Home » Learn » The Roller Skate Dad Podcast » Getting Started Roller Skating – Part 16 – Doing a Two Foot Spin – 033

Getting Started Roller Skating – Part 16 – Doing a Two Foot Spin – 033

In today’s episode, I talk about the first artistic roller skating spin that everyone learns – the two foot spin. This move is exactly how it sounds – spinning on two feet. This is such a fun move. It takes some practice, but once you get good at it, there is nothing more fun to do on roller skates than spinning.

If you are having a hard time roller skating, be sure to check out my page all about How to Roller Skate. On that page you will find videos of yours truly skating. You can see me doing a two foot spin on the Roller Skating Tricks page.

Episode 33 Transcript

[0:00] Hey everybody, Welcome to the roller skate Dad podcast, This is episode # 33.

[0:10] Let’s get started.

[0:13] Welcome to the Roller skate Dad podcast,
the show that covers everything and anything in the wonderful world of roller skating now, here’s your host, the roller skate dad himself, Jeff stone.
Hey everybody, welcome to the roller skate Dad podcast. I’m so glad you guys could join me today.
Um this is gonna be a fun one, so today we’re going to continue the getting started roller skating series and we’re gonna be discussing how to do two ft spins.
So this is the final episode in the getting started roller skating series, at least for now, um where I’m gonna be giving you step by step instructions on things to do on your skates.
So, after this week’s episode, we’re going to talk about some roller sports and some skate maintenance,
you know everything a beginner, you know, just starting out, should know, that’s what this series was really all about, was trying to give.

[1:18] Those of you out here who are beginner skaters, some confidence that you need to get started, and for those intermediate skaters out there, that want to learn a few cool things on your skates,
you know, for those beginners to kind of progress into being a more intermediate skater.
Um so that’s what this whole series has been about. So,
in the next few episodes, coming up, I’ll be talking about some roller sports, some things that you can do to really progress from a more intermediate skater into an advanced skater and how to take care of your skates.

[1:52] Because like, every beginner should know how to do that, like, what do I mean by that?
Like, well, how to clean your skates, how to clean your wheels, how to clean your bearings, um how to rotate your wheels, uh you know, things like that, basic skate maintenance, um,
so we’ll be covering that in the next couple of months,
and um so yeah, that’s what’s coming up.

[2:16] But before we get started on today’s episode, I’m gonna do a recap real fast of all of the episodes that I’ve done so far on this series,
in case you’re joining us at the very end, you can go back and listen to all these episodes, either on my website or on your favorite podcasting ah app on your phone.
So, the first episode was all about the skaters mindset, believing that you can do this, that you got this.
Um A lot of adults are scared to skate.

[2:53] And this series was primarily geared towards adults. I mean, you could use it for kids too.
Probably a few extra things I might add at some point for kids, but I meet so many adults who are scared to skate.
And I’m telling you anyone can skate any single person out there that wants to skate, can skate.
Um So that episode was all about how to get in the right mindset so that you can ensure that you’re putting yourself on the right foot when you first start out.

[3:27] Then I spent two episodes, episode uh two and three in this series talking about how to pick out your first pair of roller skates.
So if you don’t have a pair of roller skates and you’re listening to me, these two episodes are really good to kind of go over all the skate parts and everything that makes up a roller skate and what to look for.
And then the second episode of that pair was all about a handful of skates that I had personally tested and tried, that I thought were good for beginners.
So those are two episodes, you might want to check out if you don’t have a pair of skates yet, then I talked about how to get the right safety equipment so that you don’t get hurt so that you do enjoy skating.
Um so check that out if if you’re just starting out to, then had an episode that was all about falling down and how to properly get back up from the ground.
The next episode after that was 10 different ways to stop on your roller skates, and then we discuss skating forwards without falling down.

[4:27] The next episode was all about balance, standing on one ft and doing crossovers around the corners.

