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How to Heel-Toe
This is skating on the back wheel of one skate, and the toe wheel of another. This trick is actually really easy, and just about any skater that has been skating for a couple of months should be capable of learning this in just a few short sessions.
Prerequisite Skills:
- Ability to scissor your skates
- Confident at doing parallel turns
- Basic to intermediate ankle strength and control
Step 1 - Front Heel wheel only:
- Learn to skate on the heel wheel of one skate. Do this stage slowly until you have plenty of confidence, as your skates become really twitchy and hard to control on one wheel, when compared with the stability found from having all wheels in contact with the skating surface.
- Start with your weight equally distributed on both feet, with your feet scissored. Make sure that if you have a heel brake, that your
heel brake is the rear-most foot. Trying to skate on the back wheel of your heel brake skate will result in you coming to a grinding halt and/or falling over. :) Thus you would normally have your left foot forward, as most people have their heel brake on their right foot.
With both knees bent, straighten your front leg so that it is nearly straight. This will force the toes of your skate up, and leave the forward skate running along on the heel wheel only.
- Remember to leave the other skate flat on the surface, as it is much easier to learn this trick one leg at a time.
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Step 2 - Rear Toe wheel only:
Learn to skate on the toe wheel of your rear skate. Do this stage slowly until you gain
confidence!
- Again, start with your legs scissored, and with roughly equal weight distribution on both feet.
- Bend the knee of your rear-most leg, pushing the foot backwards at the same time, so forcing your skate to go onto the toe-wheel. Be sure to do this slowly the first few times, as it is easy to loose control. It's
probably a little bit harder to control your skate on the toe-wheel than on the heel wheel
as in step 1 above.
- You'll need to bend your knee a lot, probably at least 90 degrees in order to be able to get the right amount of heel lift, and enough weight onto the rear leg.
Try pointing your toes like a ballerina, and try getting the knee of the
rear-most leg about half way down the calf of your front leg, and that
should give you enough knee bend and weight on the toe wheel.
- If you find the toe-wheel skate wobbling around, this is most likely because you haven't got enough weight on that leg. The easiest solution is to place as much weight as possible on this leg.
Step 3 - Together:
Combine the two moves.
- Once you can easily do both step 1 and 2, and change between each relatively quickly, you're ready to try doing both at the same time.
- Do a step 2 first, going onto the toe-wheel of your rear-most skate. This is the harder move, and going onto the heel-wheel of your front skate is easier and
thus less likely to de-stabilize you.
- Now push the front skate forward by straightening that leg.
You should now be doing a heel-toe skate, and with a little practice you will probably be able to do some slalom quite quickly. That was relatively easy, right?
Disclaimer
As always, skating is a dangerous sport, and you assume all risk when taking
part. It is very likely that you will fall while skating, and no responsibility can be taken by either
myself or LondonSkaters.com
for any injuries you get. After all, it is your choice to learn this move,
and if you don't want to assume any risks, then don't try to learn it. :)
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