How to Stand Up and Roll on Your Roller Skates

Hey skaters, I'm Dirty Debra Harry with the Dirty School of Skate and Sugar Roller Skates and I'm outdoors today in my hometown Long Beach, California to talk to you about outdoor skating. So today we are going to talk about the very basics because I've had so many messages from people who are literally like, I just bought skates, how do I stand up and how do I get started? So we're gonna take care of those very very basic things. Now if you're an advanced skater and you say, Dirty, I already know how to put on my skates, I know how to get up off the ground, I know how to get started. Go ahead and watch this video because I want you to be able to help the multitude of new skaters. I've been skating here at the beach probably for about the last two weeks and I have never seen so many roller skaters down here in my life. So again, if you're an advanced skater, it's now your responsibility to start helping all the new people so we can grow our culture and our community to its biggest and best. Alright, if you haven't already subscribed to this channel, please feel free to hit that subscribe button, hit that notification little bell so you know when my next video is coming out and if you would like to share. I'm all into it, I'm all in. Alright, let's let's dive right into this. Okay, so let's say you're a brand new skater and you've just gotten your skates, you're just put them on. So I'm just gonna get on the ground and show you how to get up. So we just laced up our skates and we're looking at our skates and we look how beautiful they are. Now can we just pan down on these skates here real quick? Look how crazy my skates look. You guys, you really know you're a real real good skater or you are an authentic roller skater if your skates kind of look trashy. I just want you to know this because when you first put on your skates you're gonna be like look how beautiful they are like a brand new car and then you get your first scratch on them and you're all upset about that. Okay, we can't have that. Once they're messed up real good, that's when they're really broken in and they're actually working their best. Trust me, ask the skater who's been around. When you're in this position, oftentimes people find themselves going well what do I do now? How the heck do I get up? Okay, so this is what we're gonna do. I want you to roll over onto your knees. All right, so we're gonna do a little figure four here. You're gonna roll over onto one knee. Now you're gonna be in this sort of genuflecting position, right? Okay, what I do is I dig my toe into the ground and I reach forward, roll back, and stand. But for the vast majority you're gonna be like that ain't gonna happen. All right, so you're down on one knee. You can put your hands on your knee for this one or you can put one hand on the ground but try to get your feet really close together and push up. Once you push up, you can stand. The second you stand, put your feet in a V position where your wheels are actually touching. Okay, so my back wheels are embedded into each other. This way I'm not rolling forward and I'm not rolling backward. Again, so we're down on one knee. I am going to make it so everything is nice, tight, and close. I can put one hand here, one hand on the ground where the knee is. Roll it back a little bit. Use your core muscles and stand up. Put your feet in a V. Okay, now once your feet are in a V and those wheels are touching, this is going to be the point where you're going to start to begin to roll. If you've watched my other videos, hold on, I want to look good for you. If you've watched my other videos, you know that we always start in a V position. So when we start in our V, we take this area affectionately known as my fun zone and we're going to drop it down. So now our knees are really bent. They're feeling good and nice and secure. We're going to keep our chin up, our shoulders straight across our snack area where all the multitude of snacks I've eaten over my lifetime currently reside and won't go away. Right there, I tighten that up. I'm going to put my arms out to the side with my palms down. Now the moment of truth. Rock my body weight from side to side, meaning I'm going to take my center line of balance, push it over my left and then pick up my right foot ever so slightly, rock my weight on to my right, rock my weight on to my left, rock my weight on to my right. If I am committed to putting my body weight over on one foot, what's going to happen is the weight is going to naturally come off the other foot. So when I take my center line of balance and I push it over to the left and I am down and I'm thinking chest over the top of my skate, I'm going to get a lot of weight here and this foot is going to be free to come up, set it down, up, set it down, up, set it down. So let me show you what this looks like in action. Okay, I'm not going to go fast but I am going to go forward. So I've got my feet in my V position, my arms are out, shoulders are straight across, snacks are tight, chin up, down. All right, I'm going to go five, six, seven, eight, lean left, right, left, right. Body posture is everything. This chin has to stay up and you're going to look optimistically out and about. Do not stare at the ground. Before you start the general area that you're going to be skating and just, you know, get rid of the debris and the pebbles that if you stare at them turn into giant boulders. Get rid of all that stuff so you feel safe in your space. Okay, now a lot of you have sent me comments and said, Dirty, I've done all that. You know, you told me to put your feet in the V position, chin up, shoulders straight across, snacks tight, arms out, and I drop down and then I wiggle from side to side, side to side, and I'm still going nowhere. Like I don't know what's going on. So I am going to give you the absolute best tip ever. As we rock our body weight to the side, what happens is we start rolling on an outside edge. An outside edge means my weight is over the side outside wheels. I feel my body weight on the boot, outside of the boot. I can feel the side, the