Roller Skating Safety Equipment Tips

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Rachel Cook, here on behalf of Expert Village. Today I'm here to talk about how to roller skate, but most importantly, safety. The first thing that you need to do is, on your roller skates, make sure they fit. Additionally, you need to make sure your wheels are not too lose, nor too tight. They should not wobble while moved up and down like this. If they do, what you need to do is just take your handy dandy little ratchet and tighten or loosen then nut on the axle. The next thing to know is, most importantly, wrist guards. Wrist guards can come in varying shapes and sizes, personally I prefer these because they give me a little bit more flexibility. Make sure that they fit comfortably and that they're the appropriate size. In order to properly fit yourself for any sort of skating pad I highly recommend going to your local skate shop. They have pads of all shapes, sizes and types, styles, whatever is there to suit your needs. Feel free, they often allow you to try them on, that is my best advice to you, try them on before you buy. Often you might need a medium in the kneepads, a small in elbow, and an extra small in the wrist guard. Make sure that they fit, and fit comfortably, and then what you'll need to do, is also here are the elbow pads, elbow pads are important as well. Kneepads, here are the kneepads. These slide on two different ways, you can either just strap them directly onto your knee or your can actually pull them up over your knee and then secure them with the Velcro straps. These are very, very, very important, especially when learning how to skate outdoors. And last, but not least, is a helmet. You may or may not require a helmet but you never know. You don't want to fall. The most important thing about helmets is they need to fit, and they need to fit properly. Each helmet has a series of pads that are inside and they also will come with pads. Again, at your local skate shop, please try on the helmets before you buy. They're a very expensive but very wise investment. They will come with an extra set of pads and what they should do is when you put it on your head it should be snug, it should not move front or back, it should fit perfectly. If it's too loose then you need to either try a size smaller or you can see if adding additional pads will make it more secure. Again, while your helmet is on you need to make sure that your chin strap is tight, it should not hang down at all. What happens is if you fall and fall backwards, you want the helmet to stay with you, and keep your noggin safe, keep that head safe. If you have a loose strap it's not going to do anything for you but hurt you. And that is roller skate safety."