To put on your skates, loosen the laces and the buckles and put your feet into the skate. Afterwards, tighten the lace, making sure to pull at every lace so that they are tight. Then, tighten the buckles and straps on the inline skate, starting with the one at the bottom of your skates and working your way up to the top. Make sure that your skates are tight-fitting, but aren't painful.
It is highly recommended that you put on a helmet at least to protect your head. Knee pads are also highly recommended as your knees are what you're most likely going to fall on. Other kinds of protective gear like wrist guards and elbow guards are not as essential, but they're recommended if you are new to inline skating. Watch the videos below to learn how to put on your protective gear.
To stand up on skates, make sure that the centre of the skates, when you're standing on it, is always under your chest, otherwise, you'll fall backwards. Thus, you should get on your knees in a kneel first, then place one skate on the ground, followed by the other, and slowly stand up.
When you fall on skates, make sure you try as far as possible to fall forward and try to get as low as possible. When you fall with wrist and knee guards, make sure your palm is fully open so that your fingers do not get in the way and get hurt. Fall onto your wrist and knee guards in a kind of crawl position. When you fall without any guards, try to contact the ground with your hands first and then rotate your body to the side using your hands to make sure one of your butt cheeks contacts the ground first. This way, you'll reduce the chance of getting scratches on your knees and elbows and your natural pillows (your bum) will take most of the impact, which is ideal for avoiding major injury.
To have a proper body posture that is conducive to inline skating, your knees should always be bent. Your shins should touch the front of your skates if your knees are sufficiently bent. Next, your core should always be above the centre of your skate so that you can balance on the skates. With your knees sufficiently bent, this should come automatically. Your back should always be straight while skating, so do not bend your back forward as it makes it easier for you to fall forward and you will get a backache.
This position is simply having your feet parallel to each other, and having them side by side, similar to how you would stand. Your feet should also be shoulder-width apart. When looking at your feet, they should look like the number 11.
You have probably heard this term before if you've been in any fitness class. If you have, then it is the exact same position, just that you are wearing skates instead of being on your feet. The position is basically just having your feet shoulder-width apart and with one foot in front of the other. Another way to think of it is to think of the ready position but with one foot in front of the other. Your weight in the scissors position should be 40% on the front foot and 60% on the back foot for better stability.
Your feet should always be in the scissors position while rolling on skates as it is the safest position to be in. With one leg in front of the other, obstacles like twigs and debris won't contact both of your feet simultaneously, making it much less likely for you to fall. More of your weight should be on the back foot. That way, if your front foot trips over something, you wouldn't fall over and you can shift your weight from the back foot to the front foot when the object contacts your back foot. Your weight should ideally be 40% on the front foot and 60% on the back foot.
For your first few steps on inline skates, it is quite likely that you won't be confident enough to lift one foot off the ground for too long, so open your feet in a 'V' position and just do small steps, with the back of one skate touching the other skate so that you don't roll. The motion is similar to how a penguin walks. Once you are more comfortable on skates, you can continue to do the same thing, but this time, you let yourself roll a little by not having the back of one skate touch the other skate.
To get into the A-frame position, simply spread your feet apart until they are wide apart. Your feet should look like an 'A' or a triangle from the front. Your skates should be on the inside edge as well.
Lemons are one of the most important skills in inline skating. You'll find that being able to do lemons will help you with a lot of different tricks, as it trains your thigh muscles and forces you to bend your knees. To do a lemon, you first need to position your feet in the 'V' shape. Your skates should be on the inside edge. Then, bend your knees and push your skates forwards until your skates are wide apart. You should find yourself accelerating forward. Now, point your skates inwards and straighten your knee. You should find yourself moving forward, but slowing to a stop. When you have stopped, you should find that your feet are in an 'A' or inverted 'V' position. If you don't want to stop after doing one lemon, instead of putting your skates in an inverted 'V' position at the end of the lemon, put your skates parallel to each other so you will continue to roll. You can repeat the lemons as many times as you want to gain speed or to slow down using the plough stop.
Like lemons, half-lemons are also one of the most important skills in inline skating. Half lemons are a bit more difficult than lemons, as most of your weight has to be on one leg while the other one does the motion. To do a half lemon, start with your feet parallel and put most of your weight on one leg. Put your hand on that thigh to help with positioning your weight correctly if you need to. We will call this foot the supporting foot. Make sure your knee on this foot is bent as well. Then, point your other foot outwards, like in the 'V' position and have an inside edge on it. We will call this foot the lemoning foot. Bend your knee and push off on the lemoning foot to get your supporting foot to roll and let your lemoning foot move away from your supporting foot. Once the lemoning foot has reached its furthest point from your supporting foot, point your lemoning foot inwards. Let your lemoning foot come back to the supporting foot. Before the lemoning foot collides with the supporting foot, push the lemoning foot outwards again and repeat the motion. Practice until it feels smooth and comfortable. If you aren't confident about rolling, you can do the half-lemon motion while standing still, just move your lemoning foot in a semicircle around your supporting foot without moving the supporting foot.
Backward lemons are just the reverse of lemons. All you have to do is to do all the steps that you do for a lemon and do them in reverse order. So first, you want to position your feet in an 'A' or an inverted 'V' shape with your heels pointing outwards. Your skates should be on the inside edge. Then, push your feet apart using your toes and allow your feet to spread wide apart. Once your feet are wide apart, use your thigh muscles to bring your feet close together. Once your feet are in the 'V' position, you have successfully completed a backward lemon. If you want to do the trick continuously, then you just need to bring your feet to the ready position, where both your feet are parallel to each other so that you'll roll forward instead of stopping, and repeat the steps for the backward lemons.
