Getting Started Roller Skating – Part 7 – Learn How to Stop on Roller Skates

In today’s episode, I cover:

How to Stop on Roller Skates, rollerblades and inline skates. Some of the stops I discuss in detail are:
- Toe stop drag
- Knee drag
- T-Stop
- Slalom Stop
- Plow Stop
- One Toe Stop Going Backwards
- Two Toe Stops Going Backwards
- Power Slide
- Spin Out
- Hockey Stop

If you’d like to see some videos / step-by-steps, check out my How to Roller Skate and How to Rollerblade pages. And if you’re not sure which type of skates are best for you, check out my article Comparing Rollerblades vs Roller Skates vs Inline Skates.

Episode 24 Transcript

[0:04] Hey Everybody, Welcome to the Roller Skate Dad Podcast.
This is episode # 24. Let’s get started.

[0:15] Music.

[0:17] 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.

[0:37] Hey, everybody, Welcome to the roller skate Dad podcast. I wanna thank you guys so much for being here.
It’s another great day and another awesome fun roller skating podcast episode.
Today, we’re gonna be talking all about how to get started roller skating. This is the how to get started roller skating podcast series.
And in this episode, I’m going to be talking all about learning how to stop on your roller skates.
So we’re gonna talk about, you know, 10, 11 different ways that you can stop on your roller skates.
These go from super beginner to really advanced.
Um, so all the way from crashing into walls.
No, I’m just kidding. That’s not, that’s not how you should stop, even though I see people at the rink doing it all the time, That is not how you should do it.
So we’re going to not teach you how to do that. I don’t think anybody needs to learn how to crash into a wall. Um, don’t do it.
Uh no, the most beginner way to obviously stop would be a toe, stop, drag, you know, using either the toe stop on the front, if you’re on quad skates or if you’re in roller blades.
Then typically the, well, almost always the break will be on the back of your skate.

[2:05] On some rollerblades, it’s on both of your skates, on the back on others, I’d say most of the roller blades I’ve ever used. It’s only on the right skate.
Um, the break is there.
So we’re going to talk about all that today. We’ll be covering things like, you know how to do a T. Stop, how to, how to do a scissor, stop, um you know how to do a hockey stop, which is a much more advanced move.
And then there’s also like, you know, things like turning around, going backwards. And then I’m talking about on quad skates here, turning around going backwards and then basically just.

[2:43] Pushing up to where you actually stop on both toes stops at the same time.
So, one of the things I wanted to talk a little bit about is I actually have already recorded a video for this and I’ll probably put this podcast episode on that page.
The name of the page itself on my website is called the 10 tips for how to stop on roller skates, roller blades, and in line skates.

[3:09] Um so, if you want more of a show and tell of this particular episode, you can go to that page and you can actually see me doing a lot of these stops.
Um I did some of them, I think in my how to roller skate series, video series that I did out at a local park here, and some of them, I actually recorded uh on a day when it was raining outside in my garage.
So, um so anyway, uh so we’re gonna talk all about um stopping.
That’s honestly one of the most important things, especially if you’re a beginner is okay, these wheels are rolling, how do I stop?
And so often I see people just kind of out of control and don’t really know what to do, arms flailing.
Uh seeing people screaming as there going as they’re going down the ring floor help, I can’t stop, and that’s usually when they run into someone or they run into the wall.
So, let’s not have that bu let’s actually have you stopped the right way.
And so the first thing uh that I’m going to talk to you about is the toe stop, drag.
So if you are on quads.

[4:24] Then basically, the way this is gonna work is you have, you have to toe stops and they are on the front of your skates um and their whole purpose in life is to slow you down.
Now, hopefully if you’re a beginner, you’re not going very fast, at least you shouldn’t be, if you listen to my previous episodes, you want to be going at a nice normal pace, slower is better for a beginner.
And basically, as you’re rolling forward, you just want to take one of your feet and you want to kind of turn it to a 45° angle, and you just want to,
drag your toe stop across the ground, and so you want to apply pressure down onto that toe stop, and this is slowly going to kind of cause your speed to reduce,
until you come to a complete stop and you’re gonna want to practice this if you’re a beginner going slow to start, because again, as we talked about in previous episodes, beginners have the most trouble with,
balance and as your speed is changing,
and you’re really kind of only skating here on one ft when you’re stopping, um the balance gets harder.
And so I’ve seen lots of people fall when they’re actually trying to stop for the first time doing a toast stop drag, because they can’t really even stand on one ft yet.

