Beginner roller skating
Your Back Foot Taps Through the Turn Because Your Weight Sits on the Heel
On a parallel turn to your weaker side, the back skate taps across the ground — a certified coach calls it skitching. The cause: the back knee is not bent far enough over the toes, weight sits on the heel, and that skate's front wheels unweight and skip while you force the turn. The fix: bend the back knee forward until the kneecap covers the toes, squeezing into the ankle strap. Technique from ICP-certified coach Asha Kirkby.
On a parallel turn towards your weaker side, the back skate does something strange: it taps across the ground in a series of little skips instead of carving. A certified coach calls it skitching, and she says it has a cause, not a personality.
The cause is where your weight sits. Your back knee is not bent far enough forward over your toes, so your weight rests on the heel of that skate. The front wheels of the back skate unweight, and as you force the turn they skip across the surface rather than rolling through it.
The fix: bend the back knee forward until the kneecap covers the toes, squeezing into the ankle strap. That shifts your weight onto the front half of the foot, the front wheels stay planted, and the tapping stops because the wheels that were tapping are now carrying you.
Why it happens on one side and not the other is the subject of the next two pages: the weaker leg resists bending, and the weaker side gets asked to turn tight before it can turn at all.
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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