Beginner roller skating
You Learn to Jump Without Moving an Inch
Before you ever leave the ground, you lift your heels. Standing still, knees bent, stomach in, eyes ahead — raise both heels onto your front wheels and set them back down, over and over, on a beat. That drill is already the jump. It teaches your quads the work and your ankles the balance while the floor is still doing nothing at all. Quad technique, from Najete Kada, a French champion in artistic roller skating.
Jumping on skates does not begin with a jump. It begins standing on the spot, and the whole first session can happen without you travelling a single metre.
Lift your heels. Knees bent, stomach in, eyes ahead, both heels come up onto the front wheels and go back down, over and over, on a beat you can hear. That is the drill, and it is not a warm-up for the jump — it is the jump, slowed to zero.
It works because it isolates the two things that actually fail. Your quadriceps do the work of a jump and they have to learn what that costs, and your ankles have to stay steady on four small wheels while your heels are in the air.
Do it facing forward, then turned to one side, then the other, so the balance is not tied to one direction of gaze. Only once the rhythm is comfortable does it make any sense to add a push. Quad technique, from Najete Kada's Tuto roller series. She teaches quad skating and skates it herself; nothing on this page is a claim about inline skates.
Keep going: this is one section of the full Roller Skating for Beginners guide — sizing, gear, stopping, and where to skate, in one page.