Beginner Guide to Grass Stop 🌱⭐️

I love the grass. I talk about the grass all the time in my videos whether you're learning a new skill in the grass, you're getting used to your skates, you're learning how to fall, you're using it for a safe landing, you're doing your warm-up stretches just because of the softness and the same softness applies to learning how to stop. So today's video is how to do the grass stop. So a really classic thing that happens to beginners is they don't know how to stop and then they find themselves on a slight gradient like this which can be really scary which is why the grass is a good one to know because it'll stop you when you're out of control or it's just a softer place to crash and go down. Step one is the approach. You have to first point your skates into the grass. So while this is an easy way to stop, you do need to know how to turn. The most basic beginner way to make your turn is to kind of just shift your weight and point your skates into the grass. Scissor your feet for the stability and bend your knees. Scissor your feet, bend your knees, and point your skates. The next part is when your skates actually go from concrete to grass and this might be the trickiest part because you're gonna have a terrain change. Now every type of grass is a little bit different and at the end of this video I'm actually going to give you a guide to all the different kinds of grass that you'll be skating but what you're going to need to do is lean back a little bit because the terrain is going to change and slow you down. So you kind of need to lean back for the slow down and you're going to need to lift your toes because you're transitioning into the grass and what will happen if you don't lift your toes, you might be risking hitting your toe and going down. Scissor your feet, point your feet into the grass, lift up your toes. Step three, brace for impact. What does that mean? It means that you're going to get low, engage your core, and be ready for the terrain change and just ride it out. Let the friction of the grass do its work to slow you down or stop you. If you feel off balance just keep going with the flow because remember it's the softest place that you could take a fall. And for our final step is just staying low and riding it out. So we can either use it as a way to speed check slow down and then turn back onto the sidewalk or we can use it, stay low, to just bring you to a stop and then you can kind of walk it back out to the concrete. And look, I stopped. So the grass stop is also really good if you find yourself on a hill by accident and you don't know how to stop because it's going to slow you down. Most important part, lean back. Now my grass is a little muddy so it actually brought me to a complete stop. Normally I would have kept rolling. Staying low and leaning back. There's also the one foot as a way to speed check. Now this is more advanced. This is better for really narrow terrain or maybe your grass patch is really narrow. Now this is not for beginners because you've got one foot with the terrain change and one foot on the pavement. So the prerequisite for this one is you really need to know what it feels like to roll the grass. To learn it when you do it for the first time, it's kind of like a t-stop where you need really really really light pressure with the grass foot while you learn the pressure point because if you press too hard with the grass foot it could get you off balance and take you down. Or you need light pressure on the concrete foot so it's definitely a balance. Heavy on one side depending on a lot which is why it's advanced. So the grass will always stop you and slow you down but how much depends on the type of grass you rolled into, how fast you were going, and how steep the grass is. And most importantly what type of grass you rolled into. So now the moment we've all been waiting for. My guide to the different types of grass that you might find out street skating out in the world and what to expect. I'm going to start with the grass that I'm using today and that's wet grass. It's just a little bit damp. It's not soaking and it's not muddy so some things to look out for. It could be slippery. Also the ground underneath is wet which means you're gonna stop a lot faster than if it was dry and hard packed. So this is ideal honestly the soft plush grass if you're really trying to come to a stop. Now if you're really trying to roll the hill a more hard packed dry grass is going to roll a lot faster. Grass with lots of pebbles and rocks in it you want to avoid that grass. It's very unpredictable and if you fall in it it could hurt. In that same category is really tall grass. That's like an obstacle that could actually just take you down and you have no idea what's in there. Mud will bring you to an abrupt stop. Avoid mud. Grass that's kind of raised up off the sidewalk and for that grass you just have to be sure you extra lift your toes to get up there because again it could just bring you to a straight stop. So the hardest part of this whole tutorial is the transition from the pavement to the grass because you never know what you're going to get. Your biggest risk is it just hitting and taking you right down because it was a terrain that you didn't expect or maybe it's more hard pack than you expect and so you lean too far back and you go down backwards that time because you were leaning back getting ready for it to be nice and soft and smooth but then it rolled too fast. So you just have to bend your knees and get ready for what you're going to get and that's the hardest part is that it's unpredictable but the best part is you are just out of control and you just crashed really hard and guess what you crashed into the grass. A grass stop is a good stop to have in your back pocket as an emergency stop in case you're still learning other stopping methods. Let me know if the grass has ever saved you or if you want to learn more about stopping. Make good decisions. Stay safe. Thanks for watching. I love you. I'll see you guys next time.