[5:42] Um so this is a, you know, a great way if you’re a beginner to stop, If you’re on roller blades, then, you know, it’s the same thing basically, but just a little bit different.
Uh you know, you’re skating forward and you want to take your single foot, usually it’s your right foot and you want to lift your toe up,
so that the heel stopper makes contact with the ground, and you just want to continue to apply that pressure on that toe, stop until you slow down, you come to a standstill,
so that’s the toe, stop, drag.
It’s pretty simple when you’re first starting out, nothing simple, and I’m fully aware of that.
Um So, again, practice this, going slow. Another great technique, as I mentioned in the last podcast episode.

[6:27] Get on the carpet, get on the grass, and actually just practice doing the motion of putting your toe stop down on the ground.
And that’s basically you standing on one ft and then you moving the other foot behind you.
You want that foot when you’re putting the toe stop down to be.

[6:46] Out to the right or left, depending on which foot you’re standing on and which foot you’re dragging, You want it to be away from the other skate so that your other skate can still skate freely.
You know, don’t put that toe stop in front of your other skate or you’re going down right, and you don’t really want to put it behind you, directly behind the other skate.

[7:06] Uh if you, you know, you do want to put the toe stop if you’re on quad skates behind you and you want to drag it, but you want it to be,
Out, like at a 45° angle, let’s say, like a 20-30° angle from your body, so that it doesn’t get behind that other skate that’s rolling.
You don’t want your your skates to clip each other, and then you wind up, you wind up going down.
So in the last episode, I also talked a lot about the next method to stop, which can work really well if you’re wearing the proper safety gear, like knee pads, uh and that’s to take a knee.
So taking a knee is um a great way for beginners to learn how to stop.
But it does have that requirement, you gotta have knee pads on.
I mean, I guess you don’t have to have knee pads on, but I certainly, I certainly wouldn’t want to take a knee if I was going at any kind of speed and put my knee directly down on the ground, that would hurt.
So, again, you know, this is where you’re you’re skating rolling forward and you want to put both of your feet next to each other, make sure you have good balance.
You might want to stretch out your arms into a t. To give you some extra balance and then you want to kind of slowly go down to one knee and have that one knee, you know that knee pad scrape across the ground.
And until you get to, you know until you come to a stop.

[8:27] And it’s really the same way actually that you get up from a fall.
You know when you are when you fall you basically slide around the two knees and you get up into into a one knee stance and then you press off your knee.
So it’s very similar to that.
Um And so you just basically do this to until you come to a halt um.

[8:53] I personally if I was gonna choose one of these two methods as a beginner, I prefer the toe stop drag, I mean that’s how I learned how to stop, but I know that there’s a lot of derby players and you know other types of skaters out there,
who prefer different ways of stopping.
And so when I was first learning I always use my toe stop.
Um but I also was a artistic figure skater skating at an artistic figure skating skate club and skating rink.
And so everybody had toast stops in.
Um there are a lot of skate types,
skating styles like jam skating and rhythm skating, which jam skating is kind of a part of rhythm skating, but anyway um you know uh even some derby folks that most derby folks where,
uh where toe stops, so do speed skaters as well because they like to run on them,
but there are all kinds of different ways to stop on roller skates, tons.
And so these are just the two that most beginners usually wind up using when they’re first getting started.
Another great one third technique for how to come to a stop is to do a T stop.

[10:07] And so a T stop is basically where you don’t use your break, but instead you actually use your wheels to stop you.
So if you can imagine you’re skating forward, you know, remember you want to bend your knees,
and then what you do is you basically lift one single foot up off the ground,
I’m left handed, so I typically lift my right foot up off the ground For those of you who are right handed, you might want to lift your left foot up off the ground, and then what you do is you take your your foot and you turn it.

[10:41] 90 degrees until it’s pointing outwards, whichever way you’re going, you know, whichever foot you’re on, you want that foot to point outward, and then you take that foot.