rim, the edge, the lip of my wheel digging into the surface. To get moving from a standstill, you need to use two edges. I need a primary outside edge and a secondary inside edge, which is how we're going to get that momentum going forward. So we have our feet like this, right? Fun zone down, arms out, chin up, shoulders straight across, snacks tight. I go five, six, seven, eight. I go to lean on my left outside edge, right knee over big toe. I need to push away. As I dig in that inside edge and lean on my left outside edge, we will start to roll. Let me do it with absolutely no effort. When I say no effort, I mean no push. I'm not going to try to go fast whatsoever. I'm just going to show you how it can be done. Arms out, posture is correct, dropping down the fun zone. Okay, I'm going to lean. I go five, six, seven, eight. Lean, push away. Lean, push away. Lean, push away. So oftentimes you will hear me say, dig in, dig in, dig in. I need you to dig, dig. What I'm saying is I need your knee pressed over your edge. Generally I'm talking about your inside edge because that's where the power is going to come from. So when I look ahead and I'm down like this, I'm already thinking, leaning on this, push with this, or dig in and push. Dig in and push on those inside edges. Arms are out. Posture is beautiful. God, isn't it a glorious day here in Southern California? Nice and sunny. All right, we're down. We go five, six, seven, eight. Left lean, right push. Right lean, left push. Left lean, right push, et cetera. Now, try not to lean too much. Trust me. I know that you are like, I ain't going to be rolling down the streets with my arms out like this dirty and I'm going to be like, hello people, as I'm... I know that. Okay? So let's see how we can make it a little bit more casual looking. All right? Our arms. Arms are the probably number one thing that you can pay attention to in regards to balance. I get a zillion questions. How do I balance? How do I balance? I want your shoulders straight across. Your arms are just an extension of these shoulders. As the shoulders turn and move, that will allow you to spin and do all sorts of things. But if we are just skating forward, we want these shoulders straight across. Now our arms, our arms need to just be a casual extension of the shoulder. So you want to leave them down here. This is fine. Just make sure there's equal amount of space between your arms and your thighs and hips. Okay? I want it just like this and relaxed. If your shoulders are hunched up, roll them back and relax them. Stick that chin out, suck in your gut and you're going to be fine. Then the other part is skate a little bit lower than you think you need to. If you get down like this and you're thinking, wow, this is low. Get down lower. If you get down lower, your body is ready for stuff to happen. Ready for this push and roll, this push and roll, this dig and roll. It's ready for that. If you stand up extremely straight when you're skating forward, your body is not ready to take on these edges. If you stand up really straight, it's hard. I see a lot of this. Number one thing I say, just drop your hips. Now do it. Now do it. One of the biggest things I want you to really, really kind of absorb into your brain. This will make you a better skater from here on out is the idea that you're skating through into the floor. So when I drop my body weight down, I feel this connection to the floor. And when I drop my body weight to the side and dig side and dig side and dig, I'm really pushing through it. What I want you to avoid at all cost is a brand new skater is to be very upright and do a thing where we have a disconnect with the floor and we're just tap, tap, tappity, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap with it. Okay. Now I need you to get down with the floor. Okay. So from the very top and we're going to wrap this up, chin up, shoulders straight across. Snack area is tight. Fun zone down. Put your feet in a V, put your arms out and then relax your shoulders. Let your arms hang. Tell yourself 5, 6, 7, 8, lean left, dig right, lean right, dig left and left and to the right. Now for some of you be like, that ain't happening dirty. Okay. Put your feet like this, drop it down, put your arms out and tell yourself 5, 6, 7, 8, go left, right, left, right, left, right. You're going to start rolling. You can't help it. You're going to start rolling. Okay. So now that I've taught you how to get up and how the basics of rolling using an outside and a simultaneous inside edge, I know your next question is going to be, now that I'm rolling, how do I stop? I have a playlist for you. Five or six videos on a playlist called stopping on roller skates, gives you all different ways of stopping. So please make sure you visit those videos, watch those videos and they'll teach you how to stop. I really, really, really want you to have fun and be successful with this. And part of that is going to be getting over the social anxiety of being outdoors and skating, thinking that other people are looking at you or making fun of you or laughing at you while you try, while you're trying to get better. Soon enough, that anxiety will be over with and that'll let go. After a while, you'll be so deep into the idea that skating is so fun and learning and getting better and being excited about it that you will no longer care if you think that people are looking at you and laughing. The vast majority of people that look at you while you're skating and smile, if they giggle, it's because they appreciate what you're doing. They're not really making fun of you. The other thing I want you to know is that it is perfectly okay to talk about nothing but skating all day long. You know, if you just started skating, you're going to end up being like kind of, what's the word? It's kind of like a cult where you're, yeah, you're out there recruiting. You're telling everyone how much you love skating and how great it is because it is. Okay. Get as many of your friends and family out here together and we'll all have a good time. All right, skaters. I got to roll. I'll see you later. Go practice.