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Inline Skating Newsletter Article

Backward Movement

By Liz Miller

The following is an excerpt from the third edition of Get Rolling, the Beginner's Guide to Inline Skating.--Liz

Linked Backward Swizzles

Let’s bring Part 2 (backward movement) of the Football Drill to full fruition. Don’t forget to watch over your shoulder as you proceed.

  1. Start by repeating the Football Drill three or four times to get your posture and feet in gear.
  2. Just before your heel wheels meet going backward, pivot on the balls of your feet until you are in an A-Stance.
  3. Begin a new side-directed push with your toe wheels. Don’t push toward the back or you’ll topple forward!
  4. Fully recover both skates before each new backward Swizzle.

Practice Tips

If you’re having trouble pulling the skates back together:

Backward Strokes

You can achieve the basic backward stroke by linking together a series of half Backward Swizzles. This skill is best learned on a very slight parking lot drainage slope.

  1. With your back to the slope, begin a series of linked Backward Swizzles and get into the swizzle rhythm.
  2. At your narrowest A-Stance, start a sideways push against the toe wheel of the left skate to begin a Half Swizzle. The left skate begins its arc out to the side while the right one rolls straight backward.
  3. As the left skate comes back under your left hip, shift your weight over it and begin to press the right skate’s toe wheel into a Half Swizzle.

Continue practicing until you can get a short glide from each Half Swizzle (without lifting a skate off the ground).

Practice Tips

If you just can’t get any momentum:

After you successfully achieve backward momentum, start concentrating on swizzling from the knee down.