Beginner roller skating
Your Own Body Weight Is the Only Load You Need
ICP-certified coach Asha Kirkby has never lifted a weight in a gym: lifting your own body is enough, and most skaters find out how hard that is on the first back exercise. Her off-skate practice covers every joint and muscle group inline skating uses, and brackets the session with a short stretch before and after. No kit, no membership, a few minutes either side of the skates.
Off-skate work sounds like it needs a gym. A certified coach has never lifted a weight in one, and her reason is not a principle but an observation.
Lifting your own body is enough. Most skaters find out how hard that is on the first back exercise: holding up your own weight through the back muscles, lower, middle and upper, is more than most of us can do cleanly.
Her off-skate practice covers every joint and muscle group inline skating uses. It was built with her own yoga teacher, and it needs a floor and nothing else.
It also brackets the session with a short stretch before and after. A few minutes either side of the skates, no kit, no membership, and the skater arrives at the wheels already moving.
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.
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.