Beginner roller skating
Accelerate Towards the Rough Patch, Do Not Slow Into It
For a short bad stretch, split your feet one in front of the other and coast across it. Shift your weight back towards midfoot and heels so your front wheels do not get tripped by the broken surface, and keep the knees soft so they soak up the bumps. The catch is that it needs speed behind it — so you build speed on the way in, which is the exact opposite of what your nerves are asking for. Inline technique, from ICP-certified coach Asha Kirkby.
Some bad ground is not worth stepping across. A short patch of broken surface, a strip of cobbles, a ruined junction: for those, you cross in one piece rather than taking steps on them.
The position is a scissor — one skate forward, one skate back, feet split along your line of travel rather than side by side. It gives you a long base front to back, which is the direction the ground is about to disturb you in.
Two details make it work instead of catching you out. First, shift your weight back towards midfoot and heels — further back than a normal scissor — so your front wheels do not get tripped by whatever they hit first. Second, keep the knees soft so they can soak up the bumps instead of transmitting them into you.
And now the part that goes against every instinct: it needs speed behind it. A scissor across rough ground does not work slowly. If you creep up to the bad patch, you arrive without enough momentum to carry through it and the surface takes what little you had.
So you build speed on the way in. You look ahead, you see the bad bit coming, and you accelerate towards it — then set the scissor and let the speed do the crossing. Slowing down out of caution is the thing that gets you.
If the patch is long rather than short, this is not the answer: go back to short quick steps, or simply pick the smoother line and skate around it. 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.
Keep going: this is one section of the full Roller Skating for Beginners guide — sizing, gear, stopping, and where to skate, in one page.