Like the backward lemons, the backward half-lemons are just half-lemons done in reverse. First, start with your feet parallel and put most of your weight on one leg. Put your hand on that thigh to help with positioning your weight correctly if you need to. We will call this foot the supporting foot. Make sure your knee on this foot is bent as well. Then, point your heels outwards, like in the inverted 'V' position and have an inside edge on it. We will call this foot the lemoning foot. Bend your knee and push off on the lemoning foot to get your supporting foot to roll backwards and let your lemoning foot move away from your supporting foot. Once the lemoning foot has reached its furthest point from your supporting foot, point the heel of the lemoning foot inwards. Let your lemoning foot come back to the supporting foot. Before the lemoning foot collides with the supporting foot, push the heel of the lemoning foot outwards again and repeat the motion. Practice until it feels smooth and comfortable. If you aren't confident about rolling backwards, you can do the half-lemon motion while standing still, just move your lemoning foot in a semicircle around your supporting foot without moving the supporting foot.
Here are just some videos that would help you with your balance on inline skates.
Scootering is basically what its name implies. The trick looks like what you would do when pushing a scooter forward. To do the trick, you will need to put about 80% of your weight on one foot, we'll call this foot the supporting foot, and position the other foot in a 'T' or 'L' shape, behind the supporting foot. We'll call this foot the pushing foot. Now, bend your knee on the pushing foot and push off of the ground with it and you should start rolling. Your supporting foot should have a centre edge so that you can balance on your skates. Once you are rolling, lift your pushing foot and place it behind your supporting foot. Put your pushing foot on the ground and immediately push your foot off of the ground to push yourself further forward. Now, all you need to do is to repeat the steps to gain more speed and you are now scootering. As you gain more speed, it's alright if the pushing foot is not perpendicular to your supporting foot, your pushing foot can form a small 'V' shape with your supporting foot instead. Always ensure that the pushing foot is pointed towards the direction you're moving in, not off towards the side. You should also ensure that the supporting foot is always on the centre edge, and absolutely not on the inside edge.
The forward stride that you want to use is actually quite similar to scootering. As such, you should learn scootering first before learning the forward stride. You might even find the forward stride to be easier than scootering to learn. The main difference between scootering and the forward stride is the alternating legs and the position of the pushing foot. The pushing foot shouldn't be perpendicular to the supporting foot in a 'T' or 'L' shape and should instead be at an angle of less than 90° to the supporting foot, forming a small 'V' with the supporting foot. This makes the forward stride much easier to do and more efficient as you are now pushing off to the side instead of pushing backwards. To do the forward stride, put all of your weight on one foot. We'll call this foot the supporting foot. You should maintain a centre edge on the supporting foot at all times so that you can balance. Then, point your other foot slightly outwards, forming a small 'V' with the supporting foot. We'll call this foot the pushing foot. Make sure your knees are bent on both the supporting foot and the pushing foot. Now, push off the ground with your pushing foot until your leg is straight. Make sure your weight is still fully on the supporting foot. Do a toe flick with your pushing foot to get some additional speed and lift it up. Now you should be balancing on your supporting foot. Bring your pushing foot right beside the supporting foot and put it down, making sure that the pushing foot is pointed straight in the direction of motion. Now, you want to put all of your weight on the pushing foot that you just put down. The pushing foot now becomes the supporting foot and the supporting foot becomes the pushing foot. All you need to do is to repeat the steps as many times as necessary and you have done the forward stride. This will be the main stride that you'll use for skating forwards until you augment it with the double push.
The usual common mistakes in a beginner’s forward stride are the 'V' set down and having an inside edge on the supporting skate. These two issues are the root cause of a lot of technique-related issues in the forward stride, such as a short glide length, ankle pronation and bouncing up and down while doing the forward stride. To fix having an inside edge on the supporting foot, you should practice scootering until you can keep a centre edge on the supporting foot. You can also choose to practice gliding on one leg, which you can work up to by doing toe rolls. Gliding on one leg is a very important skill for a lot of other tricks, so it's much better to get it down sooner rather than later. You should be able to glide on one leg at a medium speed for about half a tennis court, basketball court or something similar to have a noticeable improvement in your balance and centre edging on the supporting foot. To fix the 'V' set down, you should do your regular forward stride, but instead of immediately pushing after you regroup your legs, pause for 4 to 5 seconds when you regroup so that you will make sure your legs are always pointed straight ahead when they are regrouped in the ready position. Once you have gotten used to it, you can gradually decrease the duration of the pause to about 1 to 2 seconds until you no longer have to pause to keep your feet straight when they are regrouped. There are some other tips in the videos below, but I think that these two are the most important ones. If you want more advanced tips to improve your stride, you should look at the trick called 'double push'.
The toe roll is a relatively simple trick if you can balance on one skate well. First, get into the scissors position and put all your weight on the front foot. Remember to bend your knee on the support skate, preferably having your knees over your toes. Then, rotate the ankle on the back foot until the toes of your back foot are pointing to the ground. You should ensure that you have a centre edge on the front skate so that you can balance properly.