[10:52] And you put it behind your other skate to where it forms a T. Or an L.
You can kind of put it off to the side a little bit.
And basically what you do is you put your wheels down on the ground and because they’re perpendicular to the way that you’re rolling, it slows you down and you come to a a slow halt.
Now, the biggest problem with this method, and it’s a great way actually for beginners to stop as well, is you just want to make sure that that back foot doesn’t get too close to the foot, that’s in front,
otherwise you can wind up clipping the wheels on the front skate and down you go.
So, um you just want to leave a little bit of space there between the two skates, and this is another great way to stop.
Um so that’s a that’s a great way to do that. Now, the other big drawback to this one, and, you know, I can hear some folks out there going, I would never do that.
Um it’s not great for your wheels over the long term, you can actually get flat spots on your wheels if this is how you stop, like over and over and over and over again.
Um because you’re dragging those wheels across the ground and it will wear the wheels thin, basically over time.
I mean, we’re talking about like quite a quite a bit of time, uh, several, several months probably stopping like this. You can start to wear him down.

[12:20] Um, so that’s why it’s important to to learn multiple ways of stopping, both for your own personal need, as well as for, you know, the longevity of your equipment.

[12:32] So let’s let’s move on, that was number three, I’m gonna go to number four which is the slalom stop and I use this one actually a lot of times when I need to slow down but don’t really need to slow down fast.
And so this is kind of like skiing, you know if you’re,
if you’re basically rolling forward typically you have to be doing this going at a decent speed, like a beginner speed where you’re really just barely going very fast at all.
This is a kind of a harder technique to practice, but you know if you got a little bit of speed going, it’s basically where you,
swing from side to side, kind of like you’re skiing and that’s swinging from side to side actually slows you down.
So you know the steps of this are you know you’re basically you’re skating forwards, you have your feet parallel to each other and then you kind of turn your skates From one side to the other.

[13:28] As you’re as you’re moving and that quick change of direction of going from one side to the other, it actually starts to slow you down.
And so each time you do that you kind of pivot and you shift your body weight ah and that helps you to come to a halt, come to a stop another great way.
And probably my preferred way actually of stopping these days is the plow stop and you know performing a plow stop.
It’s just I think it’s a great way to to to come to a stop and I like it because I don’t wear toe stops.
Uh and most of my skates and I don’t like doing t stops because I don’t want to flatten my wheels.
Um so I typically do do a plow stop, and so it’s kind of a scissoring motion that you make with your feet and you really push in on the in part of your skate as you’re stopping.
Um the front kind of like balls of your feet on on the big toe, you’re pushing really hard there as your feet come together, and I can do this at a pretty high speed and come to a stop pretty quick.
Um Now, if I’m going super fast, this doesn’t work as easily, but.

[14:50] But you can do it going at a pretty good, pretty good speed,
so again, if you, you know, you’re rolling forward, you want to make sure you bend your knees,
and you have both, obviously your legs parallel to each other, and you’re gonna slowly kind of widen your legs out while keeping them parallel, you want your legs to be about, you know, one and 1.5 to 2 shoulder length apart, maybe more.
I typically go if I’m going faster, my legs go really wide, like, I don’t know, maybe maybe 2.5 or three times shoulder length apart, like really wide.
Um So this is not really for a beginner, this is more for you, intermediate skaters out there, um.

[15:31] And then basically, as you have your feet really wide like that,
you can actually push out on the outer edges of that kind of v that you’re making, and that will actually slow you down, or you can actually bring your feet,
in words, this is the real plow, stop you point your toes inwards and your feet start to roll towards each other.
And as you’re doing that, you push on the inner part towards the big toe front, big toe on both skates, and the harder you push there, the quicker you’ll slow down.
And so typically the faster you’re going, the wider your feet need to go and and the quicker your feet need to come in.
Now, obviously, the scary part here is if you if you misjudge it and your feet come in, I mean, it could actually hit each other, right, and that would have you have you flying forward, but um,
yeah, most intermediate advanced skaters um they know how to stop this way, and it’s kind of a go to for a lot of people that I see at the rink,
um but you just want to be careful that you don’t bang your skates together if you’re going fast or you will fall.

[16:37] Really spectacularly.
I mean, yeah, so it’s a it’s a not a good way to fall,
um but that’s a fun one, and that’s the one I like, um next up we’re going to talk, this one is definitely for more intermediate and advanced people, the rest of these methods really are,
um really, if you’re a beginner stick with the toe, stop, drag, stick with the t stop stick with the taking a knee, most of these others are for folks who have been skating for a little bit while for a little while.

