Beginner roller skating
Cross a Tram Rail Square On, Never at a Slant
A wheel drops into a rail gap when it meets the gap along its length. The fix is geometry: step over the tracks in a wide pizza angle, the V position opened up, so that each wheel crosses the gap perpendicular to it. A certified coach calls these pizza steps and puts them in the beginner's first three methods. It looks clumsy and it works. Technique from ICP-certified coach Asha Kirkby.
A wheel does not fall into a tram rail because the rail is wide. It falls in because it meets the gap along its own length, so that for a moment the whole wheel is lined up with the slot. Change the angle and the same gap cannot take the wheel at all.
Step over the tracks in a wide pizza angle, the V position opened right up, so that each wheel crosses the gap perpendicular to it. A certified coach calls these pizza steps and puts them among the three methods a beginner learns first.
It looks clumsy, and that is fine. You are walking over the rail in a duck-footed V rather than gliding across it, and nobody watching will think it elegant. They will also not see you go down.
The rule under the rule is geometry, and it travels. Any slot in the ground — a drain grate, a gap between paving slabs, an expansion joint — is crossed the same way: wheel square to the gap, never running alongside it.
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.
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