There are a lot of ways to traverse stairs, but some ways are much faster than others. The ways detailed here are the quickest ways to traverse stairs when mastered. Both of the ways detailed here require you to have your feet in the 'V' position. The reason for the 'V' position is that it will stop your skates from rolling backwards when you're standing still on the stairs, which is much safer than climbing up the stairs with both feet pointed straight ahead. To go up the stairs, have your feet in a 'V' position and put all of your weight on one foot. Push it into the stair before lifting the other foot. Then, place your other foot on the next step on the stairs, making sure to maintain that 'V' shape when it is placed onto the step. Move all of your weight to that foot and push it into the stair before lifting your other foot and placing it either on the same step as the front foot (when you're learning), or on the step ahead of the front foot, maintaining that 'V' position the whole time. Now, you just have to repeat the steps until you have climbed up the entire flight of stairs. To go down the stairs, start with your feet in the 'V' position as mentioned and shift all of your weight onto one foot. Put the other foot down on the step below, making sure you maintain the 'V' position when the foot is placed down. Once you have placed the foot down, roll it back into the step and transfer your weight to it. Now, lift the back foot and place it either on the step the front foot is on (when you're learning), or the step below it, maintaining that 'V' position the whole time. Be sure to roll it back into the step after you have placed it down. Now, all you have to do is to repeat the steps until you have climbed down the entire flight of stairs. If you want an even faster way to go down stairs, check out the trick called 'stair ride'.
The most important thing when skating downhill is the ability to slow down and stop. Hence, you should learn and master as many stopping techniques as possible so that you will be prepared for any situation that you might encounter when skating downhill. You should at least learn the stepping plough stop, the T-stop, and the powerslide before going down a slope. You can go down slopes without learning the powerslide, but be sure to maintain a medium speed so that you can stop quickly if anything happens. The stepping plough stop is good for slowing down without burning your wheels, but it does take up quite a bit of space and also takes quite a long time to come to a complete stop. The T-stop is the most versatile stopping technique that can be used anywhere, even in extremely tight spaces. Learning to do the T-stop on both legs and learning how to place as much weight as you need on the stopping leg will allow you to slow down on long downhills and use the T-stop to stop quickly. However, the T-stop’s stopping power is still not good enough for an emergency stop. For that, you’ll need to learn the powerslide, which is the easiest emergency stop to learn. Afterwards, you should look into learning the magic slide and the parallel slide for more stopping power. Outside of stopping, you should be in the scissors position and staying low by bending your knees when going downhill. This is so that you’re more stable and hence, less likely to fall. There are other tips in the videos listed below, but these two tips are by far the most important when skating down a slope.
The videos listed below aren’t ranked and they are all useful, so you should watch them all. The biggest tip for city skating is to always maintain the scissors position when you’re gliding, making sure to keep your weight on your heels. This way, you will easily roll over most obstacles you come across and you’ll be able to easily recover if you trip over something. Mastering the T-stop is also essential before skating the city as you’ll have to deal with traffic, pedestrians and a lot of slopes, all of which require you to be proficient in your stopping technique. The sidewalk is usually pretty narrow as well, which makes most other stopping techniques unviable simply due to the lack of space to execute them. You can also choose to use a heel brake instead of using the T-stop. Jumps are immensely useful in clearing a wide variety of obstacles, so while it isn’t a necessity, you should learn how to jump on skates. You should also try to skate over as many different types of terrain as possible so that you’ll be prepared for all kinds of terrain that the city throws at you.
Transition in inline skating refers to changing from skating forward to skating backwards or vice versa. The smoothest and most controllable transition would require you to learn a trick called the eagle or the mohawk, which is basically skating sideways. That trick is pretty difficult to master though, so while you should be working towards mastering the eagle to have the smoothest and most controllable transitions, you should pick up an easier way to transition so that you can do tricks like the front powerslide earlier. The transition that has the lowest risk and is relatively easy to learn is the one that requires you to step into the transition. This method of transiting also builds the foundation for learning the eagle, which makes it the ideal transition to learn with. To perform this transition, first, stretch out your arms into a 'T' pose. Then, move your legs into the scissors position and make sure your knees are bent. Now, turn your arms 90 degrees such that your arms are now in line with the direction you are facing in and put your entire weight on your front foot. Then, while keeping your head facing forward, lift and turn your back foot roughly 180 degrees (you don't have to be exact, it can actually be quite a bit less) and place it down such that the heel of your back foot is facing the heel of your front foot. You can choose to pivot your back foot about the toe as well if that is more comfortable. Make sure that your head is still facing forward so that you don't crash into anything. Now, lean back and put all of your weight on the heel of the back skate. You can choose to put your entire weight in the middle of your back skate, but you shouldn’t put your weight on the toe of the back skate as you might fall forward. Lift the front foot and turn it roughly 180 degrees and place it back down. You can choose to pivot your front foot about the toe as well if that is more comfortable. Afterwards, you should find yourself with your head still facing in the direction you're moving in and you are still in the scissors position, but your legs are now in the opposite direction. To turn back, you just repeat the steps. You should try this trick while standing still first before doing it while rolling. You should also start with slow speeds before moving on to high speeds as messing up the transition at high speeds will cause you to have a pretty bad fall. If you're having trouble with the weight transfer from one leg to another, try ending the transition on only one leg, which would force you to put all your weight on that leg as you transition so you can get used to the weight transfer.
