Hi! I'm Hazuki, I'm an inline figure skater and a figure skater and today I wanted to
talk about frequently asked questions about inline skates!
Isn't it such a pretty intro? I'm going to show you guys how I did it next week,
but this week, I really wanted to get this video out; it is frequently asked questions
about inline skates. So I have a list of 15 or so questions that
we are going to go through today. It is my most frequently asked questions in the comments,
it is what I'm asked the most in my DM's, and I also asked you guys on my instagram story
about what questions you guys wanted me to answer. Sadly, I didn't get to do everyone's questions,
some of them are a little bit more specific after you get the skates and I figured what would
be most helpful for everyone would be a basic beginner's guide to inline skates. So without
further ado, the first question I get asked a fair bit is, am I too old to start? Easy answer
is no, there is a long answer sadly. If you are super duper young or if you are super duper old [regrets choice of vocab...]
you need to be a lot more careful about injuries. So you may have tougher joints, or less flexibility,
or maybe you're not going to spring back from a sprain as quickly, so you need to be a lot more
careful about how you skate. You should be wearing protective gear at all times, and you might want
to think about getting a coach, but generally, no you're never too old to start. There's no age limit
to skating. [However,] because it's a pretty intense sport, there's a little bit of a barrier in terms of
physicality of getting into skating, but generally you're never too old to start. Do I need a coach?
Hmm, so this is a tough question. I am self-taught, but I did take CanSkate, which is Canadian learn
to skate. I think it's a very valuable kind of class to take, just because you'll learn how to
do basic glides, basic strokes, basic backwards, basic crossovers, and then how to fall which
is probably the most important thing you can learn how to do, and it's really hard to pick
up those skills properly when you're doing it by yourself. There's a reason why I don't do basic
basic basic skating stuff on this channel, and it's because I'm genuinely afraid of teaching it wrong
and then people consequently not being able to skate properly as they move on to higher levels,
so I think it's very very very important to learn how to skate properly with a coach
preferably. I also understand that skating is an extremely expensive sport and so not everyone can
afford a coach, and I am one of those people. I'm a broke university student, I can't afford coach, but
I really do believe in the importance of learning how to do basics properly, so if you can, please get
a coach especially for the beginning. If you can't, just be extremely careful and take advice from
people you trust rather than just strangers on the internet. Asterisk here, I understand parasocial
relationships are very powerful because I've been in several myself (actually a lot). Everything
you see on the internet about skating, take it with a grain of salt because you never
know what kind of certifications these people have. I don't have any certifications, I'm just
a skater trying to figure it out by myself and I figured that I'd show you guys how I figured
it out. I'm never saying that this is the best way of doing it, it's just my way of doing it. Be very
mindful about the parasocial relationships you start creating with online coaches. Okay, so you've
decided that you want to get inline skates. What are the first steps? Well, I have a video up here
about the different kinds of inline frames, the video is a little bit outdated because I filmed
it in July. Some manufacturers have opened again, I believe Golden Horse has released a new line, I
think also Roll-Line released a new frame. It's a little bit outdated but the basic information is
kind of correct. I might be making a corrections video later on kind of going over everything
that's changed since that video. Generally, that's a solid resource to check out. Once you decide which
kind of frames you're going to get, the next question is where do I get them? You're going
to want to find the manufacturer website for the frames that you want to buy. So, say you want to get
Snow White skates (because that's the kind that I have), you're going to go to inlinefigure.com
and you're going to look at the manufacturer's list of distributors. Now, in that list, it's
generally by country, and you want to find your own country. I live in Canada. As of when I bought
my skates, there were three different people that sold Snow White frames in Canada. Next, what you
want to do is look through each distributor and check if they're reputable people or not, and then
you want to buy from them instead of buying from a different country. That way you avoid all the
tariffs and the import taxes (which I think are the same thing?) and shipping costs and conversion
rates and this and that, and you'll be able to avoid unnecessary additions to the cost, because
inline frames are already crazy expensive. Should I get indoor wheels or outdoor wheels?
You can get both! Changing wheels only takes about five or ten minutes, so you can get both, depending
on where you're gonna be skating. This is very specific to each skater, so I personally have
outdoor wheels because I don't really have many places indoors that I can skate and I knew that
buying my frames. I tend to skate a lot on tennis courts and pavement and parking lots and roads,
so I got outdoor frames so that I wouldn't ruin the wheels immediately, but this is very
dependent on where you're going to be skating. Can I change my ice booth into a roller boot? So,
fun fact, this boot is actually second hand. It used to be someone's figure skate boot and then I
bought the boot without the blade on it and I got a figure skate tech to mount my frames onto them.