[4:35] Then we discussed skating backwards for the first time. And then I talked about how to do backwards crossovers.
Then we talked about doing two ft turns.
Then we had an episode about one ft turns. Then we talked about doing bunny hops.
And last week we talked about doing the waltz job and that leads us to today where we’re gonna be talking about two ft spins. Woo.

[5:03] I love to foot spins. They are my favorite. And if you want to turn heads In a skating rink, learning how to do two ft spins is your secret recipe to turning heads.
Um, now I want to say that before we get started.
I should say that audio alone as for all these episodes is not always the best way to learn a technique, Right?
And um, and I get that and that’s why I have some videos on my website that you can go check out, you know, spinning is definitely a more advanced technique and this is where scene really helps with the learning, right?
Being able to see a person do it.
So I highly recommend that you check out this week’s show notes at roller skate dad dot com slash 33.
And on there, I’ll have some videos of me doing some two ft spins.
Um, you know, audio is great for listening in the car or while you’re skating.
I’m sure a lot of you do that and that’s cool. I’m so glad you do.
But explaining how to do these more advanced techniques without showing you it’s it’s just a lot harder.
So I just want to preface everything we’re about to talk about with that.
So, with that said, I’m going to try to explain, you know, everything as best I can here in this episode without showing you wish me luck.

[6:29] So let’s get started. Um so we’re gonna start off with is we’re gonna start off with some things called baby mohawks or quarter turns.

[6:40] So we’re going to start off with some baby mohawks as they’re called, or little quarter turns.
So to start we’re going to do uh huh,
Little two ft quarter turns in a circle,
so when you’re doing um when you’re doing two ft turns, you do full half turns where you turn your foot um of four 180° and your heels meet, in this case we’re just doing quarter turns.

[7:11] And you’re going to basically do these little quarter turns in a circle and go faster and faster until that’s comfortable.
So really what we’re doing here is we’re going to start building up,
to a spin, I’m gonna basically be teaching you a few techniques to kind of get the idea of what it feels like to spin, and then we’ll actually talk about doing the spin itself.
So that’s what this is kind of leading us into.
So you know, be practicing a baby version of the two ft turns we did back in episode 29, I think it was,
except instead of doing them rolling, we’re going to be doing all this standing still, so with your skates on right.

[7:55] So instead of doing full heel to heel turns or mohawk turns as they’re called, we’re instead going to do little 90 degree turns or quarter turns.

[8:07] So bend your knees arms up in a t position,
both feet should be facing in the same direction and you should be about a shoulder width apart, less than shoulder, you know, actually about a foot apart between your two ft.
Uh Now we’re gonna turn counterclockwise, so you’re going to pick up your left foot And turn it 90° counterclockwise and set it down and turn your right foot counterclockwise to meet it.
Now keep doing this movement, you know, over and over again until you get one full revolution now stop.

[8:43] Are you dizzy yet? No good because we got a lot more to do.
So let’s just keep going. You know you do this movement over and over again until you get comfortable with this motion Right?
So you just kind of turn 90°, you turn each foot 90° at a time and we’re going to eventually spin in this direction with our wheels rolling.
But it’s important to get the balance posture and feel for the spin before actually spinning.
This is also super easy to practice anywhere, even if you don’t have your skates on.
So so you just practice that until you have that down and then we’ll move on to the next skill which is upgrading into the actual spin.
So now that you’ve practiced these baby mohawks you know turning quickly, you’re going to now use the rotation of your upper body and your feet to do the spin.
So first you want to start with feet a little less than shoulder width apart, bend both knees and we’re gonna be spinning counterclockwise so put your left arm in front and your right arm out to the side.
So this is a little bit different than a T position. It’s more like you’re making an L. Shape with your arms.

[10:00] So you’ll be making an uppercase L. With your arms spinning is a down up motion believe it or not.
I mean it’s very similar to jumping in in that regard.
So you know you’re going to bend down in a little mini half squat and then rotate your shoulders arms and waist to the left or counterclockwise,
and then your feet follow that same direction and you use your arms like a helicopter, you know, to give you that momentum to bring your feet around.
Then, if you’re familiar with, you know, doing like a forward scissors, you slide the right foot.