Sprinting on skates is almost the same as regular sprinting, with the only difference being the position of your feet. When sprinting normally, you would usually have your feet pointed straight ahead. However, when sprinting on skates, you want your feet to be pointed outwards in a very wide 'V' position. It would be ideal to have your feet as wide as possible, so the ideal position to be in is to have your feet perpendicular to the sprinting direction with the right foot pointed right and the left foot pointed left. We will call this position the wide 'V' position. To learn how to sprint on skates, you must first learn how to walk on skates without rolling. To walk on skates without rolling, you have to walk forward while keeping that wide 'V' position. Do it slowly, ensuring that your skates do not roll at all. You can let the back of one skate touch the other skate to ensure that you will not roll, but you will eventually want to use the frequency of your steps to ensure that you don't roll at all while sprinting. Once you can do it slowly, gradually increase the frequency of your steps until you're sprinting. When starting a sprint from a stationary position, keep your body high, lean back, and then lean forward when you start sprinting. You should find your body getting lower as you sprint, which is why you want to start high. When you're sprinting, it is very important that you are always leaning slightly forward and that you always land on the inside edge of your skates on both feet. Landing on the outside edge will cause you to waste energy as you will cancel out the speed gained from your previous step, forcing you to push your body much further forward with your next step to change that outside edge to an inside edge. You'll usually end up losing balance and end the sprint when you land on the outside edge anyway since having to push your body much further forward disrupts the rhythm of the sprint. Like regular sprinting, your knees should be bent at all times and your arms should be swinging. Your right arm should be the one swinging forward when your left leg is moving forward and vice versa. You shouldn’t be swinging your arms past the middle of your chest as it wastes energy on the side-to-side motion. You want to focus all of your energy in the forward direction. Also, just like regular sprinting, you should be doing toe flicks every single time you lift your foot to take a step. At the end of your sprint, you want to put one foot out in front to catch yourself. This foot should be pointed straight and should be on the centre edge so you can transition from sprinting to gliding. You should also practice speeding up your steps and then slowing them down for absolute control over your sprint. Also, you should try sprinting while you're rolling so that you can break your glide to get a burst of speed when necessary. To sprint while rolling, put all of your weight on one foot and lift the other foot, pointing the foot outwards so that it forms half of the wide 'V' position. Then, place that foot down and repeat the steps with the other foot and you should find yourself sprinting. As always, start from a low speed and gradually work your way up to higher speeds.
The A-frame turn is the simplest turn in inline skating. You might have already done it yourself without even looking up any tutorials or learning from anything. All you need to do is to open your feet wide and push on the foot that is the opposite to the direction you're turning in, so the right foot when turning left and left foot when turning right. Also, do maintain an inside edge on the foot so that you'd turn faster. However, this turn is extremely slow and you should learn the parallel turn as soon as you can as this turn is terrible at medium to high speeds.
The pizza turn is very simple as well, you probably have already done it without even learning about it. All you need to do is to turn your foot that corresponds to the direction you're going in, a bit more to that direction, so turn your left foot left a bit more if you want to turn left and turn your right foot right a bit more if you want to turn right. This turn would only work at low speeds as you would likely lose balance and fall if you use this turn at medium to high speeds.
The parallel turn is the turn that every single inline skater should learn. It forms the basis for many other tricks, such as slalom and slide tricks. To execute the parallel turn, get into the scissor position first. Next, lean your body in the direction that you are turning. Look at the direction that you’re turning towards and rotate your body in that direction. You should find yourself turning in that direction. To make it easier to lean and rotate your body in the direction you’re turning, try to stretch your arms out in a T pose and imagine you are an aeroplane. Lock your shoulders in place and use your body to lean into the direction that you want to turn in and you should find one of your arms being lowered and the other one being raised. You should practice this turn until you can make very sharp and tight turns at any speed, called carving or lunge turns. You should also master this trick for both directions.
Before learning crossovers, make sure that you have mastered your parallel turns as they are a prerequisite for crossovers. Like the T-stop, you should master your one-leg balance so that you'll have full control over your crossovers, which means you'll be able to adjust how rapidly you're crossing over as well as make your crossovers look smooth and fluid. Hence, you should be able to balance on one leg for half a court. Any court will do, be it a tennis court, a basketball court or a handball court, it doesn't matter. Once you can balance on one leg, you can start to learn crossovers. Start with static crossovers and get comfortable with your legs in a crossover position. Make sure your knees are bent until you can't see your toes and keep your knees bent throughout the entire process. When you're comfortable doing static crossovers, try doing the crossovers while rolling. This time, make sure to start a parallel turn in the direction you're turning in so that you will lean in the correct direction to perform the crossover. Do the crossovers in slow motion, ensuring that you can lift one leg for about 2 seconds before crossing it over the other leg. This exercise will allow you to have far better control over your crossover speed and make them smoother. Once you're able to do that, do crossovers in a small circle to get used to tight turns and leaning. You should also master the crossover on both sides so you can navigate the urban landscape with ease. Doing crossovers in Figure 8 will force you to get good at both sides and transition between the two sides seamlessly. Once your crossovers are smooth, try sprinting while doing crossovers. To do this, you will have to reduce the crossover distance to increase the frequency of crossovers. Also, you'll have to do a tiny jump on every crossover, so make sure to keep practising until it feels smooth and stable. Make sure you can do it on both sides as well so you can gain speed extremely quickly by doing alternating sprinting crossovers.