[17:06] Um, so this one is going to require, this stop is going to require you to actually be going backwards.
So if you’re going backwards on your skates, um you can do the one toe stop, drag, going backwards, and this one’s a little bit different than if you’re going forwards.
Um, when you’re rolling backwards on, on quad skates, you want to basically, you know, you have your knees bent and your skating backwards, you know, leaning just a little bit forward, you don’t want to lean backwards when you skate backwards, always lean forward,
a little bit, and then you basically want to press the toast.

[17:41] Portion of, you know, one ft down onto the toe stopper, and typically when I do this, my toe stop is around the back wheels of the skate that I’m balancing on.
Um and you want to make sure it’s out to the side, make sure it’s not too close to the other skate, otherwise you could clip your wheels and.

[18:01] That is no fun falling backwards because you will fall backwards if you clip your wheel um great way to fall backwards, I mean a horrible way to fall backwards, but that’s you, that can absolutely be how you do it,
and you know, if you’re on roller blades doing this um your your heel is where your toe stop is, so you’re gonna typically want to make sure that, you know, obviously you lift your foot,
up and have that, he’ll break, pushed down into it.

[18:30] Um into the ground and that until you slowly, you know, come down into a standstill.
Um The next method is my daughter lily’s favorite way to stop,
and she always looks so cool when she does it at the skating rink and all the beginners turn and look at her and like that’s neat um and it’s basically the to stop going backwards.
So this is where you typically, she’s skating forward fast And she will do a two ft turn.

[19:01] To go backwards and then she will just,
jump up onto her to toe stops at the same time as, you know, it’s not a jump, it’s just pivot up onto the toes and she just slides right across the floor, you know, on her toe stops.

[19:17] And so this is definitely a more advanced move.
You don’t want to be trying this if you’re a brand new beginner.
Um But as you get better on your feet and you can skate backwards, um this is definitely something you can practice when you’re going slow, and then as you get more and more speed and you get more confidence, then you can try it as you’re going faster and faster and faster.

[19:38] The next few methods.

[19:41] The, well, the next one in particular, I don’t use a lot, but it’s called the power slide.
Um but this is one again where you are actually skating backwards,
and you keep your knees bent, obviously, just like you always do, and then you take one ft kind of turn it to the side, kind of like you’re doing a toast top or a T stop,
But the only difference here is you bend more in the front knee and you take the back leg and you stretch it all the way out at a 90° angle and you push it into the ground,
and if you’re at a rink and you have hard wheels on, you’ll actually slide.

[20:21] To come to a stop.
That’s the idea, that’s why it’s called the power glide. But if you’ve got like super soft,
outdoor wheels and the skating rink has a super sticky floor, because they put all this coding and you’re, you know, you know, this coating on it,
um you’re not gonna slide, your back foot is just gonna pop up and bounce all around.
So this really only works if you have the right wheels matched with the right surface.
And um so, so anyway, it’s a more advanced stop,
but it’s definitely one that a lot of folks have used, and I see a lot of speed skaters, especially Derby skaters, more advanced folks that have been skating for a while use this stop.
Um the next stop is called the spin out and this is probably one of my favorites because I’m an old art skater and I can still do two ft spins,
I can kind of still do one ft spins, but not quite as good as I used to be able to, you know, I used to be able to do sit, spins and camels and backwards camels and all kinds of stuff, but um.

[21:30] Not so much anymore, but with this one, um basically what you do is you’re you’re skating,
forwards And you take one of your feet and you kind of turn it 180°, so that your two ft are basically the two heels touch each other, and you basically spin.

[21:50] And you go into a spin, and the spin is typically like a wide spin, a very wide spin to start wide circle, and you then use that wide circle,
and you’re pressing inwards on the inner part of your, like your big toe, and you use that to kind of then pull yourself to a stop.

