Beginner roller skating
The Mohawk Is an Entry, Not Just a Turn
In ICP-certified coach Asha Kirkby's vocabulary, a mohawk is not only a way to change direction on inline skates. Her student's list of moves reads: lunge turn entry to powerslide, mohawk entry to powerslide, back reverse mohawk alone and in combinations. The turn is the door to the stop. Learned as a turn, it later becomes the way into the sliding stops.
A mohawk is the name a certified coach uses for the forwards-to-backwards transition on inline skates. In her vocabulary it is also something else: a way in.
Her student's list of moves after a year reads: lunge turn entry to powerslide, mohawk entry to powerslide, back reverse mohawk alone and in combinations. The turns are named by what they lead to. The mohawk is an entry, the lunge turn is an entry, and the stop is what they enter.
The turn is the door to the stop. This site has already said that the powerslide takes months and that the lunge turn comes before it. The mohawk is the other door: a transition that, once it is clean, becomes the first half of a sliding stop.
Learned as a turn, it later becomes the way into the sliding stops. So a transition that feels like an end in itself is not; it is a hinge, and the moves on the far side of it are the reason to get it clean on both sides.
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.
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