This was actually the first time he'd seen inline frames, he was really interested. The
short answer is yes the long answer is you should probably get someone that's qualified to do it.
I know you have to fill in the holes that the last frames or the last blades put into the sole and
you also need to make sure that it's aligned properly. There are instructions generally on
how to do that when you get your blades, but it's fairly cheap to get a professional to mount it for
you and it's going to avoid a lot of issues later on in terms of the blade being misaligned or not
mounted properly or falling off or whatever, so get a skate tech to do it, but yes you can change
your ice boot into an inline boot. Now, don't keep going back and forth because that's going to wear
out the sole eventually, and also that's going to put a lot of strain onto the sole of the boot and
the heel and you don't really want to do that. So once you change the frames once or twice, you
want to designate the boot as an inline boot and nothing else. So now your frames are ordered, you've
gotten your boots figured out, and the next step is waiting for them to ship in. While you're waiting
for them to ship, the next question I get a fair bit is should I do off-ice exercises while I wait?
You can if you want to, you don't have to. Especially if you're just beginning, then you might
be working a fair bit on stroking and just moving forwards and backwards first so, you're not really
going to need much flexibility for that If you're a higher level, then you're probably
already doing off-ice anyways. Personally, I enjoy doing off ice, I really like doing jumps and spins
and stretches, but it's very dependent on your specific situation. You don't have to do it if
you don't want to. If you want to, then go for it. If you're looking for some resources on where
to go for off-ice, Sofabar, Coach Michelle Hong, ISU Keep Training - that series started when COVID began,
and it's honestly one of my favourites. It's an hour-long exercise and there's
probably about a dozen different ones that are specific to stretching or jump rotation or spins
or off-ice in skates, and things like that that are very very helpful. Coach Mary's great, Coach Hamish
on Instagram is wonderful, iSkate Coach, there's a lot when you start looking for them. You can if
you want to, you don't have to. What should I buy to prepare for my inline skates getting here? The big
one here is protection, so you want to make sure you have elbow guards, wrist guards, and knee guards.
That is because when you fall in inline skates, you are going to get hurt. When you fall on ice,
sometimes you don't get hurt and that's great, when you fall in inlines, especially the first
few hours, you're almost guaranteed to get hurt unless you have protection. I've gotten some nasty
scrapes on my legs, I've gotten some nasty scrapes on my hands, I've gotten some nasty scrapes on my elbows,
and a lot of that can be avoided if you have the proper protection. Also, if you're really new
to skating, I would recommend getting a helmet. You gotta protect your noggin, and especially if you're
younger or older, making sure that you protect your head is very very important. Wrists, elbows, knees,
joints are really important as well. Also depending on the climate, I might wear thicker clothes. So,
I have a specific pair of jeans (actually it's these jeans), that I specifically wear for skating
because they already have holes in the knees that I put there because I was skating, and the jean
material has a better chance of protecting me when I fall sideways and scrape my calf or my thigh
on the pavement. If you're skating indoors, you're a lot more likely to get like friction burns than
actual road rash. I would assume there's also specific kinds of clothing that you want to wear
in that case, I don't know what they are so you'll have to- you'll have to test around a little bit, but
generally, you want hard guards that will protect your joints and your head. While we're talking
about things you can also buy, I would recommend skate leashes just because they're very helpful,
both for carrying your skates and for stretching, and I like having them around, it's also super
duper cheap. I talk about it in this video up here, and it's very very helpful to have. Okay, so
now you've gotten your frames, they're mounted by a professional, and you finally get to start skating!
This is super exciting, so what do you do now? Well, the first thing you should start with when you get
them, I know you're excited, is to do stroking, and is to go backwards and forwards, and crossovers,
and edges. I know they're boring, I hate doing them, but they're very very important skills
to have. You're gonna start noticing all the different changes between ice and inlines. If
you're feeling up to it, maybe you can start doing some three turns, and some brackets, and counters.
If you're really really feeling up to it, I guess maybe a spiral, but you want to understand how
your weight transfers across the three wheels and you want to understand how it differs between ice
and inline. If you're higher level, you might want to start doing singles jumps, or a waltz jump, or
maybe a two foot spin, but don't do too much, just because you have a high likelihood of getting
hurt if you're not used to inlines yet. Where do I place my toe stops? That's a wonderful question,
I have a video of it already up here and also how to replace them. The placement of your toe
stop is pretty important to being able to skate properly, so this is something you're going to want
to take care of as soon as you get your skates, or like within the first hour of wearing them.
