Beginner roller skating
Shoot the Duck Is Muscle, Not Technique
The squat with one leg stretched out in front has no trick hiding inside it. There is no cue you are missing — it is quadriceps, and the way in is repetition. French skaters have never even agreed on a name for it: théière, cafetière, pistolet, bonne femme, four names for one move and no winner. What they do agree on is that the people who can hold it are the people who have squatted a few hundred times. Quad technique, from Najete Kada.
The squat with one leg stretched out in front of you — English speakers usually call it shoot the duck — looks like it must contain a trick. It does not.
It is quadriceps. There is no cue you are missing and no secret about weight placement that unlocks it. The people who can hold that position are the people who have squatted a few hundred times, and the learning is a repetition, not an insight.
French skaters have not even settled on a name for it. Depending on who taught you it is the théière, the cafetière, the pistolet or the bonne femme — teapot, coffee pot, pistol, old dear. Four names, one move, and nobody ever agreed.
That is worth knowing, because it changes what you do when it does not work. You do not go looking for a better explanation. You go and do more of them. Quad technique, from Najete Kada's Tuto roller series. She is a French champion in artistic roller skating and teaches quad; nothing on this page is a claim about inline skates.
Keep going: this is one section of the full Roller Skating for Beginners guide — sizing, gear, stopping, and where to skate, in one page.