Beginner roller skating
No Room to Build Speed? Push From a T Between the Rails
Speed carries you over tram lines, but city crossings do not always give you the run-up. A certified coach's answer for the tight spots is a T stance: one skate set across behind the other, planted between the tracks, so you can push off and keep your momentum where there is no space to build any. Same idea as the scooting push, aimed at a gap. Technique from ICP-certified coach Asha Kirkby.
Speed is what carries you over tram lines, but a city crossing does not always give you the run-up to build it. Sometimes you are already standing between two rails with a metre of clear ground and a car waiting.
A certified coach's answer for the tight spots is a T stance: one skate set across behind the other, planted between the tracks, so you can push off and keep your momentum where there is no space to build any. The back skate is the push, the front skate is the direction.
It is the scooting push, aimed at a gap. If you have done the one-leg scooting drills, this is the same movement with a purpose: one strong push from the crossed skate and the front wheel is over the rail before it can drop in.
Then it becomes the scissor again. Push from the T, land in a narrow scissor with the weight back, and the next rail is crossed the way the first method says. The T is a way to start, not a way to travel.
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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