Blades - need advice

murt

hey - I just got my first set of blades and need advice as to how to go about learning to use them without breaking an arm. Is protective gear absolutely necessary? I'm fit, reasonably coordinated and very confident that I'm going to be an ace after two weeks - how dangerous is that attitude?

Cake Fiend

It's a fscking brain-dead attitude to be entirely honest. No matter how good you are (and you'll be no expert in two weeks), there are some accidents you can't avoid. You could be skating along and not notice a crack in the path / pebble / whatever, hit it at high speed and end up on your face - In fact, I found the more confident you get, the more likely you'll have these sorts of accidents, until the wisdom of experience catches up with the cockiness. Some lunatic in a car could be going along too fast, not notice you, wham. If you get into aggressive skating (grinding, jumping, etc) you're opening up a whole new world of potential injury.

Wristguards are essential. I never, ever skated without wristguards, and I used to skate a lot. Skating without wristguards is not cool, it's just dumb. If you fall, the first things that you'll put out to break your fall are your hands. Landing with all your body weight on your hands is not a good thing - you can break either your wrist or your radius, depending on the angle of impact. Neither are pleasant. One of the most common injuries in skating, skateboarding,snowboarding, etc is a wrist or arm injury sustained by falling onto outstretched hands.

A helmet mightn't be a bad idea for starting off, as your head is obviously very vulnerable to impact with concrete or asphalt. But most people don't want to do this as it doesn't look 'cool' or whatever. If you have more sense than ego, get a helmet. A bike helmet will do if you have one, or otherwise you could get a 'pro-tec' skating helmet which look a bit less nerdy.

Elbow pads are handy for starting off as well, as you'll land mostly on your hands and arms when you're starting off. It's up to you, but a broken elbow is no fun. Same with kneepads - you'll naturally pick up a few bashes and scrapes on your knees when you fall forwards. I wouldn't rate them as essential as wristguards, but again, you'll know all about it the first time you whack your kneecap off a curb.

A tailbone protector would come highly recommended, as you will spend a lot of time falling on your ass. These can be expensive unfortunately, but it really, really hurts to land hard on your tailbone. If you break it, you won't be able to sit down properly for weeks, you won't be able to lie down in certain positions, you'll generally be fairly incapacitated. If you need to sit down for work or whatever, then think about this. Even if you don't, you'll probably wish you had got one the first time you land hard on your tail. I have one for snowboarding, and it's one of my best purchases.

In conclusion: Get wristguards whatever you do. Preferably get the rest of the gear as well, especially if you're aiming to get into aggressive skating. Don't try something tricky unless you're a) fully capable of doing it or b) armoured up as outlined above.

murt

Thanks for the sound advice Sico.
I'll get some gear and can the attitude.

Cake Fiend

No worries, I've banjaxed myself enough over the years to have learnt the importance of pads by now.