Beginner roller skating
Learn the Easy Steps Before the Strut and the Moonwalk
Many new quad dancers go straight for the strut or the moonwalk and stall. A certified coach's rule: as in all skating, learn the easy things first and graduate to the complex ones. A skater stuck on a showy move has usually skipped a foundation, not run out of talent. Go back to the simple positions and the hard move gets easier. Technique from ICP-certified coach Asha Kirkby.
The quads boom of recent years produced a great many new skate dancers, and a great many of them are visible on social media trying to learn the strut or the moonwalk in their first weeks. A certified coach sees the same pattern every time: they stall.
Her rule is the one that governs everything else in skating: learn the easy things first, then graduate to the harder, more complex skills. Not because the hard moves are forbidden, but because they are built out of easy ones that have to exist first.
A skater stuck on a showy move has usually skipped a foundation step, not run out of talent. The strut needs a weight transfer the beginner has never isolated; the moonwalk needs a press into the front stop and a controlled drag the beginner has never practised on its own. Missing pieces, not missing ability.
The way out is backwards. Go back to the simple positions, each with its weight placement, and the hard move gets easier without being practised at all — because the parts it was waiting for are finally there.
Technique from Asha Kirkby of Skatefresh, an instructor certified by the Inline Certification Program who also teaches quad skating. This page is about QUAD skates first: it comes from her roller-skate and quad tutorial, and the site's own skater does not practise quads, so nothing here is vouched for by her.
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