscross is completely fine just choose what feels best. If you've got wide feet give yourself a bit of room at the front and create support up higher and if your heel is slipping focus on locking in the back of your foot and whatever you do tighten row by row. And if you're brand new here like literally just open the box to your new skates and you're wondering if you can actually do this I've got a free workshop linked in the description down below where I share how women of all ages are building confidence on skates. If this was helpful feel free to like and subscribe it really does help support the channel. Thanks guys and I'll see you in the next one.