Hi in this video we’re going over the five most important things to get you rolling as quickly as possible i’m katie and you’re watching skatey equipment The most important thing you’re going to need is obviously a pair of roller skates there are so many to choose from i would say rio rollers and moxie are very good most people say size up i don’t i say you need your ball of your foot over
Your wheels so if you size up it’s going to be slightly in front of the ball of your foot so but that’s my personal preference when you’re buying skates this bit here is a plate now some plates are plastic or nylon if they’re plastic you need to
Look at the weight limit because there will be a weight limit on them so they may be child skates and they’ll fit your foot but you need to check the weight limit because obviously you don’t be skating along and they snap because you’re going to be in big trouble So with wheels i’m on really soft wheels today because i’m outside on the gravel so these are a 75 which are about the softest wheels that you can get if i was indoors in a rink i’d probably be wearing my 90s or 100s so i can
Spin easily so the harder the wheel the slippier it is and the harder the ride so if you’re going outside you want a nice soft wheel to give you a soft cruise so you don’t feel like you’re being vibrated Okay so if you have a boot like this you may notice that you’ve got these little hooks on the side now when i do mine up i hate when my skates get loose when i’m skating and i have to stop and tighten them up drives me crazy all i want to do is
Skate so what i do is i go around the top of the hook downwards and that really locks it in and keeps it really really tight so you can concentrate on skating and not doing your skates up every 10 Minutes so this is the toe stop you’re going to have toe stops when you buy your skates some skates will have a screw through them these have are adjustable so i put a little allen key in there and i can adjust the toe stops they’re really good
But obviously some of the cheaper skates you can’t adjust the toe stops again it’s something that you have a personal preference on i like my toe stops quite high when i’m skating outside just so i don’t catch on a stone or something like that but on my indoor
Skates i had them lower so i can do tricks and stuff like that if you’re jam skating you might take these out completely and put a little rubber bung in or a plug and that’s great too the plug doesn’t really do anything it’s not functional it just protects the rink from the metal
Now i would say the most important thing with toe stops is you’re going to use them for stopping so you don’t want them too high so you want your skate at about a 45 degree angle when you when you put your toe stop down any higher you’re going to be off balance
Any lower you risk if you’re outdoors particularly you risk catching a stone or something under there when you’re skating forwards you’re going to wipe out you really don’t want to do that So the last piece of equipment that i would highly recommend as a beginner you will notice that i am not wearing um pads are really important as a beginner they will give you confidence because falling is inevitable we’re going to talk about falling in a minute um
So i’d recommend knee pads elbow pads probably wrist pads or as i’ve got leather gloves and if you fall over on this sort of surface fast you’ve got to save yourself somehow and chances are you’re going to use your hands so i recommend leather gloves or um
You can get some really nice bike gloves people wear for cycling they look really good and you know what if you really are a beginner and you’ve never skated before maybe popping a cycle helmet on wouldn’t be the worst thing that you could do just to keep yourself safe until you get
Your balance and then you can be like me and just be stupid and take everything off and then when you hit the deck it’s bad but i would personally recommend as a beginner definitely kick yourself out with some safety gear falling so falling we’ve got to talk about it it’s
Definitely going to happen especially when you’re learning so that’s why we mentioned about pads so you definitely want knee pads elbow pads wrist pads and maybe a cycle helmet as well it’s really important to protect yourself when you’re skating and it will give you confidence as well
I always say the most important thing with falling is if you can try and control the fall so bend your knees get your hands down try and reach the ground as safely as possible with as few injuries as you can manage and once you’ve fallen
You’ve got to get back up again so the easiest way to get back up from sitting on the floor on a pair of skates so one hand either side get one foot up then the other get your balance and up you’re going to be pros in no time standing Okay so this is going to be challenging because if you’ve never stood in a pair of roller skates before the wheels are very free-flowing and you literally just kind of ah so bend your knees keep your knees really really soft you want to imagine that there’s a line
That goes right down the center of your body and you want to keep your shoulder square and your weight right in the middle so you’re really solid your weight needs to be slightly to the front of the skate if you keep your weight to the front it stops you falling back
Trust me i’ve done it you do not want to fall backwards keep your weight to the front even if you’re in this sort of position at first it doesn’t matter get confident and then you can straighten up when you get better but the most important thing at this stage is to get confident
And safe Moving so now you’re standing we’re going to put the same thing into practice to get you moving so you want a nice soft knees and the best way to start is with a snake pattern so with the snake pattern you have your feet pointing out and you’re going to lean on
Your little toe and push then when you get to here you’re going to lean on your big toe and pull back in again so the most important thing to remember when you’re doing a snake pattern is you don’t want your feet to touch together at the front otherwise we’ll be practicing falling
So remember before your feet get too close you need to swap the weight and take it back onto the little toes and take yourself back out again like this knees soft arms out this is the safest way to get started because you haven’t got to lift your feet yet
If you’re having trouble getting your snake pattern it might be that your trucks are too tight if you look at my skate you see how my wheels can move if you haven’t got movement in your trucks you’re going to find this really hard so you might need to loosen them off a
Little bit so now you’ve mastered your snake pattern we’re going to start lifting our feet and transferring the body weight so we’re going to march so the most important thing here is to feel that all of your weights going on each foot every time now what will happen is you should
Feel that your wheels automatically start to roll and this is getting us ready for the next bit so keep your arms out nice and soft if you turn your feet outwards it will help you gain some speed we’re rolling so let’s get you proper skating so
You’re really close so all you need to do now is rather than lifting the knee is put the knee behind you and there you are you’re skating still keeping those knees really soft transfer the weight to each foot you’ll find if you don’t transfer your weight you’ll be skating like this
Because your weight is central so you must transfer the weight to each foot each time stopping So we’ve done sanding we’ve done moving i better show you how to stop because you’re gonna have to do that at some point so to stop i’m gonna teach you three basic ways one is with your toe stop one is called a snow plow and one is with your wheels because i
Find when i’m outside i’d rather use my wheels to stop than my toe stop because obviously the asphalt is just going to wear your toe stop down really really quickly this is the snow plow for the snow plow you want to put your weight just like when we did the snake pattern
On the outside on your little toes okay and just push outwards so the next way to stop i’m going to show you is with your toe stop so for this one you need to be able to balance on one leg to be able to put your toe stop down
So the third way to stop is that what i use when i’m outside because i don’t want to wear my toe stop away so rather than using my toe stop i’m going to use my front two wheels well i hope you’re now rolling away and enjoying your new skates
Now this video has been a very brief overview of quite a few important points so what we’ll be doing in the future is bringing out videos which explain each point in a lot more detail but until then this was skatey happy rolling instead of using my toe stop i’m going
To use my front two wheel my front two wheels i might just do that again i don’t know what i thought after that i remember sounded good
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