[22:14] And it works really well. It’s actually a great way if you know how to spin, it’s a great way to come to a stop quickly.
I use it all the time after, like if I don’t do it much anymore, but like when the kids were little and I used to go race and stuff like that with them, um I would use it to to come to a stop quickly,
and then the last one that I have on the site is the hockey stop and I have to admit, I can’t really do a hockey stop, like I used to, I think I probably need to get like some super super slick wheels.
I tried to do this in the garage but I was using some 78 a wheels and you really need to have a pretty good speed going,
to to perform a hockey stop um for you, beginners out there, it’s probably gonna sound really scary,
and it’s because it is, you know, you start, I know you guys that are roller hockey guys out there are probably listening to this area, like it’s not hard and you’re right, it’s not um,
with with practice and and good uh you know, and you’re good on your skates, but you start by rolling forwards and basically while you’re at full speed you turn your feet to the side,
and um you press, you know, your your parallel feet out in front of you and you lean slightly to the opposite way of where your slide of where you’re sliding.

[23:38] So you’re kind of leaning to your left or your right and your feet are sliding the opposite direction, and so your wheels will slide across the surface until you come to a standstill.
So again, this is, you know, making sure you marry your wheels up with the right surface.
If you’ve got, you know, enough slide there and enough give and honestly enough speed, then this.

[24:03] This will, this will work. Um but you also got to have a little bit of confidence honestly to pull this off. I used to do this all the time when I was a teenager and now that I’m older, I’m like, yeah, it’s cool.
I mean, it makes a a really awesome like screeching noise if you do it just right.
And that’s why we used to do it as kids because it would make everybody turn and look at us, you know, those of us, those of us who as kids who wanted that kind of attention, which I always did.
Um but now that I’m older, I’m like, I’ll probably just get hurt.
What’s the point? Um so for those of you who are out there who are really good at hockey stops and maybe you’re in your forties or fifties, you know, shoot me a video and send it to me.
And if it’s good enough, I will replace my really bad hockey stop video that I have on my, on my web page with yours.

[24:56] Okay, that’s that’s true. I will do that.
Um so you just got to shoot a video, put it up on youtube if you can do an awesome hockey Stop, send me an email Jeff at roller skate dad dot com.
And if I like it, I’ll stick it up there and then you can show people how to do a proper hockey stop because mine is not so great.
Um So anyway, those are the 10 ways to stop on uh, you know, on quads, Most of these, especially the more advanced ones that went over,
um work exactly for the most part the same on rollerblades, you know, other in line skates.
Um really roller blades, and in line skates are the same thing.
Uh when I think it in line skates a lot of times, I think about um in line speed skates, which those don’t have toe stops, but.

[25:49] Whereas roller blades typically do at least the more beginner and intermediate ones do.

[25:56] So anyway, um that’s all the stops I had to cover again, because this is a how to roller skate series and it’s mostly for beginners.
You’re going to want to stick with the toe stop, drag, going forward.
You’re going to want to stick with going down to one knee with knee pads on.
Don’t do the one knee, please don’t do the one knee stop without knee pads on.
And um and then the t stop, those are your three stops, really uh sure, you might crash into a wall occasionally, just teasing.
But um, you know, and you’ll, and you’ll fall and that’ll be another way that you’ll stop.
But hopefully you get good enough here, over these next several weeks, as you’ve been listening to these podcast episodes, you pick out your skates and you get out there and you practice, you know, hopefully 2 to 3 times a week,
You will absolutely get to a point where you can roller skate, I have no doubt, I don’t care how old you are, whether you’re 10 or.

[26:57] 110, you can do it. So just keep going, keep practicing keep trying and do the best you can, you’ll you’ll get there. Just takes time and practice.

[27:08] So, I think that’s everything for this episode that I wanted to cover.
This is episode 24. So, if you would like to get a transcription,
of this podcast episode or if you’d like links to the 10 tips for how to stop on roller skates or any of the other things that I talked about in this episode, go to roller skate dad dot com slash 24.
And all that stuff will be there for you so that you can easily, you know, go back and and maybe click on anything that I may have talked about where you want to see more.
Uh every one of the stops that I talked about here. I did record videos and there on that page and so you can check those out there, silent movies.
Um kind of charlie, Chaplin style.
Um so, so don’t expect any words or you know me speaking or anything.
Um but you can, you know, go back and listen to this podcast episode on that page.
Um, and see the videos as well at the same time.
So, I hope you check that out and I hope you guys like that.

[28:11] All right. I think that is everything for this episode again. I wanna thank you guys so much for being here and until next time.
Get on out there and skate.
Thank you for listening to the roller skate dad podcast at www dot roller skate dad dot com.
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