This article is a collection of slow-motion videos illustrating basic inline skating moves.
I created these videos in 2026 because I couldn’t find the kind of slow-motion skating clips I wanted to learn from. The idea came from slow-motion swimming videos I found online. As a self-taught beginner swimmer, I like watching a clip over and over until I understand what makes a movement work. I might loop it 20 times, go swimming and reflect on what I saw, then return to the clip for another look.
Most swimming tutorials describe the two-beat front crawl in terms of leg kicks. I’ve come to understand it differently: not as kicking two legs independently, but as coordinating the movement of both legs with the “swinging arms”, “walking legs”, body rotation, and hip movement, much like ordinary walking. The distinction matters. Just as a free skate in inline skating doesn’t simply reach out to a new location on its own (see this article), a swimming leg doesn’t move in isolation from the rest of the body.
For me, slow-motion videos are a way to discover these less obvious movement patterns. I watch them over and over, imitate the movements physically, and keep going back and forth between observation and practice until the movements begin to make sense.
This is how I learn, and perhaps it’s how you learn, too.
I’d searched for useful slow-motion videos of basic inline skating moves throughout my years of learning to skate. Great beginner tutorials abound on YouTube, but I found very few slow-motion clips that helped me understand the movements themselves. So I decided to make my own.
You’ll find more articles focused on slow-motion analysis here.
Wear your protective gear
If you’re going to learn by imitating the skating movements shown in this article, wear all the protective gear shown in the image below. I don’t advocate skating without proper protection, even though you may find older videos of me skating with nothing but wrist guards.
Like many skaters, I sometimes take calculated risks. But when I’m not filming tutorials, I skate in full protective gear, especially when learning new moves. You should, too. See this section for further motivation, and this sections on protective gear.
You won’t see my padded shorts in the image on the right, but trust me, I’m wearing them under my jeans. In some of the slow-motion videos in this article, you may even spot the outlines of the padding through my jeans.
Never fall backward on skates
Many first-time inline skaters show up at a rink or park and soon find themselves falling backward. This is dangerous: you can injure your tailbone or suffer a concussion. For some beginners, one bad fall is enough to end their skating days before they’ve even begun.
I’m not going to film myself falling backward like a newbie, in slow motion or otherwise. Instead, here’s a relatively safe way to demonstrate what happens when a skater falls backward.
First, I’m wearing full protective gear and standing on grass, which provides some cushioning for my simulated fall. I squat all the way down into a deep Asian squat, first pressing my shins firmly against the tongues of my skate boots to establish balance. My body is now only toddler-height off the ground. With my chin tucked in, I gently lean backward and let myself fall onto the grass. Starting so low and moving so slowly minimizes the impact.
Watch the slow-motion video. My tailbone hits the ground first. Then my head hits and bounces off the grass.
Now imagine doing the same thing from a standing position on pavement. Your tailbone travels much farther and builds up far more momentum before striking the hard ground. Your head travels even farther, potentially dropping from nearly your full standing height. The result can be a devastating impact.
This brings us to two key messages that I’ll repeat throughout this article.
First, do everything you can to avoid falling backward onto your tailbone and head. Watch the slow-motion demonstration again and consider how little opportunity you have to protect yourself once you’re falling backward uncontrollably. Padded shorts can cushion an impact, but they can’t eliminate the risk of injury, and excessive padding can restrict mobility. Trying to catch yourself with your hands and arms is no guarantee of safety, either. You can break a wrist or arm and still hit your head.
Almost my entire 23-chapter tutorial, How to Inline Skate, is devoted to helping you develop a few skating habits until they become second nature, reducing your chances of falling in the first place. Check it out.
Second, when a fall does happen, learn how to fall in ways that reduce the risk of striking your head and tailbone. Sometimes you’ll fall through sheer bad luck; other times, falling is part of learning a new move. You can’t prevent every fall, but you can practice safer ways to handle them. The next videos demonstrate some alternative falling techniques.