Backward crossovers will be the main way that you turn backwards, so it is highly recommended to learn this trick as soon as possible after learning how to skate backwards. Despite their name, backward crossovers are quite different from regular crossovers, so you should just forget everything about regular crossovers when learning the backward crossover, except for keeping your knees extremely bent, as bending your knees is essential to the backward crossover. Before attempting the backward crossovers, make sure you are comfortable with the backward scissors position and balancing on one leg while moving backwards. You should also be comfortable with your legs being crossed while moving backwards as well. Now, to do a backward crossover, go into the scissors position with 60% of your weight on the leading leg and 40% of your weight on the trailing leg. The leading leg is the leg in front when you are facing the direction of motion and the trailing leg is the leg behind. Then, lift the heel of your trailing foot and place it down such that it crosses the toe of your leading foot. The obtuse (smaller) angle between your two feet should be about 120°. Now, push your trailing foot backwards and let it roll. You should find your trailing foot crossing over your leading foot. Once the trailing foot has crossed over your leading foot, make sure that the trailing foot is on the centre edge and put about 80% of your weight on it. Then, push the leading foot off the ground until the leg is straight. Do a toe flick right before lifting your leg to uncross it. Place your leading foot back into the scissors position again. Once you're in the scissors position, use your trailing foot to push off of the ground and make sure that the leading foot is on the outside edge so that you are continuously turning. At the end of the push where your trailing leg is straight, do a toe flick to gain more speed. Then, regroup back into the scissors position again and you have completed one backward crossover. You just need to repeat the steps to do more backward crossovers. Keep practising it until it becomes smooth! While doing that, be sure to do the backward crossovers in slow motion so that you will have absolute control over your legs while doing the trick, which will allow you to have silky smooth backward crossovers. Once you have mastered the backward crossovers, you can try sprinting backward crossovers. To do this, you have to do a little jump after every step and you should reduce the distance that you cross your legs over to increase the frequency of your crossovers. You should also learn the backward crossovers on both sides so you can turn backwards in both directions.
To use the heel brake, get into the scissors position and make sure that you have more of your weight on your back foot. Your weight should be 40% on the front foot and 60% on the back foot. Next, lift your heel on the front skate and let the heel brake slide across the ground. You should feel yourself slowing down. If you would like to stop faster, gradually shift more of your weight to the front skate so that there would more friction between the heel brake and the ground.
To do the plough stop, get into the A-frame position where your feet are wide apart and your skates are on the inside edge. Then, turn your skates inwards and use your tighs to push against the ground to keep your skates from moving inwards. This will cause you to slow down. If you find your skates getting too close to each other or are colliding, instead of allowing them to collide, just spread them wide apart and do the plough stop again. You can repeat the plough stop as many times as necessary to stop.
To do the stepping plough stop, put your weight on one foot and lift the other foot. Turn that foot you lifted inwards and place it as far away from your other foot as you can and let it roll towards the centre. When your foot is about 15cm away from the other foot, turn it straight and glide on that foot, putting your weight on it. Now just repeat the process with the other foot and you should find yourself slowing down. If you want to stop faster, turning your foot inwards more and doing more steps would make the stepping plough stop more effective at stopping.
To do the spin stop, you will need to get comfortable with doing a circular motion with both legs. Start by doing a circular motion with one leg at a time. Once you're comfortable, do the circular motion with both legs at the same time. You can use something to support yourself to help with balancing. Afterwards, start trying to do the spin stop at extremely slow speeds, slowly increasing the speed as you get more and more comfortable. Do note that the spin stop is completely unviable at medium to high speeds as the spin is nigh impossible to control at those speeds, so you should use another stopping technique to slow down before executing the spin stop to completely stop yourself.
The lunge stop is a stop coined by Skatefresh Asha. It is basically an extremely tight parallel turn, with the turn radius being about 1 to 2 metres. You just need to do a very sharp and very tight parallel turn and then shift your weight from your front leg to the back leg at the end of the turn to stop yourself from rotating further.
The T-stop is probably the most versatile and low-risk way to slow down in all situations while being relatively easy to learn. The key to mastering the T-stop is to master your balance on one skate. Without mastering your balance on one skate, you'll find that you'll tend to spin out and your feet just cannot keep the position well at all. So make sure you can balance on one skate for at least half a court. Any court will do, be it a tennis court, a basketball court or a handball court, it doesn't matter. Once you have mastered balancing on one skate, you can move on to learning the T-stop properly. Place most of your weight, about 80%, on one foot and form a 'T' or 'L' shape with the other foot. The other foot should be on the inside edge so that it slides instead of sticking to the ground. After you've mastered the T-stop on flat ground, practice your T-stops on slopes as being able to do a T-stop on flat ground doesn't mean you can do it on slopes. You can use a carpark ramp as it is decently long and has quite an angle, which allows you to perfect your T-stop technique when going down slopes. On slopes, you'll definitely want the T-stop to be more powerful, so you should place your dragging foot much closer to your rolling foot and stand up taller to put more weight on the dragging foot. However, do make sure that you keep an inside edge on the dragging foot, otherwise, you'll just get stuck and fall over. Alternatively, you can also lean backwards to put more weight on your dragging foot, but standing taller and more upright is less tiring to do and is more effective, though it is more difficult to control and needs much more practice to get the hang of. You should also master the T-stop on both sides so you can wear out your wheels evenly, have more options in tight spaces and allow your legs to rest when going down a long slope.
This trick is functionally similar to the T-stop, but is only used when moving backwards. To do this trick, get into the scissors position while moving backwards, putting 80% of your weight on your back leg and 20% of your weight on the front leg. Turn your front foot inwards to be perpendicular to the direction that you're moving in and let the foot slide. Make sure that the supporting foot and the sliding foot form a 'T' or 'L' shape so that you'll slow down. If you know how to do the soul slide, just do the soul slide but move backwards instead of forward while doing it.
