How to gain speed in Inline Skating?

Question

How do i gain speed, i mean rollerblading. I use the ones where they're are 4 wheels in a straight line. Inline Skates. I know how to rollerblade and all that but how do i gain speed quickly and keep it?, Also when im roller blading forwards how do i make the transition to backwards without loosing balance?

Answer 1

The primary is good form.  It makes skating quickly much easier.

Get your knees bent.  It lengthens the power part of the stride and gets you lower, out of the wind.

Push though your heels.  Your leg muscles are much stronger than the ankle muscles.  

Push sideways your skates should flare out slighly with the toes and then the toes should move more into a forward position.  Pushing towards the back with your skates limits your speed to how fast you can kick your skates backwards.  Pushing sideways allows your legs to much much slower than you are skating.

There are many ways to transition front to back.  I am not into jumping or pivoting on pairs of wheels so I use a modified spin stop.

   Glide forward with both skates on the ground.

   Pick up the heel of one skate and let the toe rotate outwards.

   As the skate rotates, set the heel back down.  

Your feet are now at a wide angle from each other and you will be rotating around a circle facing inwards.  Try it both ways, most people rotate better in one direction than the other.

As you are turned backwards, straighten the skates out and you will be moving backwards on momentum.

When I want to turn back forwards, I start turning slightly then turn the toe of the other skate out and skate forward on it.