Beginner roller skating

You Would Never Skate Forwards Like That

Go and watch people skating backwards, at a rink or anywhere with a bit of space. You will see the same picture almost every single time: both skates flat on the floor for the entire distance, hips wiggling from side to side to generate a bit of movement.

Now picture doing that forwards. Both feet glued to the ground, shuffling along, never lifting either one. You would call it hopeless immediately, and so would everyone watching. Nobody would defend it as a technique.

So why does it survive backwards, on the same people, in the same session? Because nobody can see themselves. Going forwards you have watched a thousand skaters and you know what it is supposed to look like. Going backwards you have watched very few, and the ones you have watched were doing the same thing you are.

Backwards skating runs on the same principle as forwards. You push with one skate and glide on the other. The direction changes, the mechanics do not, and the moment you accept that, the shuffle stops looking like a technique and starts looking like what it is — an absence of one.

That is worth knowing before you spend another session practising the shuffle, because practising it makes it more permanent rather than better. Inline 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.