Beginner roller skating
Steering Is the Direction of Your Knee Bend
A turn on inline skates does not start at the boot: the rigid shell holds the foot still, and the wheels extend the leg. ICP-certified coach Asha Kirkby's intermediate drill puts steering where it lives: use the direction of your knee bend for accurate steering and edge control. Bend the knee towards where you want to go, and the skate follows.
Ask where a turn comes from and most beginners point at their feet. On inline skates that answer cannot be right, and the reason is the boot.
An inline boot is a rigid shell that holds the foot still, and the wheels become the extension of the leg. There is no free joint down there to steer with. Whatever turns the skate has to happen higher up, in the leg that the skate is bolted to.
A certified coach's intermediate drill puts steering exactly there: use the direction of your knee bend for accurate steering and edge control. Her toe-roll drill has three levels, and this is the middle one. Beginners use it to hold a centre edge in a straight line; intermediates use it to find out that the knee is the steering wheel.
Bend the knee towards where you want to go, and the skate follows. Bend it straight ahead and the skate runs straight; send it slightly out over the little toe and the skate rolls onto an outside edge and curves that way. This site has said before that an edge is the whole leg; this page is the same fact, seen from the turn.
The rigid-shell fact at the top of this page is the site's own skater's, who skates inline. The knee-bend drill is 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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