On my slow-motion videos
Many of the video clips on this page are presented in pairs: Normal-speed playback on the left, and the same movement in slow motion on the right. On desktop browsers, you can play them simultaneously to see how the movements you hear and see at normal speed correspond to the individual movements revealed in slow motion.
All videos can be downloaded freely, so you can play them back frame by frame on your own device if you wish. Click on the share icon at the top right of a video to access the download link. Scroll down on the “Share video” popup if you don’t see a “Download this video” link. On your own devices, you can play a downloaded video in a perpetual loop. Many video players allow you to manually run this slow-motion clip forward and backward with a mouse scroll, for in-depth analysis.
Sometimes you’ll want to share one of these videos, but sending separate links to the normal-speed and slow-motion versions is inconvenient. To make sharing easier, I’ve included a third link in each video caption that plays both versions back to back: normal speed first, followed immediately by slow motion.
Here is one such video demonstrating the backward-fall from the last section.
Get back up on one knee
Before I cover alternative falling techniques, I want to show you how to get back up safely after a fall. Until you learn to stand up safely, you can’t learn to fall safely. Every time you try to stand up, you create another opportunity to lose your balance and fall the wrong way.
Start by kneeling on both knee pads, keeping your torso upright. Bring one foot forward and plant your skate on the ground, as if you were about to be knighted. Place both hands on the raised knee and use it for support as you lift your body. This may seem overly cautious, but getting back up on pavement is harder than it looks.
Study the slow-motion clip and see if you can figure out why this is the most widely recommended way to get back up on skates. Think about it for a moment. Ready? Here’s my take.
I think the key is that this arm-and-leg position naturally brings you into a scissored skating stance, with one skate forward and the other behind, your shins flexed and your knees bent. This is one of the most stable skating postures. You can pause at any point during the rise and remain balanced, rather than having to commit to one continuous movement. Compare this with slow-motion videos showing the Squatting Posture in a later section to see why.
If you must choose, fall forward
If a cat falls, it instinctively twists its body to land on all four paws, using its legs to cushion the impact and protect its head and torso. Skaters don’t have that luxury, but we can learn to respond to a fall in ways that reduce the risk of injury.
Of course, falling sideways is often a better option, and I’ll cover that later. But if you have to choose between falling forward and falling backward, choose forward.
Lower your torso by deeply flexing your shins and bending your knees. Gently lower your knees to the ground and slide on your knee pads. Your upper body will continue moving forward, so raise your head and brace for further impact with your elbow pads. Continue sliding on your knee and elbow pads. Turn your head sideways to avoid a face plant, and let your wrist guards make contact only at the very last moment. Never put your bare fingers down on the pavement.
From personal experience, I know you have only a split second to react when you fall. That’s why I recommend practicing this sequence on grass from time to time, so the movements become muscle memory before you need them. See this section on How to Inline Skate for excellent demonstrations of this technique by some of my favorite inline skating personalities.
Crumble into a ball and roll sideways
The slow-motion video below demonstrates three sideways falls. First, I fall from a relatively tall skating stance. Next, I tumble from a mildly crouched posture. Finally, I roll sideways after crumbling into something resembling a football.
This is by far the preferred falling technique among inline skaters around the world. Ivo from ThisIsSoul calls it the “mermaid fall”, an excellent name and mnemonic. As you watch the three falls, picture a stereotypical mermaid sitting on a rock. Notice how the legs are folded from the start, like a mermaid’s tail. Even in the final, football-shaped roll, the legs and buttocks contact the ground first, while the head and torso initially remain relatively upright.
The ideal is to roll sideways in a compact ball rather than tumble from a tall stance. But we don’t always have the time or opportunity to curl up first. Many skaters instinctively resist a fall at the first sign of instability, flailing their legs and skates in an attempt to recover. Ironically, this often leaves them standing taller than their normal skating posture, making the eventual impact even harder.
Here’s a mantra I want you to commit to memory. When you feel unstable, don’t fight the fall. Simply yell out:
“Oh, no. Get Low!”
