Beginner roller skating

Balance Starts Under Your Soles, Not in Your Head

Most balance advice on skates is about what to do: bend your knees, look ahead, hands in front. All of it is correct and none of it tells you how to know whether you are currently doing it. That is the gap this one fills.

Learn to feel your own footprint. At any moment, some part of each sole is carrying your weight — the ball of the foot, the heel, the outside edge — and you can feel which one it is if you go looking. The sole of the foot is a part of the body nobody ever thinks about, and it happens to be the only place where balance is actually decided.

The exercise needs no speed and no space. Stand still, in skates on grass or carpet, or even in ordinary shoes, and work out where your weight is sitting right now. Then shift it deliberately, forwards onto the ball of the foot, back onto the heel, and pay attention to how different those two feel.

What it changes is that you stop guessing. A skater without this awareness knows only that something feels wrong. A skater with it knows the weight has gone into the heels, which is a problem with a known fix. The first can only hope; the second can correct.

It is worth doing before anything else, because nearly every posture correction you will ever be given comes down to where the weight sits on your feet. 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.