3 Tricks That Instantly Improve Your Skating Even for Beginners

For a lot of adults starting to learn to roller skate, most of them stay stuck for months and it's not because they're not trying hard enough. If you've been skating for a while and you don't feel like you're improving, it's probably not the reason you think and this video might be what you need. Hey, I'm Tracey from Suns Out Skates Out Roller Skating School where I help adults and kids to learn to roller skate with confidence both in person and online through my beginner coaching course. If you're new to skating and want a little bit more guidance, I've actually got a free beginner workshop that shows you the key things to focus on first. I'll pop the link down in the description below but today I want to talk about one thing that so many adult skaters get stuck on when they're learning to roller skate and what actually helps you improve faster even if you're still a complete beginner. So for most beginner skaters, they think that they need to practice for 1, 2, 3 hours a day to see really fast results when they're learning but usually by doing this, it does the opposite to your practice. So here's why. So skating for once or twice a month for 1, 2, 3 hours per session is not going to get the results that you want to see. So what does get results is by practicing your basic skills for 10, 15, 20 minutes, 1, 2 or 3 times a week, whatever you have time for. So you'll start to build a little bit more muscle memory by putting your skates on more regularly versus putting them on just once or twice a month. If you put your skates on in shorter time frames closer together, you're more likely to remember what you need to do and your body's going to start to understand the feeling of the skill that you're doing and it's just going to get you used to being comfortable on roller skates in general versus just putting your skates on once or twice a month for a longer session. The next one is skating without a plan. This one's a huge one because most people just put their skates on, they roll around and they hope that the skills and the confidence is just going to click. The improvement doesn't come just from rolling around. It comes from repetition and practice. Don't overwhelm yourself by saying, I'm going to go and practice 10 different skills. So before you even put your skates on to go and practice, you need to have a plan. So pick 2 to 4 skills that you want to practice for that session, have a look at how to do them, look up some YouTube videos, just make sure you have a plan before you put your skates on. It's really easy and I've done it before that I go to do some practice, I put my skates on and I don't end up practicing anything. I actually had a student in class the other day ask me what she can practice. So even by doing a class, you can still feel overwhelmed in what to practice. So what I like to do sometimes is go onto YouTube or onto Instagram, find something that I'm working towards, say that I have a few things already that I can refer to that I'd like to practice for that session. And then the last thing to be able to progress faster is don't attempt more advanced skills too soon. This one sounds simple, but it actually gets a lot of beginners in the early stage. They start feeling like they're confident and then suddenly they're trying to do spins or jumps or skate backwards before they're actually ready. And I know it's really tempting. You see all these fun looking skills on YouTube or Instagram and think I want to be able to do that, which is a great goal to have. But when you skip ahead too fast, you usually end up scaring yourself or even worse, getting injured. And that one bad experience can knock your confidence for weeks or months, makes you just throw in the towel and you never put your skates on again. The fastest way to build your skills is gradually. First, basic balance, gliding, stopping, turning, then move on to the fun stuff. You'll feel way more confident and you won't have those moments where fear sets in. And this is exactly what my in-person and online students do. They practice all the basics with a goal in mind. They're very aware that if they go for that goal straight off the bat, it gets really frustrating. So just a quick recap. Mistake number one is skating for too long and not often enough. Mistake number two is skating without a plan. And mistake number three is jumping into more advanced skills before you're ready. That's it for today. I hope you can take away at least one thing from this video. Keep showing up, keep practicing and I'll see you guys in the next video.