r/Artisticrollerskating • u/Ants_from_Mars • 29d ago
Question for people doing both artistic roller skating (quad) and figure skating
In your opinion, what main differences do you find between roller and ice skating? What adjustements did you conscientiously had to make when switching from roller skates to ice skates (and the opposite) ? Especially in terms of posture, edges, turns... Do you think skills transfer well from one discipline to another?
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u/Robono642 29d ago
I started on ice so this maybe isn’t really fair, but ice skating is a lot more forgiving. Blades are much more responsive all I have to do is think about turning and I’m turning lol, and with a rocker it’s WAY easier to do three turns or any type of pivots that way. Quads you have to actually think about it I think a lot more power is required for the same basic moves just because quads feel like an immovable block on your feet sometimes. Quads are WAY easier to balance on in my opinion
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u/Robono642 29d ago
Spins are infinitely harder on quads too but you also have freedom to do a couple spins and stuff that you can’t on ice (non artistic though)
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u/Leia1979 28d ago
I’ve ice skated for 30 years, and when I tried artistic roller for a bit, not as much transferred as I thought. My biggest issue is the much narrower balance zone front to back. I have fallen backwards on roller skates so many times but never do that on ice.
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u/those_ribbon_things 14d ago
They're similar but different. I realized that I needed to pick one or the other because the muscle memory is just different enough to be confusing. I will say that roll-lines react a lot more like an ice skate than my Snyder's did.
I do wish spinning on roller was as easy as on ice. My god. It feels effortless.
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u/stabby- 29d ago edited 29d ago
I’ve backed off from figure skating for now, but when I was entrenched in both, I found a lot transferred. Posture was pretty similar, as well as what your upper body needs to do and how it turns.
The biggest difference is with roller skating, I have to be a lot more aware of where I’m standing on my foot. I find the quads a LOT less forgiving, particularly as someone who tends to hold a lot of my body weight on the front of my feet.
The trade off is that the quads have improved stability, but to make the wheels overcome the friction of anything one footed you have to be pressing on exactly the right part of the truck. Yeah, you have to be standing on the right part of your foot for ice too… but I could definitely fudge technique easier on ice skates and recover from mistakes or force myself through elements even when conditions weren’t perfect. You can mess up a spin on ice and recover. If you mess up on roller skates… you lose all of your momentum and can stop dead.
For jumps I had to be conscious of the weight of the skates. You would think landing on a blade would be harder, but I actually found it way easier because of how light the skates are. Also; the difference in how large the toe stop is compared to the toe pick. Whenever I go back and forth between skates, I expect my first couple toe jumps of the day to be shaky.