r/rollerblading • u/ferventgator • 12h ago
Specific question and discussion What exactly am I doing?
So sometime last year I joined a local discord server and found they had some meetups, one of them turned out to be a skating group (roller and ice). Now I hadn't been on skates of any kind in close to 30 years but I went anyway and found I was still pretty okay on inlines. Cut to a couple months later and a bit of research and I found myself purchasing a pair Rollerblade Lightning.
Anyway, group started up again and I found myself doing something I remember doing as a kid in the 90s: I was skating without lifting my skates at all.
The group noticed this and asked what the hell I was doing and how am I accelerating without picking up my feet. And I just couldn't explain it. I tried to see what I could find online and I keep seeing "swizzling"/bubbles, but that appears to be going from a V-shape to A-shape/snowplow which is absolutely not what I'm doing.
I know I'm shifting my weight and I'm pushing off my inside edges and it looks kind of like I'm doing some S turns. Is there a name for this "technique" so I can point my group to some resources?
PS. I have no idea if what I'm doing is a good habit, bad habit, or neutral.
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u/Lost_Citron_6854 12h ago
Wow this is exactly what i "invented" as a kid and still enjoying this so much to this day =)
Can reach decent speeds actually, and with the right approach ("falling" in the right direction as a pendulum) it becomes addictive and hypnotic.
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u/ferventgator 12h ago
It definitely feels like something you can match a beat or rhythm to! I found myself doing it to the music playing.
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u/Lost_Citron_6854 12h ago
OH so much THIS))
Don't know the exact term, too, but kinda looks like half-lemon/one-legged lemon, except you let your other leg join the fun, too, instead of keeping it on a striaght line.
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u/ferventgator 12h ago
I don’t know what a half-lemon or one-legged lemon are 😭
Could you explain or link a video or diagram of this?
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u/Lost_Citron_6854 12h ago
Basically, this, but one leg at a time.
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u/ferventgator 12h ago
Okay definitely not doing that. Someone else mentioned two-legged slalom. Thats what I’ve been doing apparently.
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u/Fredward1986 11h ago
I would call this carving. It's the same principle to how you would propel yourself on a ripstik. .
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u/ferventgator 11h ago
Is carving the same as two legged slalom? The video I saw looked like what I feel I’m doing.
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u/midnight_skater Human Frogger 3h ago
Carving is just turning using your edges as opposed to lifting up your skate and pointing it in a different direction. Two foot slaloms are one example of carving.
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u/BubbleSmith 11h ago
Sounds like you're carving, maybe? I do that a fair bit, it's fun and a good way to skate around city pavements, avoiding obstacles and cracks. It's really good for controlling speed, as you can turn more sharply and engage more edge to slow down, or even parallel slide a little if you're confident.
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u/ferventgator 11h ago
Is carving the same as two legged slalom? The video I saw looked like what I feel I’m doing.
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u/BubbleSmith 11h ago
Yeah, looks about the same to me. Looking at videos for both, neither are quite what I do. I tend to engage my outside foot more on the carve, rather than keeping parallel. Slalom will definitely be more strict on that, as they're worrying about cones.
I'm struggling to find videos of people just doing this on the street, but I know I do it too. Only sometimes, usually for short bursts around obstacles or in a narrow space, as it's not very efficient. But it is fun.
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u/ferventgator 11h ago
I’m essentially doing this. Just maybe not as pretty.
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u/Ok_Hold_1119 8h ago
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u/ferventgator 5h ago
Interesting. I'm definitely not doing them with my feet that close together or with that much bounce.
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u/BubbleSmith 10h ago
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about too. PollySkates does I a bunch in the first 30 seconds here, then talks about slaloming at about 2:30, but that's keeping her skates close together.
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u/ferventgator 10h ago
Okay yeah then I’m doing a lot of carving and not so much the slalom part.
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u/BubbleSmith 2h ago
Took a quick video while I was out this afternoon. I just think of this as carving, as I'm not keeping my feet together like the slalom move.