Lean your shins forward, bend your knees, and curl your body into a ball. Sometimes you’ll regain your balance and can coast in this compact posture until you come to a stop. Other times, you need to stop immediately. Imagine a pregnant mother pushing her firstborn in a stroller right in front of you. You need to get out of her way. If a fall is unavoidable, roll sideways, away from them. Keep your chin tucked in as you roll to reduce the risk of hitting your head.
Astute readers may notice that this mermaid roll doesn’t use all the protective pads on your four limbs. Your body also makes contact with the ground as you roll. In a real skating situation, you may scrape your clothing or even your skin, and some body parts will contact the ground without padding. All true. But instead of concentrating the impact on a single point, you spread it across a much larger surface area and over a longer period, potentially reducing the force on any one part of your body. You can wear padded shorts like I do. You can also continue rolling farther than I demonstrate in this video. See the next section.
Roll like a ball onto grass
If you have a choice, crumble into a ball and roll sideways onto grass, as demonstrated below. This mermaid roll looks slightly different from the previous one because the skater is already moving when he initiates the roll. He has to manage not only the downward fall of his body, but also his forward momentum.
Watch how he first scissors his skates for stability, then lowers his body to reduce the height of the fall. Finally, he rolls diagonally onto the grass, gradually dissipating his forward momentum instead of taking a direct impact on the pavement.
This video also demonstrates the “knight kneeling” technique for getting back up after a fall. Note how the skater steps away from the grass and back onto the pavement. Watch how he angles his left skate on the grass for support, before pushing off with his right skate onto the smooth pavement. I’ll cover this grass-to-pavement transition in more detail in a later section.
Always squat and never stand up straight
The following video illustrates various degrees of what I call the “Squatting Posture,” ranging from standing completely upright to a deep squat commonly known as the Asian squat. The video plays at normal speed first, followed by a slow-motion repeat.
First, I want you to confirm one thing: throughout almost the entire video, the skater cannot see his toes, except for the brief moment when he stands completely upright. As you probably already know, skaters consider not being able to see their toes a sign of good skating posture and stable balance.
Next, I want you to think about why his knee pads block his view of his toes. Many skaters believe that deep knee bends are the key to achieving this ideal skating posture. But I implore you to watch the slow-motion clip again. Notice how the knee angle varies from about 180° when standing tall to roughly 30° in the Asian squat. Yet the toes remain hidden throughout most of this range, becoming visible only near full extension. So knee bend alone cannot explain it.
Watch again, this time focusing on the shins. Do you see how they remain deeply inclined forward almost throughout the entire video, except for the brief moment when the skater stands completely upright?
The shins. The shins are the secret to unlocking a great, stable skating stance.
You don’t have to take my word for it. The next video compares the same Squatting Posture on the left with what I call the “Ankle-Cast Posture” on the right. Both skaters try to lower their bodies, but the Ankle-Cast skater keeps his shins nearly perpendicular to his feet, with his ankles effectively locked at 90°.
Admittedly, this is how many people walk in modern shoes, with their feet and shins forming roughly a right angle. But you must break away from this habit when skating. The ability to flex your ankles and incline your shins forward is what skaters call ankle mobility.
With his ankles locked, the skater on the right struggles to lower his body into a stable posture. The more he bends his knees, the more his back, buttocks, and thighs conspire to tip him backward, as his entire body weight is centered on the rear wheels. To compensate, he has to lean his head and upper body aggressively forward just to keep standing.
I believe this ankle-cast posture is a major reason beginners fall backward and hurt themselves.
Rewatch the comparison video. Notice again how the squatting skater remains in a compact stance, straightening up only briefly between positions. Now compare him with the Ankle-Cast skater. Despite his exaggerated forward lean, the latter never achieves the same posture in which his knee pads block his view of his toes. He can always see his toes, largely because his ankles remain locked.
The Ankle-Cast skater is effectively trying to skate while standing upright, despite leaning his upper body forward. His balance depends heavily on that compensating lean, and a small disturbance can more easily throw him off balance.
When I say “standing up straight,” I’m referring specifically to the angle between the shin and the foot, not whether the back is vertical. See the section “Why Am I Unstable on Inline Skates?” and the sections that follow for more details.
