Tutorial: How to skate backwards on quads & roller-skates (Part 1 - first strides to find balance)

Hi, I'm Asha from Skatefresh. Welcome to Brighton. Today's lesson is on how to skate backwards for beginners on quads and roller skates. Now, when I say beginners, I don't mean complete beginners. You should not be going backwards until you can already be comfortable going forwards, but this is for beginner backwards skaters. Now, I want to show you something that for most people is a bit of a surprise, and I want to show you that backwards skating is identical but the opposite to forwards. This is what I mean. When we skate forwards, we bend our knees, we open our toes, we make a pizza slice position, and we step up and down, and that gives us momentum. Here I am in the pizza and I'm stepping, stepping, stepping. Now, I'm just going to stop for a moment. The complete opposite to a normal pizza shape, heels in, toes out, would be an inverted pizza shape, which means toes in, heels out. Now, if I'm in an inverted pizza shape with my knees bent and I march up and down, like magic, I skate backwards. Can you see how I'm going to stop now and go forwards? Watch, toes out and I go forwards, and then I turn my toes in to stop, and if I keep stepping, I then go backwards. This is a really good little drill to do. Toes out and you stop, and you keep stepping, and then you go, and toes in, you stop. This is the stepping plow, and you keep stepping, and then the heels out makes you go backwards. That little kind of, I call it, stepping plows into your strides, that really helps you get the feeling of what it is that makes you go backwards. Now, a couple of tips with the backwards stride. We're just going to now continuously skate backwards. The amount that you turn your heels out will determine how much acceleration you get. You don't want to turn them out too much and go too fast. Cruise when you've got enough speed backwards and you'll just roll gently to a stop. Be careful that you don't do too much heels out, that's going to give you crazy fast steps. What you want is something like this, like an inverted pizza. This would be too much, this is more or less okay, and parallel. If you step with your feet parallel, absolutely nothing happens. One of the big problems that happens when people are skating backwards is that they start skating backwards and then they get this kind of, whoa, this sort of leaning forwards and kind of wobble situation. So, I think it's caused from two things. A lot of people think it just happens because the body leans forwards, but it's not. It actually originates from the legs. So, watch what happens. Your body is a system of levers. If you are correctly body up, knees down, which is the position you should be in, watch what happens if I lean forward. As I lean forwards, my knees start to straighten. And those two things happen kind of simultaneously. So, most people will skate backwards in a bit of a slightly leaning forwards, whoa, I just did it myself, knees forward situation. So, the secret has always got to be body up, knees down. You need to engage your core muscles, your stomach muscles, so that you don't lean forwards from the waist. So, engage the core and the lower back and keep your shoulder directly above your hip. Okay? So, that's going to help you keep upright and therefore stay more balanced. So, the most difficult bit about going backwards is actually steering. Now, in order for your skates, for example, if I'm rolling out or I'm pulling in, you do not want your wheels to hit and for yourself to trip yourself up. So, essentially, this knee bend that I've spoken about before, the purpose of this is to put your weight on the front half of your skate so that your heels are lighter. Now, watch, if I take a few strides and then I just wiggle my heels left and right, you can see that I'm able to steer my skates. Okay? So, what a lot of people do is they do the opposite. They come up in the knees, they put their weight on their heels. Did you see that? I almost went over backwards. So, if you put your weight on your heels, it's a bit like putting on the brakes. Okay? So, I want you to do what I call little wiggles. Yeah? So, we're going to skate backwards with the inverted pizza shape and then you're just going to move your heels in and out, in and out. Yeah? So, this is going to prove to you that your heels are lighter. Yeah? So, this movement in and out, in and out with your heels will show you whether you've actually got your weight on the front half of your skate or not. Okay? So, that's quite useful. You can also, in the next episode on backwards, I'm going to give you some other steering exercises. So, check out part two coming up soon. See you next time. Bye-bye.