That way, you can start building up good habits with the toe stop in the right place.
Again, it's fairly different between people, uh, I like to keep mine around where it is right now...
So that's not helpful at all, is it? How do I do wheel maintenance? I have a video for that up here,
it's fairly easy, the video took me 10 minutes to film but it usually takes me, like, seven minutes
to do it, or I'll watch Netflix while doing it and then it'll take me 10 minutes. It's super duper
easy, I teach you how to rotate your wheels, how to take apart the wheels, how to do basic maintenance,
and a couple other things. How do I stop? That's a tough one. Okay, so the issue is a lot of stops
require you to wear down your wheels fairly quickly or your toe stop fairly quickly.
My favorite stop is the one where you kind of go around in circles until you slow down enough,
because it doesn't wear down on your hardware as much and I like to try to prolong the life of
my wheels and my toe stop as much as I can. If you're just starting out, I would recommend maybe a
T-stop, or dragging your toe stop across the ground, that way you slow down with a lot of control.
The downside of that being you wear down your hardware a lot. This is the biggest question
I get; Do inline frames feel the same as ice? That's a really really hard question to answer.
The short answer is yes and no. I'm gonna explain myself; so no, it doesn't feel the same as ice,
but it does. I like to think of it as figure skating-adjacent, in the sense that it's
kind of close to skating, but it's not exactly. My favorite thing to do on ice is spins, I love spins
so much. If you look at my Instagram [@hazookskates], you probably know that. I love spins so much
and inline spins don't feel the same. Your weight is in a different spot you don't get
to spin as much, it's a lot harder to do variations on types of spins, sit spins are crazy hard because
you have no weight whatsoever on your heel, and that can be pretty disappointing. I think some
people might not expect that to happen and it's really disappointing when you can't do the things
that you could do on ice in inlines. However with rings closing due to IT and the summer and other
situations where the rinks are closing, it's nice to have something that kind of feels like skating.
One of my favorite things to do on inlines is to skate on roads. If you look at my Instagram
there's some really pretty shots of me skating down this beautiful country road, and
that's not something I could do on ice skates. On ice skates, I usually look at the inside of an ugly
rink, or maybe I'm outside on a pond but it's not great ice, but with inlines, you can skate
practically anywhere that there's a hard surface, which is extremely freeing, and it's a wonderful
feeling. So it's different in the sense that you can't do things in the same way that you can [on ice as] on
inlines, but you have a lot more freedoms, and as long as you modify elements, you can do practically
everything on inlines anyways. There's pros and cons to each type of skating, one of the pros
of inline skating is you can skate practically anywhere and it's absolutely stunning if you can.
You know, you have these beautiful shots of people skating in sunsets, and people skating in parks,
and people skating in these beautiful beautiful places that you wouldn't get when you're skating
on ice. There's pros and cons, it's- it's a hard balance just because you expect one thing and
you get something adjacent to it, but it's not the same, but you kind of gotta look on the bright side
as well. There's things that you never would have been able to experience had you not had inlines.
So like I say, it's figure skating adjacent. It's not the same, it's not that different, it's adjacent.
Not helpful, I know. Hi! This is editing!Hazuki here to tell you that I completely forgot to answer one
more question; another question that I get fairly often is can you move things that you learned
on inlines onto ice? Like I said, because inline skating is figure skating adjacent,
the answer is a little bit iffy. Short answer is yes, I've learned all my jumps and most of
my elements on inlines before moving them onto ice because I have a lot more access to inline skating
than ice skating. However, because it's adjacent and not exactly the same, it does feel different,
and it takes a little bit of an adjustment period to get used to one or the other. Short answer is
yes, you can learn things on inlines and move them onto ice later. Finally, some general advice for
you; if you are new to skating and you don't have a coach, I would recommend checking out this video, it
talks about things that you can do to help improve the productivity of your practices. If you already
skate or you have a coach, then these are probably not tips that are going to help you much because
you know this stuff, but these are all things that I had to learn on my own that really helped me. Be
careful with parasocial relationships that you're making with people online, this is just in general
but also within skating just because skating is such a high risk sport. I hope these answered a lot
of your questions. If you have any more questions, you can leave them down below, you can email them
to me, or you can ask me in my Instagram DM's. I'm here to help you, however, I'm not a coach, I don't
have any qualifications, I barely graduated CanSkate, I just know that there's a lot of people
out there right now who are trying to figure this out. I didn't really have that many people to ask, so
hopefully this helped you, I really hope it did. I will see you guys next time thanks for watching!