[10:40] And then the left foot to do the spin and you put all of your weight on your big toes, pressing on those inside edges.
Um Then as you’re turning to the left, you raise up by slowly coming out of that squat.

[10:57] You then also bring your arms in towards your chest and you,
typically cross them right in front of you and then this rapid motion of turning your upper body first,
and then doing that down up with your knees in a quick squat to a more raised position, helps to get you into the spin.
So what I like to do with beginners is just tried doing a little 180 spin to start, you know, it really helps to get the motion down and to work on maintaining your ballot, you know your balance.
Um So you know you just kind of Get down, you bend down and as you’re turning your upper body, you’re turning your head and your shoulders and your waist, you bring your arms in and just try to spin yourself around 180°.

[11:48] And you know many beginners are going to get stuck in two places, they are either going to over rotate their upper body or they try to turn just their feet before they turn their upper body.
And so they just kind of looked disjointed usually and it’s important to remember that spins, it’s important to remember that spins start with the upper body first.
You know we just talked about jumps jump start with the upper body first, I wonder if there’s a parallel there. Yes, almost everything starts with the upper body first, and that’s where most beginners get hung up is they don’t think about that.
They always are looking down at their feet and not thinking about their upper body.
So you want to start with your upper body first, right, spins jumps.
They all start with the upper body first if you’re struggling or you’re stuck.
Um You know, try try this technique.

[12:44] It can be hard and you can struggle with understanding how to slide your feet so you can try this out to understand how your feet will slide while you spin right, So,
if you start with your feet in a T.
Position, kind of like you’re doing a t. Stop right, put your left foot in front and your right foot behind Turn 90° pointing out, and you want that right foot to be behind your left foot.

[13:13] This is what we call a T position, So just put your feet in a T position, then bend your knees liberally and roll your right foot out from under the T position and have it make an arc In a 1/2 circle.
Kind of like a parentheses on a keyboard, a closing parentheses on a keyboard until it rolls slightly in front of your left foot.
So you kind of roll it out and roll it back in basically.
Um just like just like a parentheses, your left foot should remain where it’s at while you’re sliding your right foot.
So don’t move your left foot, your right foot is sliding until the toe of your right skate has slid in in an arc in front of your left skate.
Now with your right foot in front of your left, bend your knees and now slide the left foot around while on the ground in the same half circle.
This one will look more like an open parentheses um on the ground in a half circle until it meets the right heel.

[14:14] And so you should now be facing the other direction, you know, you slid into probably almost a 1, 80.
Right? And so you can practice this, this is like a pivot exercise, You can practice this again and again to kind of slide 180° at a time.
And I mean this isn’t really gonna get you to spin, but it will help you kind of understand what it feels like for your feet to actually slide in the spin.
You know, the only difference is that your feet will be sliding at the same time instead of doing one at a time now when you’re actually spinning, you know, your feet are going to stay slightly apart and your toes are never going to meet,
this, you know, this pivot exercise, like I said, it’s more for understanding that the wheels do actually.

[15:00] You know, slide when you spin they roll, it’s not as much about them turning, it’s more about them sliding.
So it’s also important to understand that, you know, as with one ft turns and I talked about this a couple episodes ago, um wheels matter wheels matter when you’re spinning,
um you know, and I’ve been teaching you how to do these two ft spins, we’re doing them with all eight wheels on the ground, right,
and depending on how slick your skating surfaces and how soft or hard your skate wheels are.
This can be a lot harder to do, or or easier depending on the skating surface and the hardness of your wheels, so spinning on a nice smooth concrete,
like a basement or garage floor, or if you’re lucky enough to have a skating rink nearby on a wood floor, are those are really the best surfaces for doing two ft spins With all eight wheels on the ground.

