Before rollerblading, it is a good idea to familiarize oneself with all of the equipment. Learn how to rollerblade, or in-line skate, from a rollerblading coach in this skating video.
Hi, this is Patrick Eaves. In this segment, we're going to talk about how to inline skate. Well, really, the first thing you're going to need to do with inline skating, again, make sure you have all the right equipment, and the way to do this is to go either to your local specialty retailer store---that could be a skate shop or an inline skate shop---go to your local skating rink where they will have people that can kind of guide you in the right direction, make sure you have the right skates, the right protective gear. And then finally, finding a coach in your area is really the best idea. If you can find a roller hockey coach or an inline skating coach in your area, by all means, that's the best way you can go. These videos, no way, will replace real one-on-one instruction. But for now, let's say you've got all your gear together. You're going to want to start out by practicing balancing on your skates. When you're balancing, make sure your legs are about shoulder-width apart. Your knees are always going to be bent, and you want to kind of be leaning forward, just slightly, not too much. If you're standing up straight, it's going to be really hard to balance on these skates, so make sure you're in this position, hands out in front of you. We call that the ready position. From there, you're going to practice doing your forward glides. Now, before you can really start gliding forward, you want to make sure you can move around on your skates, so you're going to take baby steps. What those basically look like are just taking steps on your skates. That's your first step in learning to skate. Once you're comfortable with that and you can walk all over the place doing baby steps, your next step is going to be your glide. To do the basic glide, you're going to start out very slowly using a simple set of movements. When you start your forward stride, if your feet are close together like this and pointing straight forward, you're not going to be able to create any forward motion, because you have no traction to go forward. So what you're going to do is turn each skate out at an angle, about a 45-degree angle off of where it is right now, maybe a little less. So basically, it looks like that. Once you have your skates at angle like this, now, you're able to push forward. So to start your forward motion, your forward glide, once you have your feet at that angle, you're going to start by putting all your weight on one foot and pushing off to the other direction. As you do that, this leg is actually going to come out, and you're going to transfer your weight over to that leg. As you transfer your weight to that leg, you're going to start pushing off into the other direction. Once you do that in sync a few times, you're going to have your forward motion. Good luck. And remember, try to look or contact a local coach or someone that can help give you one-on-one lessons on how to rollerblade and stay safe.
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