Hi, my name is Patrick Eaves. In this video series, we're going to do a beginner's guide to rollerblading. So there are some basic things you need to start out with. First, obviously, you're going to want to get a pair of inline skates. There are all kinds of different inline skates available out there right now. Most of them are going to come with a heel stop and just--what you're looking for in the beginning is just recreational inline skates. As you progress, you can move on to some of the aggressive street-skating or speed-skating type skates. But you're going to want to do is go to your local sports store and just tell them you're looking for a pair of recreational inline skates. They'll be able to tell you what kind to get. There are lots of different brands and styles, so your local retailer will be able to help you out. So I recommend going to a local roller rink or your local hockey club and look for an inline skating instructor. So once you have your inline skates, your next step is to get protection, obviously, a helmet. You always want to wear your helmet when you're inline skating. And then some things are optional. But I highly, highly recommend would be knee pads, because you are going to fall once or twice possibly; elbow pads; and you definitely want some wrist guards, because if you do fall, your hands are probably going to go down first. And these have plastics protectors on them, just to help you not scrape up your hands. Okay, now when you're beginning to inline skate, you want to start out slow. You want to make sure that your first few times out, you're not in your big hills or anywhere busy. And as you start out, you're going to progress through a series of maneuvers. Your first maneuver is going to be basically just taking steps on the inline skates, making sure you can stand up and get your balance on them. Once you have that down, your next step is going to be learning the basic stride. [demonstration] Once you've practiced the basic stride a little bit, you can start learning to do some turns. You may learn to do a little bit of backward skating, and you're going to learn several different kinds of stops. Once you're ready to progress, make sure that you contact a local coach. It can be an inline skating coach. It can be a roller hockey coach. You can go to your local roller rink and pick up some tips from some of the other people skating there, or skate parks. Remember, once you
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