[16:04] These surfaces are going to provide the best slide. Um Your your wheels will slide better on these surfaces asphalt. You can spin on it.
I certainly do, but it’s a lot tougher and so harder wheels.

[16:19] You know, are going to be much better for spinning, like much better.
I prefer personally to go with urethane wheel that has a Deromedi er of like a wheel hardness somewhere between 98 a In 103 a range.

[16:38] If you’re really adventurous and you want to slide a lot, you can go with like a clay or a wood wheel.
Um I talked about some of those in the, in the episode on one ft turns, these slide really easily, but they’re kind of hard to do, like a regular skating session in them because they slide so much.
Um My favorite wheels personally are the roller bones, Elite 103 a wheels.
These are artistic skate wheels, they do slide but they don’t slide as much as like the clay and the wood ones do and um I like them because I can do spins and I’m pretty good even on a speed skate floor that’s pretty tight,
and um and I can still skate my normal session,
and that’s important to me because I, you know, I’m doing all these jumps and spins and stuff, but I’m not like that’s not the only thing I’m doing, I also like to speed skate some and I also like to just goof around.
So um but those are the ones that I wear when I skate and they slide well, but they have some good stiff to them,
so I often recommend the beginners that they get super soft outdoor wheels, like the adam pulse,
Right, which is a 78, a soft barometer,
and these are really good for beginners, but they’re super hard to spin on.

[18:01] If you’ve got all eight wheels on the ground, and I keep keep saying that if you have all eight wheels on the ground, because there’s all kinds of jumps, I’m sorry, there’s all kinds of spins that you can do,
where you lift up your heel or you lift up your toes, so you’re not actually spinning on all eight wheels at once,
and we’re going to talk about that here in a minute, but if you’re actually doing your,
spins the proper way, the proper artistic way.

[18:31] On two ft, it’s with all eight wheels on the ground and so getting some harder wheels can really make for an easier time.
And if you don’t want to go to harder wheels, if you’re like Jeff, I’m not buying any more wheels, I’ve got a pair of wheels, that’s what I’m going to use, then you can totally do that.
Um you just may find it a whole lot easier to learn how to either spin on your toes or to spin in a heel toe manner, which I’m going to cover here in just a few minutes.

[19:03] So let’s talk about rolling into your two ft spin.
So after you practice, you know, some of the techniques I just talked about.

[19:12] Uh for a while and you’re getting pretty good at just doing those little quarter mohawks and you’re getting good at doing like the pivot exercise,
you may find that you can only do a few revolutions before you come to a stop and this is because, you know, you’re starting your two ft spin from a standstill,
and at best you’ll maybe be able to get three or four revolutions from a standstill.
Maybe Maybe five or 6 if you’re on a really slick surface, it can be really hard to get a lot of speed in your spin, just if you’re standing still.
So one way that you can fix this is obviously to get more speed into your spin. So how do you do this?
So the best way to do this is by rolling forward, knees bent, then you do a two ft turn with your right leg in front and your left leg behind you and you hold that position and then you pivot onto your inside edge and you hold that position.
And this is actually another artistic skating technique called a spread eagle.

[20:18] And so you roll from the spread eagle onto the inside edge hard And you pull that into the 2-foot spin,
and this extra roll into the spin really helps to give the spin more speed and it can allow you to get a lot more revolutions like a lot more.
So you know, this is a more advanced technique and you only want to move on to this, you know when you get three or four revolutions easily standing still, but this is,
how all artistic skaters, you know when they’re first learning when they’re doing two ft spins, this is how they get 8, 10, 12 revolutions on a spin is by,
getting speed going into it.

