Today, I decided to take a break from backward skating and focus on toe manuals. I’ve been experimenting with dribbling (aka walk n slide) probably since Day 13. I liked Linda’s tutorial, but I couldn’t get past the lunges because I couldn’t get the hang of centering my weight in between switches and maneuvering around toe stops. (Yes, I know the overwhelming consensus is to remove toe stops eventually if your focus will be dance skating, but I wanted to see if I could master it with toe stops. Plus, I’m not ready to remove toe stops!)
Linda’s tip to start with moonwalking was great though because it introduced me to the concept of articulating the movement of shifting from the toe to the sole of foot and vice versa. (Check out my initial stab at moonwalking on Day 12.)
I did like @rollerskillz’s tip in her tutorial to get a feel for the gap between the toe stop and the ground, so I practiced that over time. My big breakthrough came today by drilling some toe manuals. I got the tip from @tkrollerskates that toe manuals really helped with dribbling, so I checked out her tutorial recommendations:
- @claudiarollerskates has a good tutorial on toe manuals. It took half an hour to get over the initial fear (of course, while holding onto the wall).
- @oumi_janta’s tutorial on walk n slide is also great, but this was next level and will take a few sessions for me to level up!
All in all, I feel like I’m going down the right path here!
Clips from my session today:
Watch ’til the end to see my improved and smoothed WIP dribbles.