Beginner roller skating
Outside on Quads, a Turn Is Also a Stop
Many quad skaters never think of a turn as a way to stop. A certified coach adds the Turn Stop to the stopping methods of beginners and intermediates. Outdoors, where the toe stop is not a brake and the ground is not a rink, one more way to stop is safety. It sits beside the plough and the lunge stop, not instead of them. Technique from ICP-certified coach Asha Kirkby.
Ask a quad skater how they stop and they will name a plough, a lunge, maybe a drag. Very few name a turn. A certified coach adds the Turn Stop to the stopping methods of beginners and intermediates for exactly that reason, after coaching a skater who had never once used a turn to stop.
The principle is simple: a tight turn bleeds speed, and a turn tight enough ends with you facing away from where you were going, standing still. On a rink you rarely need it, because the floor is smooth and the space is bounded. Outside, you need every way of stopping you can get.
Outdoors, the toe stop is not a brake and the ground is not a rink. The site's own skater has written that the front stop on a quad is a fixed point that does not roll, useful for holding still, pivoting and pushing, and useless for slowing down. That leaves the quad skater outdoors with the plough, the lunge stop, and now the turn.
The Turn Stop sits beside the plough and the lunge stop, not instead of them. This site has already given you the plough as the first stop to learn and the lunge stop as the step before anything harder. The turn is one more answer to the same question, and outdoors one more answer is safety.
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: it comes from her Turn Stop tutorial for roller skates and quads, and the site's own skater does not practise quads, so nothing here is vouched for by her.
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