[21:00] Um Alright let’s talk a little bit about heel toe spins because this is actually another way to get a really long spin without meeting a ton of speed and,
even if you do have a ton of speed, sometimes it can just be really hard to spin on certain floors or certain surfaces because of how sticky they are.
Um So heel toe spin is where one skate spins on the front two wheels.
And your other skate spins on the back two wheels.
So with this one, you’re simply going to pivot one ft onto the front, two wheels and the other on the back too, it’s pretty much that easy.
Everything else with the spin is exactly the same, and by reducing the number of wheels on the ground, you know, you’re reducing the friction,
of those wheels against your skating surface, so this allows you to spin more freely and it’s gonna, you know, allow you to get more revolutions on your skates.
So one reminder here is you need to be mindful of the toast stop on the skate that you’re doing the toe spin on.
You know, either you can get you some toe plugs like me, I put jam plugs in my skates, I don’t have toe stops, or you just need to be careful not to jam that toe stop too hard down into the ground as you spin,
otherwise you could fall right.

[22:27] Um so, you know, like I said, this isn’t really a problem for me because I wear toe plugs, but it’s just important to understand that um some people actually put that toe stop on the ground as they’re spinning, helps with the balance.

[22:44] You know, you’re really going to have to work on your balance before you progress to this kind of spin, it’s harder to do because it requires more balance to spin on four wheels, Right, two on each skate Rather than eight wheels, and,
if you really want to ratchet it up, you can actually just spin on your toes and that’s actually how most jam skaters spin is.
They will actually bend their knees a little bit more and they will get up on their toes with jam plugs in obviously and they will spin just on the front two wheels of both skates.
And for the really advanced jam skaters out there, they learn how to do one ft spin that way to where they’re just spinning on one ft on the front two wheels.
Uh I practiced that. Some not very good at it.
Um it’s it’s a lot harder to do and it does take a lot of practice, but it is a way to spin a whole lot faster, so.

[23:41] Alright everybody, I think that’s going to do it for today’s episode, I hope you enjoyed it.
I think there’s been one heck of a ride if you stuck with me through this whole series and you know, you’ve learned everything I’ve taught you so far, you know, you should feel,
really great about where you’re at as a skater, you know, I just want to say thank you, I hope you’ve enjoyed it.
I know I have, next week we’re going to start talking about roller sports,
so you know, the episode’s going to kind of be a primer of every roller sport that’s out there right now,
and I’m just going to give you kind of like an intro of each one and kind of high level overview of what, you know what I know about each sport, I haven’t played all of them, I’ve played,
several, but you know, we’re done several of them, but not all of them, but anyway, that’s for next week.
So if you want to see a transcript of today’s episode or get more information about some of the things I discussed today, then check out the show notes, you can get those at roller skate dad dot com slash 33.

[24:50] Alright, everybody, I think that’s a wrap until the next time. Get on out there and skate.

[24:57] Thank you for listening to the roller skate dad podcast at www dot dot dot com.
If you liked what you heard today, please be sure to subscribe rate and review the podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, google or wherever you’re listening.

Wrapping Up

Thanks again for rollin’ by. If you have a question about the podcast or just want to leave me a note, please comment below.

I hope you will join me every week for a new episode of The Roller Skate Dad podcast.

Please subscribe to the podcast on whichever podcasting platform you listen on. And, don’t forget to join the Roller Skate Dad Club. You can do that easily with just your first name and email address from any page on this website.

Did you like what you heard? Do you want to hear more? Check out these additional episodes:

Want to Learn More About Skating?

Want more reviews on roller skates? Check out my Best Roller Skates page for a list of all of the quad roller skates I recommend. I also have pages for roller skates for menroller skates for women and roller skates for kids where I recommend the best skates on the market today. Or, check out my roller skates for beginners if you are completely new to roller skating.

Or, if rollerblades or inline skates are more your style, then check out my rollerblades for menrollerblades for women or rollerblades for kids pages. Or, if you are completely new, check out my rollerblades for beginners page.

Photo of author

Jeff Stone

Jeff Stone started the website RollerSkateDad.com back in 2015. The site specializes in roller skate reviews and advice about skates and all things roller skating. When Jeff isn't skating with his two daughters Lily and Violet, he enjoys writing code, cooking, watching movies and hanging out with his wife Claire and their german shepherd, Electra.

Leave a Comment