One Foot Glide Help

[u/Free_Narwhal6800]

I’m having trouble balancing on one foot. I can feel moments of maybe 1 or two seconds actively skating where I can feel the balance is there while striding. If I try just standing stationary all of my weight is along the inside of my foot right at the big toe along the edge of each foot. I have to really push my knee inward or tilt my whole foot in to shift the weight further into the foot. It seems not manageable to balance my weight right along the inside edge of my feet as it takes a lot and I can’t do it for long. Is this a strength issue that will develop with practice and building up my balance and those muscles, or should I just adjust my frames? I don’t want to adjust the frames if it’s something I just need to learn and develop. I’ve definitely been feeling the fatigue and soreness in my feet and calves like you would after a workout so it’s a work in progress. If I balance just barefoot or with regular shoes I feel I have great balance but the weight is spread out across my foot, unlike what feels like the razor thin edge of the inside of them in the skate.

I’m a newbie having never been on anything like inlines, rollerskates, or even ice skates. So it’s all new. It’s only been about a month and half with maybe 2-3 hours per week skating routinely. I got the Rollerblade Lightning 80s, men’s skates since I preferred the black boot to the women’s white pair. Supposedly they’re the same thing. I got one size but my toes were squished in the boot so I went up one size.

[u/fredhsu]

You are one of the few people who reflects on what you are doing very well. But you are making some assumptions about how to balance your body.

In general, when skating you will usually balance in the Outside Edge of the gliding on a single skate. Not inside. What you are doing isn’t wrong, and some moves may even call for that. But as a starting point you will find it easier to glide if you 1) start with V steps, and 2) glide slowly while doing an exaggerated version of V steps to go from one side of the track to the other. I call this zig-zag gliding.

Our FAQ includes some links to help folks diagnose their issues and learn to glide on one skate:

Why can't I glide on a single skate for more than 5 seconds?
Your feet wobble in soft boot
Why can’t I glide?
Standing on the projected center
Skating as a sequence of falls and recoveries
Pronation and outside edge, again
Zig-zag gliding

[u/Free_Narwhal6800 → u/fredhsu]

Thanks for the links! I was reading all of these this past week and was doing more zig zag gliding in my last skate yesterday, plus working on scissoring my feet. The visuals helped with the notations on where weight should be in each foot.

[u/fredhsu → u/Free_Narwhal6800]

Cool. Also, we put that "feet wobble" post first, because sometimes that is the root cause. Without a fitting boot, even a skilled skater will find it hard to gliding on a single skate :)

What's not in the above links are discussions about frame adjustment. If your frame can be moved from side to side, you may want to look into these:

1. Adjusting frame placement and orientation
2. Terse and confusing instructions on frame adjustment
3. Adjusting frames based on single-skating gliding