Slalom skating is widely popular in Europe and Asia, but just getting going in the United States. In Paris, London or Seoul you will see the locals out with rows of cones practicing dozens of different tricks. Freestyle slalom skating is about skating with both fluid style and precision. Getting started is really not as hard as it looks!
Here’s a quick overview to answer your questions and get you started.
Skates
You can start to learn slaloms on your recreational skates, but as you improve, you will probably want more specialized skates. Slalom skates are designed for tight turns in small spaces at low speeds. So you will probably want to use different skates for slalom than you do for recreational or fitness skating.
When getting started slalom skating, you will quickly realize the heel brake will be in the way and can easily trip you when your feet are crossed. The only real solution is to learn an effective T-Stop, and remove your brake - yet another reason you may want different skates for slalom.
For slalom, you want a skate that makes precise and sharp turns. So the best slalom skates have a very supportive boot, and you should fit them fairly tight so your foot does not move in the boot. To make turning easier, find a skate with a short frame, somewhere around 235 - 250mm (measured from the front axel to the back axel). Typically, this size frames will have 72 mm or 76 mm wheels, which is a great size for slalom.
The Seba skates from Universkate are designed specifically for slalom. Next, there is the Powerslide Maven and Hardcore skates, available online. The Rollerblade Twister is available in skate shops and online. Hockey skates are another option, especially for women with small feet.
Wheels and Rockering
As with skates, you can start with the wheels you have. But when purchasing wheels, look for a hard wheel, such as an 82A or higher. The harder wheels will last longer, and roll better without gripping too much.
To make their skates turn even easier, most slalom skaters ‘rocker’ their wheels. Out of the box, all skates are made to have all four wheels flat on the ground: O-O-O-O. Rockering means adjusting the frame or wheels so middle two wheels are lower: O-O-O-O. This makes the skate turn very easily - but now you are really skating on two wheels at time, so it takes some getting used to.
Some skate frames are made with adjustable axels, so you can move the middle axels down, or the end axels up. For most skates, rockering a skate is done by using a smaller front and back wheel.
If your skates normally take four 76 mm wheels, you would put a 72 mm wheel in the front and back positions. Some skates are made with a hi-lo setup, with an arrangement like 76-76-80-80. Even though there are two different sized wheels, all four will ride flat on the ground, like this: o-o-O-O Here again, you can make the front and back wheels 4 mm smaller, and you would use 72-76-80-76.
Cones
What’s slalom without cones? For freestyle slalom, you want small cones - about 3 inches in diameter, and 3 to 4 inches high. Bigger cones are harder to maneuver around.
The cheapest and easiest to find cones are plastic kids’ cups. Ikea has some that are popular for slalom skating - you can get six KALAS tumblers for about $1.50. They aren’t available online, so you need to go into the store - look in the children’s area, not in the kitchenware. The only drawback to the Ikea cones is that they are pretty hard, and can hurt if you fall on them.
There are two other options available online, the Starway cone from Switzerland, and the Universkate cone from France. Both are softer and more compact for transport.
Slalom Spacing
There are three commonly used cone spacing: 50 cm, 80 cm and 120 cm. By far, most tricks are learned and practiced on 80 cm. For competitions, there will be lines of cones on all three spacings. For example, there may be a line of 24 cones at 50 cm, a line of 20 cones at 80 cm and a line of 14 cones at 120 cm.
The Basics
Before you get started in slalom skating, you should be comfortable skating forward and backward. Next, you will want to learn some building block moves without the cones The building blocks include two foot slaloms, crisscross forward, crisscross backward, and transitions from front to back, and back to front.
Two foot slaloms are done with skates side by side, and work on keeping them close together and always carving arcs same direction. You do this by rolling your skates from side to side, hitting both edges of your wheels, one inside edge and one outside edge (in other words, both are tilted left or both tilted right).
A crisscross is done while rolling on two skates, and crossing one skate in front of the other, and then uncrossing them. Repeat with the same foot in front each time. When crossed, your wheels will be on the outside edges. Work on getting the cross symmetrical so you are evenly balanced, and each skate moves sideways the same amount. Practice leading with one foot, then try the other. If you are like most skaters, you find you have a preferred side to lead. Got that? Good! - Now work on it backwards.
You will also need to learn to T-stop proficiently, as you will need to remove your heel brake for slaloms.
Slalom Tricks
The first tricks to learn are:
Fish, a two foot slalom with your feet side by side.
Snake, a two foot slalom with one foot directly in front of the other (tracking in one line).
Crisscross through the cones, forward and backward.
Crazy, connecting forward and backward criss-crosses, moving sideways through the cones.
One foot slaloms
You can learn new tricks from your friends, but when you run out of those, you can start learning more from great skaters all over the world. There are two main websites with demonstration videos of individual tricks. From France, there is Universkate.com and from Korea, there is Munobal.net. Another good resource for more advanced tricks is Skaliweb.com.
