Beginner roller skating
The Skating Stride Is Just a Weight Transfer, Sped Up
Nobody teaches the stride as a separate skill, because it is not one. Roll on one foot, bring the skates level, transfer, roll on the other, then do the same thing faster. That is the stride. Knowing the order matters, because it means the fix for a clumsy stride is never more speed. It is going back to the slow transfer and cleaning it up. Quad technique, from Najete Kada, a French champion in artistic roller skating.
Nobody teaches the skating stride as a separate skill, and there is a good reason for that: it is not one. The stride is a weight transfer you already know, performed faster.
Laid out slowly it is four things. Roll on one foot. Bring the skates level. Transfer your weight. Roll on the other. Speed those four up until they run into each other and you are striding — there is no fifth ingredient that appears at speed.
Knowing the order matters because of what it says about fixing a bad stride. The fix is never more speed. A clumsy stride is a clumsy transfer with less time to hide in, so going faster makes it worse and going slower makes it visible.
So when the stride feels wrong, go back to the slow version, find which of the four steps is rushed, and clean that one up. Then speed the whole thing back up. Quad technique, from Najete Kada's Tuto roller series. She teaches quad skating and skates it herself; 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.