Beginner roller skating
Point Your Trailing Foot Like a Ballerina
The second drill of a certified coach's pronation routine holds a centre edge for longer than scooting does. Sink into a deep front knee bend, kneecap over your toes, then point your trailing back foot like a ballerina into a toe roll. Keep nudging the front knee toward your little toes, or the skate collapses onto its inside edge again. Technique from ICP-certified coach Asha Kirkby.
Most drills tell you what the supporting foot should do. This one is about the other one — the foot that trails behind you and that most skaters simply forget about while it drags along.
Sink into a deep front knee bend, kneecap over your toes, then point your trailing back foot like a ballerina into a toe roll. The back skate ends up riding on its toe wheel, extended behind you, and the whole of your weight sits forward on the front skate where it belongs.
It is harder than scooting, and that is the point. It asks you to hold a centre edge for far longer than a scooting push does, which is the only way that edge stops being something you find by luck.
Keep nudging the front knee toward your little toes throughout. Without that, the front skate collapses back onto its inside edge the moment the position gets difficult, and you are practising the fault instead of the fix.
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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