Karasu I did sort of skate when I was little, but only at recess in the winter months. My handmedowns never fit right and I was never any good at it. I didn’t ever play hockey, because I was the fucked up trans kid who didn’t like a lot of boy stuff and got bullied by the hockey kids, and so I came to loathe the sight of hockey skates and thought any skate with a pick were off-limits to me. I didn’t start skating with any regularity until I was 31! albeit I was on inlines at first. The skills I learned rollerblading transferred instantly to ice and I think what works for me ought to work for anyone skating on ice or pavement. Unsolicited advice incoming!!
I never put on skates or step onto a skateboard without doing my stretching routine of: these dynamic leg raises by Thomas Kurz; a modified head-to-toe routine I got from taekwondo (which I can outline if anyone would find that useful); and 30 second muscle group massages with a lacrosse ball, rolling pin, and a length of PVC pipe I found in the gutter one morning. imo wearing pads is great, but a dynamic warm up will increase your available range of motion and improve your reflexes. After that, once I’m out on my blades, I take about ten minutes of easy predictable skating to warm up fully before doing anything adventurous.
No one needs to do exactly what I do, but the thrust of it is: always warm up, do it before your activity, and dynamic stretching is the best warm up. Never do static stretching before an activity, it tires your muscles out. Dynamic movements are meant to mimic the activity you’re about to undertake but in a safe and controlled way. Conventional wisdom is that you should warm up for at least ten minutes before any physical activity, and if you want to do it safely then you should do it before the activity even starts. That extra ten minutes I mentioned of easy skating is really just ramping up and finding your sea legs again, and it can’t be avoided ime.
Other advice that has helped:
- Stay low to the ground. This makes it easier to balance and any tumble will have a smaller impact on your body.
- If you want to improve your balance off the ice, do single leg stands. This will help strengthen the muscles that stabilize in particular your ankles. Try to stand one-legged barefoot on a firm surface for over a minute (on either side). Then try a less firm surface. Then rise up on the ball of your foot. Then pull your arms in and keep them there. Then try to move around a lot. Then do it with your eyes closed. This is an example of a progression your can follow over weeks, not in one session lol. Your muscles should burn and you’ll really feel it in your shins, which is where hard-to-strengthen muscles reside that skating demands a lot from.
- As for padding: G-form and Ennui and maybe others are now making pads that fit closer to the body and absorb impact using non-Newtonian foam instead of hard plastic. That’s what I prefer for the low-profile they offer. An often overlooked spot to pad up is your tailbone, and I recommend picking up a nice pair of G-form impact shorts or some other competing product. Burton makes a pair for snowboarders that is absolutely overkill but I’ve had them for over four years and I don’t regret a thing, and I forget I’m wearing them!
- Lastly, ask the city about arenas open to skaters when it’s warm out, and/or pick up a nice pair of hard shell inline skates and learn how to stop without a heel break.
My first pair of inlines were these gigantic Rollerblade Spiritblade soft shell fitness skates from the 90s that were all slop, and the first thing I did was remove the heel break. I skated around on them in an empty school yard and rink for a season but didn’t really learn how to stop or develop the confidence to leave my front door with my skates on until I got a pair of Seba FR3s (which were also too big for me—get skates that fit and are comfortable!!). The whole reason soft shell inlines have heel breaks is because, being so soft, they don’t offer enough control to reliably stop using any other method (though you may be able to drag stop if you trust the cuffs). You may be tempted to pick up a pair of roller hockey skates, but I wouldn’t recommend this unless you have access to a roller rink. Roller hockey skates have no shock absorption and use relatively small wheels that, sure, maybe they’re really soft indoor wheels that should offer plenty of cushion but they won’t have the rebound of a good outdoor wheel like Rollerblade Hydrogens or Seba/FR Street Invaders (both outstanding wheels but this bullet is turning into a rollerblade recommendation post and was meant to be way briefer uh oh!! oops!). A friend of mine has told me as much, that skating on the actual street with roller hockey skates is no fun because of the ripped up asphalt we’re left with from our harsh winters. One of the problems with inline skates though is that trying them on is key, and good stores are hard to come by. There used to be a really great one in Calgary called Shop Task, but they closed that location and I think only operate out of Vancouver now. Anyway, maybe just look into indoor arenas and ignore the rest of this paragraph lol.
That’s all I got, and I hope any of it helps and didn’t come off as pushy but also: you’re from Maryland, right? If you ever get back out there still, there’s a covered outdoor roller rink in DC called Anacostia Skate Pavilion that I see in a youtube skater’s videos sometimes, and every time I do I get immensely jealous that we don’t have anything like it here. I’m getting ahead of myself again, but if you’re still interested in learning how to skate it might be good to know about!!
