How to choose roller skates

Roller skat­ing can give a lot of pos­i­tive emo­tions, be a great work­out or a source of adren­a­line. But no mat­ter what direc­tion you pre­fer, first of all it should be com­fort­able and safe. And an impor­tant step towards achiev­ing these con­di­tions is the com­pe­tent choice of roller skates, which must meet all your require­ments and wish­es. What you should pay atten­tion to when pur­chas­ing roller skates, this arti­cle will tell.

Choos­ing roller skates

The first thing you should decide when going to the store for roller skates is why you need them. Or rather, what direc­tion of roller­sport you would pre­fer to do. For almost every type of skat­ing, mod­ern stores offer spe­cif­ic mod­els of roller skates. The most com­mon mod­els are:

Roller skates for fit­ness and recre­ation

Such videos are designed for active walks. A fit­ness roller skate is a boot with four wheels attached to it. It also has a reg­u­lar brake, which can be eas­i­ly removed if it inter­feres with you for some spe­cif­ic pur­pose.

Freeskate roller skates

These inline skates are designed for fast and fair­ly aggres­sive rid­ing. You can also per­form sim­ple tricks on them — jumps and turns. Freeskate roller skates fea­ture a strong boot that is hard enough to break even with a direct hit. The boot also has strong bind­ings and fix­a­tion.

Roller skates for aggres­sive skat­ing

This type of inline skate is designed to per­form com­plex tricks — jump­ing from great heights, slid­ing on dif­fer­ent sur­faces, sharp turns. They are dis­tin­guished by a heavy soft boot that has very good cush­ion­ing. Also, in the man­u­fac­ture of such roller skates, a very strong short frame is used, which can with­stand strong impacts and oth­er types of aggres­sive con­tact.

Cross-coun­try roller skates

This type of inline skate is designed pri­mar­i­ly for speed skat­ing. They are dis­tin­guished by a low boot, high rigid­i­ty of the wheels and a long frame. The types of wheels for such skates should be select­ed depend­ing on the sur­face on which the skat­ing will take place.

Roller skates for chil­dren

It is impos­si­ble to ignore the spe­cial type of chil­dren’s, or dimen­sion­less, roller skates. This type can be per­formed in any of the above cat­e­gories. But most often it is intend­ed for ama­teur ski­ing. The main fea­ture of such inline skates is that each pair is not one size, but a range of sizes that are easy to install and fix on your own, depend­ing on the inten­si­ty of the child’s foot growth.

Choos­ing shoes

Anoth­er impor­tant detail that you should pay atten­tion to when choos­ing roller skates is what type of boot is pre­sent­ed in a par­tic­u­lar mod­el. Of course, the boot should also be cho­sen depend­ing on the pur­pose of the roller skates. But besides this fac­tor, per­son­al pref­er­ences should also be tak­en into account.

There are the fol­low­ing types of boots:

• Hard and soft boots
• High and low boots

Hard boots

This type of boot secure­ly fix­es the foot. How­ev­er, it does not give free­dom of move­ment in the ankle. These boots are suit­able for those who decide to go in for roller skat­ing (in this case, the boot should be low) or for those who real­ly need high-qual­i­ty foot fix­a­tion to reduce injury risk dur­ing tricks (for exam­ple, in freestyle).

soft boot

It is wider and more com­fort­able than hard. It has mov­able ele­ments in its design, which means it gives free­dom for the move­ment of the foot and ankle. How­ev­er, the fix­a­tion of the foot in such a boot is much weak­er. This means that roller skates with a soft boot are not suit­able for extreme activ­i­ties. But on the oth­er hand, a soft boot will allow you to ful­ly and com­fort­ably enjoy ama­teur skat­ing or roller-skat­ing fit­ness.

High shoe

The high boot is fea­tured on most inline skates. It fix­es the leg quite well, pro­tects it from bumps and injuries.

low boot

This type of boot is most often used for speed­skat­ing. It ris­es from the ankle no high­er than 2–3 cen­time­ters, due to which it does not hin­der move­ment. How­ev­er, for oth­er types of ski­ing, low boots are not rec­om­mend­ed, as they pro­vide lit­tle or no pro­tec­tion to the foot from any type of injury due to exter­nal impact.

How to choose the size of roller skates?

After you have com­plete­ly decid­ed on the pur­pose of roller skates, you should decide on your size. For many, the stereo­type will work that the size of the rollers should be slight­ly larg­er than the size of ordi­nary shoes. How­ev­er, this opin­ion is erro­neous. To ensure that skat­ing does not cause dis­com­fort, roller skates must fit your size. And this also applies to chil­dren’s roller skates. The most com­mon mis­take par­ents make is buy­ing roller skates for growth.

When choos­ing roller skates, care­ful­ly check that the toes do not rest against the edge of the boot, at the same time, you should not leave a lot of free space. Check how well the boot fix­es the ankle — the risk of dis­lo­ca­tion in case of sharp turns or brak­ing direct­ly depends on this.

Be sure to check that the boot does not rub any­where and does not cause dis­com­fort. Remem­ber, inline skates are not san­dals and you won’t be able to break them apart. So, in case of an unsuc­cess­ful choice, skat­ing will not only not bring you joy, but sim­ply turn into tor­ment.

It is impor­tant!

Before buy­ing, care­ful­ly inspect both skates for strength and qual­i­ty of mate­ri­als and fas­ten­ers.

The design of the videos, of course, should be cho­sen based on your own pref­er­ences. But very often flaws in qual­i­ty are hid­den behind the bright col­ors of plas­tic. There­fore, first of all, pay atten­tion to the videos them­selves, and not their “wrap­per”.

May rid­ing bring you joy!

Author: Natalia Kay

Arti­cle pro­tect­ed by copy­right and relat­ed rights. When using and reprint­ing the mate­r­i­al, an active link to the healthy lifestyle por­tal hnb.com.ua is required!