SMOOTHER Skating in 1 Week – The #1 Drill for Beginners

When roller skating feels heavy, it's rarely because you're doing it wrong. It's usually because you haven't learned how to shift your weight properly yet. And here is the number one drill to help fix that. Hey, I'm Tracey. I teach adults how to roller skate both in person and online. And in this video, I'm going to show you the number one drill that I use to help beginners skate smoother. This drill that I use is called the cone weave. It teaches your body how to shift weight while you're moving, which is exactly what smooth skating is built on. If you don't have training cones, just get creative. You can use shoes or drink bottles. So as you can see, I've got my set up about 1.5 to two meters apart. Now, you don't need a lot of cones. I am starting with five, and you can set them up in a T-shape so that when you're skating around, if you want to jump back into the drill and you're over on the far side, you can easily jump back into this drill wherever you are in your space. So to do the cone weave drill, we're going to start with nice soft knees. Our arms are always out for balance, and our posture is always tall. Always looking ahead of where you're going, not down at your skates or at the cones. And what we're going to be doing is going into a split staggered stance as we press on the outside of the forward skate. Now, as you move through the cones, you're going into that staggered stance. So knees are nice and soft. When you come up to a cone, the foot that is closest to the cone is going to lead. So right here, you can see the cone is on this side. So this foot here is closest, that's going to lead. All right, so when you come into your staggered stance, your skates are coming slightly apart. Your weight goes forward a tiny bit so you can press on that forward foot into that outside edge there. Now, you do need a little bit of speed to get through here. Staggered stance, outside edge. So not only are we using a outside edge of that forward foot, we're also using the upper body. So my shoulders are leading me to the direction that I want to go. So by doing this, starting with the shoulders leading, it connects the body down. So then it goes into the hips and then it goes into the skate. So when we're turning corners, we always want the upper body to be leading us first. And if this feels awkward, that's okay. We just don't want to be trying to use the skate. See here how my upper body is not moving and it's really hard to press on an outside edge if my upper body, my shoulders are not leading the way. Now, if that's starting to feel pretty comfortable, what you can start to do is add opposite arm to opposite leg as you come through. So we're rotating the shoulders, opening up and by connecting the opposite arm to opposite leg, it's helping to open up those shoulders. So if you're struggling with just naturally moving the shoulders side to side, you can try this. There are a couple of common mistakes that I see a lot of the time when doing this cone weave drill. And number one is having stiff knees. So when you're going through the cones, we have to make sure that our knees are equally bent. There's not one that's straighter than the other. You won't be able to get around the corner with a straight stiff knee. Like I just said before, not letting your upper body lead you. I like to think about going from 10 o'clock to two o'clock. That is where you're directing the upper body, 10 o'clock to two o'clock. And then the third common mistake is not having those arms out for balance and having them kind of gripping beside you. Your arms should feel really soft, natural and comfortable sitting here. Your arms will give you so much balance. So make sure that they're out here and you're using them for extra support. And don't look down at the cones. So when we look down, our posture gets thrown off and our weight gets thrown forward. And this is why I like this drill so much. You can use the same weave to work on different skills. So for a one week practice plan to feel smoother on your skates, practice this weave drill with some training markers. Start with a basic cone weave. Once that feels comfortable, try one variation at a time. And remember, you don't need to do all the variations in one session. And guys, if you're new to skating and you want a clear starting point, I've got a free beginner workshop. I'll link it down below in the description. It gives you a clear starting point and takes the guessing work out of where to begin. If you found this video helpful, feel free to leave a comment below and don't forget to like and subscribe as it really does support my channel. Thanks guys, and I'll see you in the next video.