This is basically a failed powerslide and hence it is only viable at low speeds. At medium to high speeds, you would want to use the powerslide instead. To get into this position while moving backwards, get into the scissors position, put all your weight on one foot, and lift the other. Then, put the other foot behind your supporting foot, making sure that the foot is perpendicular to the direction you are moving in to stop yourself. The supporting foot and the stopping foot should form an 'L' shape. Afterwards, you should find yourself coming to a stop near where you place your stopping foot.
The power heel is a stop coined by Flow Skates. It is a pretty advanced technique as it is essentially a modified powerslide. First, you do a regular heel brake. After you have engaged the heel brake, you use the heel brake as a pivot point to turn your other foot until it is perpendicular to the direction you're moving in. Make sure that your other foot is on the inside edge to get the foot to slide. Pushing the foot through the heel will also help with getting it to slide.
The power step is stop coined by Bill Stoppard, but you'll likely have used it before without even realising it. It is extremely simple to pull off. While rolling, just put one foot perpendicular to the direction that you're rolling in, then follow that up by placing your other foot a metre away, in the same direction as your first foot. You should find yourself stopping pretty quickly. Do note that this method of stopping is only viable for low speeds, as at medium to high speeds you will likely fall to the side as your feet don't move with your body. You should use the power stop instead at medium and high speeds.
The power stop is probably the most powerful stop, outside of using slides as stops. It is a stop that was coined and popularised by Bill Stoppard. What a fitting name! The power stop is a poorly defined trick. Different skaters have very different ideas about what it should be and how it should be performed, which results in huge differences between all the tutorials teaching this trick. The creator, Bill Stoppard, doesn't have a good tutorial on this trick which makes it pretty difficult to learn the power stop in the way he intended, not to mention that his power stop has evolved over the years, which makes learning the power stop properly a moving target. Bill Stoppard's version seems to be a carving entry into a parallel slide, which is effective at any speed, but your skates won't slide when your speed is too low. The version of the power stop that Flow Skates teaches and breaks down is an older version of Bill Stoppard's power stop that seems more like a modified front powerslide than a carving entry into the parallel slide, which makes it viable at any speed but isn't as fast or as powerful. Motor Learning Addiction's power stop also seems to be an older version of Bill Stoppard's power stop. Thirty+Rollin's version of the power stop looks to be a front powerslide. Skatefresh Asha's and Tiago's version is a modified lunge stop that doesn't turn the full 360° but stops halfway at 180°. This makes Asha's power stop less viable for high speeds as it is difficult to sufficiently counter-rotate to stop yourself in the middle of a turn at high speeds. Rich Hayter's and Whitty's version of the power stop seems quite similar to Asha's and Tiago's version, which is a modified version of the lunge stop, but it doesn't have a counter-rotation to stop them from rotating further. Instead, they rely on creating sufficient friction with their skates to stop themselves from rotating further, which makes it unviable for use at high speeds as you can easily spin out and fall. As such, they use other stopping techniques like the T-stop to slow down before executing the power stop at high speeds. Ricardo Lino's version of the power stop seems to be a modified version of a spin stop. Instead of having your feet in a very wide 'V' position, you put a foot down on the ground, like the needle on a compass, and let the other foot spin, like the pencil of the compass. There is also much more weight on the spinning foot and that foot is also on the inside edge so that it'll stop effectively. His version of the power stop also has an end position where the skates are in a T shape, which makes it unviable at high speeds as you will trip and fall if you fail to lose all of your speed using the power stop. The spinning motion also causes you to spin out and fall at high speeds, making it unusable at high speeds. With all that, the power stop has evolved to mean a powerful stop that can stop you quickly, so you should make it your own. Use whatever stops or slides, combined with other techniques like carving that allow you to stop nearly instantly at any speed. After all, the whole point of the power stop is a powerful stop that stops you immediately at any speed and you can break it out whenever necessary.
The J-slide is just a cross-acid toe slide but instead of crossing your sliding leg under your supporting leg, you cross your supporting leg over your sliding leg.
The parallel slide is probably the most difficult of the 'common' slides. It looks deceptively easy, and most tutorials, even the tutorial videos listed below, make it look much easier than it actually is. First, before attempting to learn parallel slide, it is highly recommended that you swap your wheels for slide wheels, which are wheels with a hardness rating of 88A and above. Slide wheels that are highly recommended by most sliders are the 九轮至尊刹车轮, or God Wheels, which slide extremely well even when they're new and do not require any break-in time to get them to slide. You can probably only find these on TaoBao, a Chinese shopping site, so you'll have to understand Chinese or have someone who does understand Chinese to help you order them. You should order the white or black wheels as the other colours don't slide as well. The black wheels wear down slower than the white ones, so you should get those. Using normal urban or slalom wheels would work as well, but they will make sliding more difficult, making it easier to develop bad habits when practising parallel slides, which would greatly slow your progress.
Next, you should find a flat and relatively smooth (but not too smooth or slippery) area to practice your parallel slide. A basketball or tennis court will work great for this. Keep using this area to practice your parallel slide until you are confident before moving to another surface as changing surfaces would require you to readjust a lot of things, which is terrible for feedback when you are learning the slide.
Lastly, be prepared for lots of conflicting advice and opinions, as the parallel slide is very personal and differs from person to person. Even this guide here may not help you, as it is just one person's experience learning parallel slides. Also, you should expect to fall a lot, since this is a slide that has no supporting leg to save you if you screw up.
