Beginner roller skating
Linked Parallel Turns Slow You Down
Parallel turns are not only for changing direction. ICP-certified coach Asha Kirkby teaches consecutive parallel turns as a way to slow down and stop on inline skates: each turn bleeds off speed, and a chain of them brings you to a halt. It is a stop built from a turn you may already have, and she coaches it as a stop in its own right, with its own common faults to correct.
A parallel turn is usually filed under changing direction. A certified coach also files it under stopping, and teaches it as one.
Consecutive parallel turns are a way to slow down and stop on inline skates. Each turn takes the skates across the line of travel and bleeds off some speed; the next turn, the other way, bleeds off more. A chain of them brings a skater to a halt without a brake and without a slide.
It is a stop built from a turn you may already have. That is what makes it worth knowing about: a skater who can link parallel turns already owns most of this stop, and only has to learn to use the turns for speed rather than for direction.
The coach treats it as a stop in its own right, with its own common faults to correct. Her lesson on it is a correction lesson, not an introduction: the turns are assumed, and what she fixes is how skaters chain them when the goal is to stop. This site does not describe the mechanics of the turn itself here; that is a lesson to take from her.
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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