Beginner roller skating
Leaning Forward Puts You Where Backward Falls Start
You are afraid of going down backwards, so you push your chest and head forward. It feels logical. But the body moves as one piece: that lean arrives with knees not bent enough and a backside sitting behind your heels, which drops your centre of mass into the back half of the skate — precisely where a backward fall begins. The stance you took out of fear is the one building the risk. Inline technique, from ICP-certified coach Asha Kirkby.
You are new, you are frightened of going over backwards, so you push your chest and your head out in front of you. It feels like insurance. Almost every adult beginner does it.
It does the opposite of what you think.
The body does not move one part at a time. That forward lean never arrives on its own: it comes with knees that are not bent enough and a backside that has slid out behind your heels. Draw a line down from your centre of mass — roughly your navel — and it lands in the back half of the skate. Your weight is on your heels.
Which is precisely where a backward fall starts. The posture you adopted because you were afraid of falling backwards is the one that makes falling backwards likely.
What replaces it is not leaning the other way. It is standing up straight and bending at the knees instead: shoulder over hip, kneecaps over toes, backside above the heels, weight over the front half of the skate. From there a wobble is something you can ride out rather than something that decides for you.
And do not expect skating more to fix the lean. Every session spent in it makes it more automatic. This one has to be corrected on purpose. 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.