How to do a T-Brake
There are dozens of brake techniques to be learned if you want to start inline skating, and T-breaks are one of the best ones there are.
In this blog we explain the steps to take to learn it!
Step 1: learn to ride on one foot first
With a T-brake, all your weight will be on your rolling foot, so we will need to learn to ride on one foot first. Skating on one foot is a matter of steering it. You can imagine it as if your body is a broom. Remember as a kid you would try to put a broom upside down on the palm of your hand and balance it as long as possible? Think of what you were doing with your hands while balancing. Your hands would pendulate back and forth to the point you would run!
Now imagine you are the broom, and you need to balance yourself, the bottom of your body will need to correct any imbalances.
it is a matter of steering your foot,
Before riding on one foot, you will need to be able to steer. We practice this with slalom techniques like lemons. This is where you draw the shape of a lemon with your wheels on the ground.
the easy part is not the normal lemmon, but it is a good start.
the hard part is actually getting your foot across to the other side,
any exercise you can do that included this, makes you better at skating on one foot, and thus makes you better at the T-brake.
There are 3 things that you can practice.
> flowing from left to right.
> A double push movement, a double push is when a skater puts his left foot at the right side of his center of balance, or vice versa.
> and crossing legs slalom moves.
When trying to ride on one foot, you must them focus on steering the foot that is riding, so that it can compensate and balance you.
Practice this until you can ride at least a couple of meters on one foot.
Step 2: The end
A good instruction always starts with the end of a techniques, and works to the start. At the end of the technique you stand still in a T.
Get in to the T position, and roll out back and forth a couple of times to get comfortable with it.
Now use this movement to push off and slide for about 10cm.
All your weight should be on your front foot. The more you leen on the rolling foot, the better.
Practice this from standing still, to pushing off, to a perfect standstill again.
Step 3
now you are ready to go and try it with some beginning speed.
roll around in a straight line. put your feet op and put it in the right position straight away. the trick is to keep it there untill you stand still.
this will take a lot of repetitions from your side.
If you manage to some what do it in a straight line, untill you absolutely stand still, then either repeat it again with the same speed, or increase it a bit.
If you get wobbely and need to lift of your back foot to regain balance, then slow down your speed at the next attempt.
redo these steps untill you get enough reps in to increase the speed to something decent.
Difference between braking and stopping.
The T-brake is a braking technique. This means it is great for slowing down at high speed, but not so much for coming to a complete standstill at a specific spot.
For coming to an exact standstill we use stopping techniques like the pizza stop or the soul stop.
Usually skaters combine braking and stopping techniques if you for example arrive at a traffic stop. Bill stoppart famously uses the t-brake technique in combination with a little slide, shout out bill stoppart.
But we like to combine it in our lessons with the "peanut butter" technique.
We have not find an official name for this techniques so that is why we named it ourselves here at This Is Soul Academy. It is what you use when you are in the supermarket and want to grab some peanut butter. More details about this technique in a later blog post.
Learn skating from a professional
We teach skating to kids and adults in private or group lessons. Come to us at the overtoom 327 in Amsterdam, or we will come to you somewhere in The Netherlands.
Learn more here:
https://www.thisissoul.com/collections/lessons/