Beginner roller skating
Quads Were Built for the Rink Floor. Outside Is Harder, Not Impossible
Quad skates were designed for flat, very smooth indoor floors. A certified coach says skating quads outdoors is significantly harder, and very possible: rough ground easily catches the wide, flat wheel profile and the short wheelbase. The surface is doing what quads were never built for, so expect to slow down and relearn. Technique from ICP-certified coach Asha Kirkby.
Most people meet quad skates on a rink, and most people who fall in love with them want to take them outside. The first session on a pavement is usually a shock, and a certified coach explains that the shock is built into the skate.
Quads were designed for flat, very smooth indoor floors. Everything about the classic quad, from the wide flat wheels to the short distance between the front and back axle, was drawn for a surface that has no cracks, no grit and no camber. That is the rink, and the rink is what the skate is good at.
Outside, the same features work against you. The coach's words are that skating quads outdoors is significantly harder, and very possible. Rough ground easily catches the wide, flat wheel profile and the short wheelbase: a crack that an inline wheel rolls over is a crack a quad wheel drops into.
So the honest expectation is to slow down and relearn. Nothing about your rink skating was wrong; the surface has changed and the skate has not. The pages that follow in this series take the differences one at a time: the fall to watch, the raised heel, the way a quad turns, and then the ground itself.
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 outdoors: it comes from her comparison of quad and inline skates, and the site's own skater does not practise quads, so nothing here is vouched for by her.
Keep going: this is one section of the full Roller Skating for Beginners guide — sizing, gear, stopping, and where to skate, in one page. Free, no sign-up, nothing to buy.