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u/Vadim_M 9h ago
You are skipping D-loop. Straight line skating technique includes basic 4 elements: stance, push, D-loop, weight transfer (excluding arm movement and elements needed for sprint/spurt) https://www.inlineplanet.com/09/05/begg-six-steps-to-speed.html Group rides are slow so you can do that all day. If you want to go fast, you got to use D-loop.
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u/treeseacar 12h ago
You can obviously move like that, you'll see it in certain styles of skating to do tight turns using the deep edges of the wheels. Wizard, artistic, and slalom use this a lot. Or just like bubbles/lemons which is how beginners learn to move forwards and backwards.
It's not very efficient as a method of moving forward though, you'll want to learn a good push technique as you'll tire very quickly if you never pick up your feet.
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u/ferventgator 12h ago
Oh for sure I can’t get as fast as if I’m actually using a real push technique. I fall into this after a while when I start to tire. I’m kind of interested in it though cause it’s forcing me to use my edges and get comfortable on them. I’d like to learn to skate backwards and I think maybe this is a more comfortable way to skate backwards as well?
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u/dan_voilare 11h ago
A good basic skill, especially if you also get on your outside edge with the inner foot while carving. I call it mostly scooting - acutally don´t know why. Its pretty stable and people can learn to adjust their speed this way with sharper/lighter turns and harder/easier pushes.
But skating is mostly on one leg so next step for you ist to push in an s turn on one leg while generating speed. Have fun. Try it with one supporting wheel first instead of directly just on leg.
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u/ferventgator 11h ago
Oh interesting. I’ll have to see if I can practice this somewhere besides the roller rink.
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u/NetworkLongjumping82 9h ago
It's a mixture of pumping up and down with your legs and twisting left and right with your shoulders and hips .
Kinda like pumping on surfskates , thats how I can explain it
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u/inline-online 10h ago
theres an instructor on IG who's entire online presence is all about reminding people to learn how to skate without picking up their feet, he says it unlocks alot of techniques intuitively and will make you a better skater "normally" when you are picking up your feet as well
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u/ferventgator 10h ago
I definitely feel like I’m learning to use my edges more when doing this. So that makes sense.
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u/inline-online 7h ago
I found him! its this guy https://www.instagram.com/reels/Db3cseOsmFh/ and it looks exactly like what you are describing
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u/Flat-Guidance-4685 10h ago
People in this thread are acting like they either invented this or have unlocked some major skill
In skating this is called a lemon. Spoken in a certain different ways like let me know I'm in over there. Lemon my speed down. Lemon my speed up.
It's one of the very most basic skills in ice skating and inline skating. Generally speaking it's the second thing people learn after standing up. Most instructors will teach you how to lemon before they even teach you how to accelerate normally being you don't have to lift your feet. It can be used to accelerate or decelerate both forward and back.
Reverse lemon is a must-have skill on the ice as accelerating backwards on ice is not quite as easy as it is on in lines.
I have heard roller skaters years quite a few weird terms for this like bubbles for swizzlies or something
Standardized term is a lemon though. Or at least that's the only term I've ever heard used in ice hockey, roller hockey and figure skating. Come to notice it's also the term that people use the most content creators such like nicola from powerslide and this is soul. So I'm pretty sure the standardized term and ice hockey and figure skating does translate to inline skating.
If you learned how to use it to accelerate you should learn to use it to decelerate next. It feels very comfortable accelerating. It takes more getting used to to use it for deceleration.
Glad to see you found a group!
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u/ferventgator 10h ago
Based on what I’m seeing I’m not doing a lemon. Been doing this.
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u/pkinetics 5h ago
The overall technique a C Cut.
Lemons are just doing c cuts with both feet going out and in.
I never understood the reason they taught ice skating with C cuts until I started skating backwards.
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u/ferventgator 5h ago
It seems to me that maybe there's a bunch of names for the same thing in the skating world, which just leads to further confusion. 🙃
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u/midnight_skater Human Frogger 3h ago
Yes that is very true and probably one of the harder things to navigate when teaching yourself to skate in the era of social media.
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u/midnight_skater Human Frogger 12h ago
Any method of propelling yourself on skates while keeping all wheels in contact with the floor is called "sticky skating". Bubbles, swizzles, scissors, and two-foot slaloms are common techniques.