Beginner roller skating
Where to Take Your Quads Outside: The Smoothest Concrete You Can Find
A certified coach says quads were designed for flat, super-smooth floors, and outdoors nothing is quite that smooth. So the surface matters more than the place: empty tennis courts, a Sunday car park, the flat of a skatepark: smooth concrete. Asphalt is rougher than it looks; gravel and wet painted lines bring you down. Technique from ICP-certified coach Asha Kirkby.
The first outdoor quad session usually fails for a reason that has nothing to do with skill: it happens in the wrong place. A certified coach's description of what quads were built for tells you where to go.
Quads were designed for flat, super-smooth floors, and outdoors nothing is quite that smooth. So the question is not where the nice spot is; it is where the smoothest surface is. The site's own skater has already written that the surface matters more than the place, and for quads that is doubly true.
Look for smooth concrete: an empty tennis or basketball court, a car park on a Sunday morning, the flat area of a skatepark. These are the outdoor surfaces closest to a rink floor. They are flat, they are usually clean, and they are bounded, so the first sessions can happen without traffic or gradients.
Asphalt is rougher than it looks and eats a quad's momentum; gravel and wet painted lines are what bring you down. A road surface that a bicycle barely notices is a constant vibration under wide, flat wheels. Loose grit acts like ball bearings under the skate, and this site has already said that a painted line in the wet is aquaplaning. Choose the concrete, and save the rest for when the concrete is easy.
Technique from Asha Kirkby of Skatefresh, an instructor certified by the Inline Certification Program who also teaches quad skating. This page is about QUAD skates outdoors: it comes from her comparison of quad and inline skates, and the site's own skater does not practise quads, so nothing here is vouched for by her.
Keep going: this is one section of the full Roller Skating for Beginners guide — sizing, gear, stopping, and where to skate, in one page. Free, no sign-up, nothing to buy.