Beginner roller skating
Quad Transitions: Do Not Swap Your Leading Leg Halfway
On quads, turning from forwards to backwards is a toe or heel flip, and a certified coach names the common mistake: swapping the leading leg mid-transition. It happens because the end position, the backward scissor glide, is not fluent yet. Fix the end first: glide in that scissor until finishing there feels easy. Quad tutorial from ICP-certified coach Asha Kirkby.
On quad skates, turning from forwards to backwards while rolling is done with a toe flip or a heel flip: the weight comes off one pair of wheels, the skate pivots, and you are facing the other way. A certified coach teaches it, and names the mistake almost everyone makes on the way.
Swapping the leading leg during the transition. You go in with one skate ahead, and somewhere in the turn the other one takes over, so that you come out backwards with your feet the wrong way round and the flow gone.
The cause is not the flip. It is the end position. A transition finishes in a backward scissor glide — one skate ahead of the other, rolling backwards — and if that glide is not fluent yet, the body improvises a way to arrive somewhere it can balance, and swaps the legs to do it.
So fix the end first. Practise gliding in that backward scissor position, on its own, until finishing there is comfortable. Once the landing exists, the transition has somewhere to go and the legs stop rearranging themselves. And do it on both sides: fluency in only one direction is not fluency.
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, not inline skates: it comes from her quad tutorial, and the site's own skater does not practise quads, so nothing here is vouched for by her.
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