Being able to glide forward and backwards on inline skates feels good. But being able to pull off a few cool inline skating tricks as a beginner or intermediate-level skater feels even better. And this post offers you a list of 11 inline skate tricks you can learn even if you’ve not been inline skating for very long. Well, some of tricks may not be best suited to beginners, but none are too hard that you will never learn.
If you prefer watching as opposed to reading, we recently published a video where one of us, Bujie, a guy who’s been rollerblading over the past 16 years, demonstrates 11 tricks pretty much anyone can do on rollerblades.
How do you transition from a lower surface to a slightly higher one or from a smoother surface to a rougher one and vice versa? Position one foot in front of the other and shift your weight away from the front wheel and you’ll do it.
The toe of the back skate stays some distance behind the heel of the front skate. This can be a little tricky to pull off at first. It’s a trick after all, but it’s doable, even for people who got into skating recently.
Watching the video above to see Bujie transitioning between a rough surface and smooth one. In case you’re interested, here’s a post we published on how to ride rollerblades on rough roads and other surfaces.
We put together a video on how to t-stop on inline skates for beginners. You may want to watch it.
Every inline skater must learn how to do the T-Stop. If you learn this stopping trick, you can stop any time you like without using brakes. Beginner rollerblades usually have brakes, but how will you be stopping when you start riding speed skates or rough-road rollerblades? That’s where the T-stop comes into play.
To do the T-stop, all you need to do is to lift your back foot and position it perpendicular to the direction you’re rolling in. The toe of the supporting foot — the foot you’re gliding with — points forwards while the T-braking foot points to the side of the road or sidewalk.
So, keep your balance as you roll and then put your back foot down onto the ground. As you place the foot down, shift your weight to the other foot. Once the foot contacts the ground, start dragging it. That creates friction, and it’s that friction that brings you to a stop.
The T-stop is a nice and quick way to stop without brakes, but it can wear down your wheels pretty fast.
Rollerbladers do all kinds of fancy-looking jumps. But not every kind of jump is easy or even safe for a beginner.
One huge mistake beginner inline skaters keep making is swinging their arms the wrong way during a jump. They make a motion that looks like a circle.
I recently heard one trainer refer to this motion as the windmill of death. The skater’s arms start going up in a counterclockwise motion, ending up behind their back.
What happens? Their weight shifts backward when they do that. And that’s the surest way to hit the pavement with the back of your head or bum.
Start slowly and increase your pace as your confidence grows. To jump the right way, start blading normally.
Find a crack or something on a flat smooth surface and start practicing. Now, jump as you normally do. As you jump, your arms will go up, but don’t let them rise past your chin. Otherwise, you’ll start losing your balance.
Note that both feet should leave the ground at once, and the same goes for when landing. Once you’re airborne, you need to plan your landing. You want to land with both feet striking the ground at the same time.
Also super important: the front wheels take off last and strike the ground first when landing. If you land with your real wheels, I guarantee that you’ll fall backwards and it won’t be fun.
And when your feet touch the ground, you want to sink to absorb the impact from the jump. Meanwhile, your arms stay stretched out to the front — diagonal to the ground.
As you land, your knees are bent. And once you land, bend your knees even more and sink low. Then, simply roll away from the landing spot.
How do you do big jumps bigger obstacles? The jumping technique remains the same. But you’ll have to build up more speed to fly over bigger objects. And as you go up, be sure to move your feet to the side and your knees up. As you get better, you’ll start doing 180˚ and 360˚ forward and backward jumps on rollerblades pretty soon.
In this beginner rollerblade trick, you glide along on the heel of one skate and the toe of the other. This might look tricky at first, but believe me, it’s not that hard to do.
Start off with your weight balanced evenly on your rollerblades and have your feet in the scissor position. When your feet start out scissored, one foot stands some distance ahead of the other.
Then, straighten your front leg. When you do that, the toe of your skate should rise up while the heel wheel stays on the ground.
At the same time, push your back foot backward, which causes the rear wheels to leave the ground and only the wheel at the toe will remain on the ground. In this trick, your body equally splits between the front skate and back skate. Maintain your balance as you enjoy the heel-toe glide. Watch Bujie in our video above to learn how to perform the heel-toe glide.
It may take a few tries to nail the heel-toe glide on inline skates, so keep going.
Being able to skate on one foot can really help your balance. This skill also comes in handy when performing a slew of other tricks.
To perform this trick, start gliding forward as you normally do. Once you’ve gained some speed, lift one foot while transferring your weight to the other foot.
If you can glide on one foot for a second, that’s good. Keep doing it until you can skate for a couple of seconds without losing your balance.