On to the actual slide, you should start with the end position in mind. The end position of a parallel slide is to have your feet perpendicular to the direction you are moving in, and parallel to each other. Your body should form a C shape facing the front, with your head (and optionally arms) forming the top part of the C. Your hips form the middle part of the C, and your knees are bent towards the back (towards your hips) so that your legs can form the bottom part of the C. Your hips should also be facing to the side, instead of the front, as your legs have to be parallel. Your skates should be angled into the ground like you are trying to cut the ground with your skates as a knife. Your weight should be distributed evenly, or 50 - 50, on both legs, as the parallel slide is an equal-weight slide. To determine whether your weight is distributed evenly among both legs, hold the end position while rolling forward; both legs should not move much. If one of your legs is very uncontrollable or is moving around quite a lot, that means there is insufficient weight on that leg and you need to shift your weight from the other leg to that leg. Also, you should feel like you are sitting on a chair with your legs and knees bent to the side when in the position. Your legs should feel relaxed and not tense since you are sitting down. The position should therefore feel stable and not feel like you will fall. If you feel unstable, adjust your position until it feels stable. You want to practice simply holding this end position when you are stationary first to get comfortable with the position. You will have to hold this position after entering the slide to keep the slide going, so it is best to be as comfortable as possible with the position.
Once you are quite comfortable with the end position, put your lower body (everything below your hips) into the end position. The mouth of the C shape should be on your right when you are twisting your hips left, and left when you are twisting your hips right. Another way to remember which direction to form the C shape is to put your hips on the same side of your body as the side you want to twist your hips. So hips on the left side for a left twist, and hips on the right side for a right twist. Your leg on the opposite side of the side you are twisting your hips to, i.e., the right leg for a left hip twist and the left leg for a right hip twist, should be placed slightly in front of your other leg, roughly one wheel in front. This leg should not be too far in front or behind your other leg as it'll cause you to be unbalanced when preparing to enter the parallel slide and make it far more difficult to twist your hips to slide. Putting the aforementioned leg too far in front or behind your other leg makes it very easy to carve into the slide, which is what you absolutely do not want. In this position, you should also feel like you are sitting in a chair with your legs and knees bent to the side. Your legs should feel relaxed and not tense since you are sitting down. It should feel stable, and not like you are going to fall.
After you are in the end position, twist your hips in the desired direction. When twisting your hips, try not to move your upper body, which means you should keep the exact same height before and after the hip twist. That said, if you need to move your hands to help you twist your hips, you can do so. Your legs should be completely relaxed when twisting your hips. You don't want to use your muscles to tense up your leg as it will only make the slide more difficult by increasing the friction on the ground. You want to have as little friction with the ground as possible, so you should strive to have only your body weight pushing on the ground and not any more weight than that. Also, by tensing up your leg muscles, you will tend to use your leg muscles to emulate the twisting motion, which is bad as it has a high chance of twisting and injuring your knee, while also causing you to carve into the slide. Carving into the slide is something you want to avoid at all costs, as your skates won't be parallel when you do so. It will always be one leg moving after the other, and anything you do to keep them together and moving in sync will be futile. Only a proper hip twist with your legs fully relaxed can do that, as your legs will follow the movement of your hips and move as a block, instead of moving one after the other. Your toes should be the pivot point for your legs when your hips are twisting, so your heels move instead of your toes. If your hip twist turns your skates about their centres, then you need to place more weight on your toes to make your toes stay in place and get your heels to move. If your heels fly up above the ground due to the friction, you are halfway there and the motion is correct. You most likely need to keep practising the hip twist while keeping your heels on the ground, but do not tense up your leg to do it. Shifting your weight towards your heels will do the trick but ensure that the toe is still the pivot point for the hip twist by keeping some weight on the toes. It is best to do this practice while stationary, and you can try the motion on foot using socks or slippery shoes, like canvas shoes. Sometimes, just reducing your skates' angle to the ground by bending your knees more and sitting lower when you are in the end position preparing for the hip twist would fix the issue, if your leg muscles are already there. Ensuring your legs are relaxed usually helps, as there is less friction with the ground compared to tense legs.
Once you can do the above, keep practising until you are comfortable and confident doing the slide. Start at a slow speed, making sure that you can enter the slide. You will likely not slide much but will come to a stop. If you find yourself still moving after the slide, that means your slide wasn't successful, and you carved into the slide. Focus on twisting your hips and not using your leg muscles to emulate the twisting motion. Try exhaling to relax your leg muscles before twisting your hips into the slide. Once you can pull the slide off consistently at low speeds, increase the speed bit by bit. It should be easier to slide at higher speeds, which means increasing your skates' angle to the ground to not slide out and wear down your slide pads. You may also need to decrease the force you use when twisting your hips, otherwise, you might over-twist and end up in the wrong direction (usually to the side instead of going straight). Try to keep practising on the same surface, as it will give consistent feedback for adjusting your skates' angle to the ground and how forcefully you have to twist your hips. Only change surfaces once you have mastered the previous one and practice the slide on a new surface before trying to do it at high speeds, or it will end horribly. If you would like to use this slide as an emergency stop for urban skating, make sure you have at least practised the slide on slippery surfaces, relatively smooth surfaces, and rough surfaces with a lot of friction. It is generally not recommended to try this slide on rocky or uneven surfaces, but if you have sufficient practice on such surfaces, then more power to you.
