Beginner roller skating

A Barrel Roll Is Three Moves You May Already Have

The barrel roll looks like a single continuous trick, which is exactly why people put off learning it. A single continuous trick has to be learned all at once, and all at once is intimidating.

It is not one move. It is three, joined up. A transition from forwards to backwards. A backward crossover. A transition from backwards to forwards. That is the whole figure, and each of those three is a skill that exists independently and is taught independently.

This changes what you should do next in a very practical way. Go and try the three separately. If you can do all three, you are not learning a new move at all — you are learning to run three moves you already own without stopping in between, which is a much smaller job than it looked.

And if one of them is missing, you have just found your actual homework. Instead of grinding at the whole figure and failing at an unidentified point, you know which single component to go and build. That is the difference between practice that compounds and practice that just tires you out.

Most things that look like one big move are assembled this way. It is worth asking the question of any figure that intimidates you: what are its pieces, and which ones do I already have? Inline technique, from Asha Kirkby of Skatefresh, an instructor certified by the Inline Certification Program. She teaches inline skating, and that is the discipline this page is about.