Never skate standing upright. Keep your shins flexed forward.
From squatting to scissors to parallel turns
The Scissor Posture is a well-known stable skating stance. When coasting over uneven surfaces or through debris, skaters often adopt this posture to reduce the risk of tripping over obstacles.
Study the following slow-motion video and see if you can figure out why this stance is so stable. Here’s a hint: the skater starts in a mild Squatting Posture, then eases into the Scissor Posture simply by gliding his right skate forward. This effectively extends his support across a span longer than two skate lengths. He can shift his balance forward or backward by adjusting his shin and knee angles, all while maintaining the same stable, squatting posture.
Next, the skater squats his body even lower, allowing him to push his right skate farther forward into a deep scissor stance. This gives him the stability and control to initiate a tight Parallel Turn on a narrow biking trail. Throughout the turn, he inches his right skate farther forward until the gap between his front and rear skates exceeds one skate length. Achieving such a deep scissor stance requires a deeply inclined left shin.
New skaters often struggle with Parallel Turns. When I ask whether they adopted the Scissor Posture before initiating a turn, they usually say yes.
New skaters often find it hard to turn with a Parallel Turn. When asked whether they have adopted the Scissor Posture before initiating a turn, they usually answer yes.
But there’s scissor stance, and then there’s scissor stance. I believe many beginners with locked ankles can manage only a shallow, unstable scissor stance. Without a stable stance, they struggle to lean into a circle, which is essential for executing a Parallel Turn.
For more on body leaning and Parallel Turns, check out this section.
The following video shows a skater swapping the front and rear skates at will, all while maintaining a proper Squatting Posture. Watch how his shins alternately incline forward and straighten as he moves the front skate backward and the rear skate forward. Notice how he maintains his stable skating stance throughout the transition.
Stepping away from grass onto pavement
Many of us advice learners to practice V-steps, the Squatting Posture, the Scissor Posture, falling techniques, and even crossover steps on grass. So you’ll often find yourself moving back and forth between grass and pavement.
I don’t recommend skating on grass. With regular inline skate wheels, I think it’s too risky, not to mention strenuous. Instead, I recommend simply walking in your skates on grass. If your wheels tend to roll even on grass, you can walk sideways using crossover steps, as demonstrated below. See this section on sidestepping for details.
Be careful when stepping off grass and back onto pavement. As soon as your wheels reach the hard surface, they can suddenly roll freely. You’ll want to keep one skate firmly planted on the grass while you bring the other onto the pavement.
One way to establish a secure foothold is to angle your final step on the grass perpendicular to your direction of travel. Think of it as just another crossover step in your sequence. See the following video for a demonstration.
Gliding away from pavement onto grass
When you leave pavement and roll onto grass, you’ll encounter the opposite problem. Your skates may roll freely on smooth pavement, until they suddenly don’t when they hit the grass.
If you’ve already come to a stop on the pavement, you can use the same angled-skate technique I described in the previous section. Again, the angled skate helps brace against the ground and establish a secure foothold.
But what if you’re still moving and your wheels are rolling as you approach the grass? In that case, I recommend turning your body sideways and stepping onto the grass in a crossover motion. This lets you dissipate your remaining momentum gradually instead of running your skates straight into the grass and coming to an abrupt stop.
Hit the grass running
If you must leave pavement for grass at high speed, you have two main options. You can crumble into a ball and roll sideways onto the grass, as demonstrated in an earlier section. But if you haven’t managed to lower your body in time, you may have to resort to running on grass, crossover-style.
And I really do mean running. Watch the following slow-motion video. The skater approaches at high speed, standing tall, then makes a split-second decision to hit the grass running. Between crossover steps, notice how both skates become airborne, just as people do when running in ordinary shoes.
But don’t actually run straight ahead as if you were wearing shoes. Your wheels may keep rolling forward and cause you to slip, or they may catch on a twig and trip you up. This is really an extreme version of the crossover steps I demonstrated in the previous section.
Don’t try this until you’re comfortable sidestepping on grass without your skates getting tangled up with each other.
Last edited: 2016-11-01