Beginner roller skating
On Rough Ground, Raise Your Tempo, Do Not Push Harder
Bad tarmac takes your speed away instantly, and the instinct is to push harder against it. Wrong lever. What brings the speed back is cadence: short, quick steps set down in a V, barely rolling between them, with almost no force in any single one. Picture the ground as red hot and you not wanting to leave your wheels on it. The same answer works for hills and for headwind. Inline technique, from ICP-certified coach Asha Kirkby.
Bad tarmac takes your speed away the instant you touch it. Every skater feels that, and almost every skater reaches for the same answer: push harder.
Wrong lever. What brings the speed back on a rough surface is not force, it is cadence — more steps per minute.
In practice that means short, quick steps, set down in a V, with almost no push in any individual one and barely any roll between them. One-and-two-and-one-and-two. It does not look elegant and it is not supposed to; it is the thing that works.
The image that makes it click is to imagine the ground is red hot and you do not want to leave your wheels sitting on it. That gets the tempo right without you having to think about mechanics.
What people get wrong is keeping one stride for everything. They hold the long, slow, powerful fitness stride when the surface turns bad, which is exactly the stride that has the most to lose there — every long glide is a long time spent being robbed. You need two settings and the judgement to switch: short and fast when the ground is against you, push and glide when it is smooth.
The same setting handles hills and headwinds, for the same reason. Anything that needs more from you gets tempo, not force. Inline 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.
Keep going: this is one section of the full Roller Skating for Beginners guide — sizing, gear, stopping, and where to skate, in one page.