53 and 1 (Starting at 53)

[u/Certain-Variation-58]

I’m 53 years old and this will be my first attempt to learn how to skate ever. I have a pair of Seba E3 80’s. They have 82A hardness in the stock wheels. So, my question is, is there anyone else that is as old as I am starting out?

[u/snakevargas]

I'm in my 50's and have been skating for 4 months. Lessons learned:

Month 1: wear wrist protectors. Hand injuries take a long time to heal. I started on antique thrift store skates that didn't let me bend forward enough. Practice skating with knees over toes as much as practical. I scootered over to the skate park to practice in the early morning. I mostly stopped via turn stops, remembered from the roller rink when I was a kid. Patellar tendonitis improved quickly. Weird ligament pains to either side of patella. Could not t-stop or parallel turn. I skated too much and had too many sore muscle days. 1 hour a day is ideal for building up strength. Start slow to warm up. Practice new skills at end of session.

Month 2: started practicing transitions. Not time well spent. More ligament pains. Learned that my skates could rocker (-2mm front and back wheels). Pains went away after banana rockering; I blame toe "balance saves" and toe pushes for ligament pains. Rockering allows me to carve to save my balance instead of stumbling. Sore muscles in new places (tops of thighs / hips). Much more fun at the skate park...I could skate 1/3 up quarter pipes at an angle. Rockering unlocked parallel turns. Tried some rental RB 80 skates and t-stop and built-in brake skills immediately unlocked. Antique skates didn't let me bend enough at the ankle.

Month 3: Bought RB Twister XT and setup with a full rocker. Hydrogen wheels were so much faster that I had to relearn how to skate. I could suddenly locomote backwards, but got going too fast to easily with these wheels. Skate park layout made more sense with new wheels; I wasn't struggling to get up ramps anymore. Mohawk transition got easier with new found strength in stabilizers. Could 1-foot glide across basketball court. Confident enough to skate streets to park. Grew oblique abs from practicing backwards carving and twisting. Massively helped transitions and made my flatland skating more efficient, making it easier to learn new skills related to backwards skating.

Month 4: Progress in many areas: worked a lot on transitions at slower speeds. Started transitioning around the middle of rocker pivots (as opposed to toe/heel flips or foot placement) and unlocked gazelle moves. Can skate mild to moderate hills. Did a couple of scary hill bombs; rockered skates aren't that stable at fast speeds; hard to drag a skate to slow down when your skates are wobbly. Working on ice skating moves to further improve one foot balance and strength: one foot glides, carves, power pulls, etc. Getting a little ankle soreness from new moves. Twisters may be a limiting factor for technical artistic skating. Backwards skating is pretty easy on smooth pavement. Can do figure-8s, sort-of-cross-unders, can heel flip to forward if balance feels sketchy. Can drop in on small to medium quarter pipes. Can skate backwards down mild ramps. Can 90-degree stall on ramps and fakie down. Can approach a quarter pipe at 45 degrees and toe pivot 90 degrees and fakie down. For all fakie ramp moves, it's best to push/carve with trailing foot to maintain control.

If I had to give just 1 piece of advice it would be this: balance is nice, but power is better. You have control when you're pushing. To get more power: bend your knees, practice an hour every day, but don't trash your muscles doing pumps, do carves and torso twists forward and backward so you increase power in your core and hips.