by snailskates on Tue May 15, 2007 7:40 am
HI Bill and Alisha
at the moment you are starting to skate and trying to find your balance any way you can! What you are doing with your ankles and arms at the moment is perfectly normal, unless you have a medical problem with your ankles (in which case consult a doctor!).
The first thing you need to learn is the correct skating stance off skates- this can be found on the internet (if you can't find it anywhere I'll find you one) - legs at shoulder width, knees slightly flexed. You could do some dryland exercises to build up the muscles in your ankles a little if you wanted to. Then you can try it on your skates.
Next just focus on walking in your skates. A good place to do this is on grass or carpet, which will stop/minimise your wheels from rolling and give you a bit of confidence (and is less damaging when you fall!!) A thought that our coach uses here is to pretend that you have big heavy concrete boots on.
Use your arms to balance -they are your first tool in staying upright! The better your balance gets, they will naturally start to move with your legs like they do when you walk or run.
When you have had a go at walking on the grass/carpet now do the same on some tarmac! Make sure that you are padded and helmeted up! If you are in the correct stance your weight should be slightly forward so you should tend to fall forward (onto your protective gear) rather than onto your back (where you have none) if you do fall.
Practice walking first...if you focus on learning your skating skills bit by bit the strength in your ankles and your balance will start improving!
You then start the next skill, which is putting your feet in a T shape and just pushing off the back one slightly. Try one roll and stop. Then try a couple of pushes , one from each leg etc. Make sure you are on a flat surface! There are learn to skate programmes online, have a look at some of them!
Once you have practised the basic movements and are feeling a bit more confident on your skates (nb this took me months lol) then, as the skate coach says, focus on staying on top of your wheels, and this will build up the muscles in your ankles correctly and will make you roll better and more efficiently. But you need to feel confidnt about rolling first !
But the main thing to remember in all this is that skating is fun, and that you can do it! Focusing on fun helps you relax and will see you skating much more quickly! I'm sure other people will have lots more to say about this, but just keep rolling - mastering skating is the best feeling in the world!
cheers
snailskates