Some important points should be harped upon. The first and most important thing you absolutely cannot do is carve into the slide. By carving into the slide, you are doing Bill Stoppard's power stop instead of a parallel slide and will find it impossible to slide at low speeds, even with slide wheels equipped. Without slide wheels, you will find it difficult to slide even at relatively high speeds as you don't cut into the slide. Instead, you should twist your hips and let your body do the rest. This hip twist is essential in ensuring your legs move together, not one after the other, which is often the case when carving into a parallel slide. You will find a lot of tutorials teaching you to carve into a parallel slide, which is completely wrong and will injure your knees, as you will end up using your leg muscles to twist your legs into the parallel position, inevitably twisting your knees. You should not experience knee pain when practising parallel slides. If you do, stop practising the slide immediately and give your knees a break. Do something else instead for the time being and let your knees heal. When you try parallel slide again, ensure that your hips are twisting, instead of your legs. Keeping your legs relaxed and twisting your hips fixes this problem, but it is easier said than done.
The second thing is to ensure that you feel like you are sitting down in a chair and your legs are relaxed when preparing to twist your hips into the slide. Feeling stable in this preparation position is essential for a successful parallel slide, as it is the end position of the slide. Any instability in this position will cause the slide to fail, sometimes catastrophically, and sometimes recoverably. If you feel unstable in this preparation position, adjust until you feel stable and comfortable or abort. You might get injured if you continue the slide when you feel unstable in this preparation position. Usually, tensing up your legs will likely lead to more instability, so keep your legs as relaxed as possible and your knees bent. Tensing up your leg also usually causes you to stand higher instead of keeping the same height after entering the slide, which will throw you backwards and is far from ideal as it may cause you to fall backwards. The added friction from tense legs also makes the slide more difficult to enter, so keeping your legs relaxed and letting your hips do the work is critical but is much easier said than done.
The third and final thing is that your skates must pivot about your toes and not around any other point, and your heels must always be on the ground when twisting your hips. If you are drawing circles with your skates, you are pivoting your skates about the centre and need to push more weight to your toes to keep them anchored in place. If your heels are flying off the ground, you need to shift more weight to your heels to keep them on the ground and do more stationary practice for the hip twisting motion, until your heels are sliding against the ground with your toes anchored. If your toes are not the pivot point, you will end up just spinning in a circle instead of sliding, and if your heels are off the ground, you will end up falling forward as your heels will swing much further forward compared to your toes as they are off the ground, causing you to fly forward.
As an aside, if you are constantly hitting or grinding your slide pads when you do a parallel slide, check if the frame on your skates has shifted. A shifted frame usually results in the slide pad of the back skate touching and grinding off the ground even when the angle is fine.
There's a lot of information above, so here's a quick summary of the important points to note. First, ensure you are comfortable and stable in the preparation position, which is also the end position, before entering the slide. You should feel like you are sitting in a chair with your knees bent to the side in this position. Your weight should also be evenly distributed on both of your legs. Second, you must only twist your hips while keeping your legs relaxed to enter the slide. Carving into the slide will not work. Third, your upper body should ideally not move when twisting your hips, so your height must stay the same before and after you twist your hips to enter the slide. A common mistake is to increase your height after entering the slide, which throws you backwards which might cause you to fall. Fourth, when twisting your hips, your toes must be anchored to the ground to serve as a pivot point, while your heels must also stay on the ground and be the ones that slide against the ground. Failure to do so usually results in pretty bad falls. Lastly, make your life easier by switching your wheels to slide wheels, like 九轮至尊刹车轮 or God wheels. Practice on the same flat and relatively smooth (not too smooth or slippery) surface, like a basketball or tennis court, to get more consistent feedback until you can consistently perform the slide instead of constantly switching surfaces, which will slow down your progress due to the ever-changing feedback and hence adjustments.
The powerslide is probably the first slide that you will learn since it is the easiest slide to do. It is also a highly effective stopping technique, especially if you need to stop quickly in an emergency as it has far more stopping power than the T-stop. To do the powerslide, you will first need to know how to skate backwards as well as to roll backwards on one skate. When you're skating backwards, put about 80% of your weight on one leg. We'll call this leg the supporting leg, and the other leg with the rest of your weight, the sliding leg. Be sure to bend your knee on the supporting leg to about 90° and keep your abdomen close to your thigh. Then, push the sliding leg out to the side until it is almost fully straightened and then bring it back behind you to initiate the slide. Your sliding leg should be fully straight when it is behind you. The motion of the sliding leg should look like carving a large C on the ground. While sliding, you shouldn't be turning to the left or the right and you should instead move in a straight line. If you are turning, that means that your sliding foot isn't sliding or the heel of the supporting foot has turned. As you get more comfortable with the powerslide, you should do the slide in slow motion so that you will have full control over the slide. You should also try varying the amount of weight you put on your sliding leg during the slide as well as the angle the sliding leg makes with the ground. The greater the amount of weight and the greater the angle between the sliding leg and the ground, the more friction you'll generate and you will stop faster. To learn how to control the amount of weight that you put on the sliding leg, instead of carving a large C on the ground with your sliding leg, try lifting your sliding leg and then placing it on the ground to initiate the powerslide. If you can easily lift and put down your sliding leg while sliding, then your control over the amount of weight you place on the sliding leg should be pretty good. To change the angle of your sliding leg, you just have to adjust how high your body is. The taller you stand up, the greater the angle between the sliding leg and the ground. Also, if you are intending to use the powerslide as a stopping technique, be sure to practice the powerslide on a downhill or a ramp as it will be vastly different from doing it on a flat surface. A carpark ramp should be a decent practice area that will get your powerslide ready for use during most downhills.