You can always put the free foot down for more support and stability if it starts feeling like you’re losing balance.
TBH, inline skating backwards is one of the toughest tricks you can learn on rollerblades. It’s not uncommon to come across folks who have been blading for years but still can’t do smooth and super fluid backward skating.
There are different ways to skate backwards on rollerblades. And we published this inline skating backwards video to help budding skaters out.
Start off in the right skating stance — toes together, chest up, and your knees bent. Your chest needs to stay over your knees. Keep your core strong, that is, keep your tummy tucked in nice and strong. And your head needs to look over your shoulder so you can see where you’re moving. Also, you never want to lean backward or you’ll fall and hit the back of your head, which is never pretty.
With your knees still bent, start marching and you’ll effortlessly start skating backwards. You’re doing the exact opposite of what you do when skating forwards. Let’s summarize what the motions looks like below:
To practice slalom skating, you’ll need cones, 10-20 should be enough. Place the cones roughly 1 meter apart at first. And as you get better at slalom skating, you can place the cones even closer.
So, start skating forwards to build up some momentum. Then, position your skates in the scissor stance, right foot slightly forward. Next, ride around the first cone and revert to the scissor stance but this time with the left foot slightly forward.
After mastering the initial movement, repeat it for all the other cones. Upon completing your simple slalom course, turn around and start skating in the direction you came from.
Keep slalom skating until you can do it almost effortlessly. To get even better at slalom roller blading, shift the cones to reduce the distance between them.
Once you’ve mastered forward slalom inline skating, you can advance to the more challenging forward crisscross slalom skating and backward slalom.
The fishtail is another beginner-friendly rollerblading trick to learn. To perform this little maneuver, first build up a bit of speed. Next, wiggle the trailing skate on its wheel’s toe side. To complete the fishtail trick, you want to move your rear inline skate in and out.
What if you want a wider arc? All you need to do to achieve this goal is to have more weight over the toe wheel. When you do that, it’ll add a little more momentum to steer the movements.
The flat spin is yet another relatively easy-to-do rollerblading trick for new skaters. The flat spin is fundamentally a 180-degree or 360-degree spin. Let’s be clear here: we’re not talking the airborne 360 spin you might see advanced-level skaters performing at skateparks.
If you perform this trick right, it looks really cool, and it helps you control speed and stop. But it’s the safest way to stop on inlines tbh.
Here’s how you perform the flat spin trick. Start off with your feet standing shoulder-width apart. Then, decide the direction you want to spin in and begin twisting your upper body in that direction.
As you turn your upper body either, push skate slightly in an arc-like trajectory while pulling the other skate in the opposite direction. Also, keep the spin slow and smooth. Watch Bujie in the inline skate tricks video above and see how he does it at 5:56.
Here’s what not to do as you execute this rollerblading trick for beginner skaters. Don’t twist your upper body suddenly. If you jerk rather than turn your torso slowly, you’ll most likely lose your balance.
Admittedly, forward crossovers aren’t exactly a complete-beginner inline skate trick. They’re more of an intermediate-level trick. So, once you’ve mastered all the beginner-level rollerblading tricks above, you’ll want to learn crossovers.
Crossovers can help you navigate into and out of turns efficiently and fast, helping go faster on inline skates. If you go out skating with someone who’s yet to learn crossovers, you’ll always outperform them.
To do forward crossovers, you need to have mastered one skill – single-skate skating. This technique requires you to be able to glide on a center edge with the other skate off the ground.
Not the outer edge, not the inner edge, but the center edge. So, master this skill before you attempt forward crossovers.
To practice this skill, have your weight on the gliding skate and repeatedly push with the other skate. Once you can easily skate on the middle of your wheels on one foot, transfer your weight to the pushing foot and repeat the drill.
You may have to practice this skill for some time before you master it. So, decide to persist no matter what.
The next step is to take your straight-line scooting around a corner. When turning the corner, you’ll naturally have to use the outside edge. Keep practicing the outside edge skating in both directions around the bend.
Forward crossovers consist of 3 essential parts: pushing, crossing over, and regrouping. So, push with the outside foot and transfer your weight to the other skate, the inside skate/foot. Next, lift the outside foot/pushing foot and cross it over the foot that’s providing stability. To complete the crossover, lift the stability foot and place it parallel to the foot you used to cross over. We previously published a video on how to do crossovers on rollerblades. Enjoy!
You’ve learned a couple of fun-filled beginner tricks for inline skaters. But all the reading and video watching will amount to zero if you won’t put in the work and do the drills needed to master each trick.
So, start practicing now. And if a trick proves harder than this post made it seem, watch a our video and practice even more.
Happy inline skating! And remember to gear up properly before heading out.
