On the regular I chat with people who are at the very beginning of their roller skate journey. It’s so sweet seeing how excited they are, so delighted to be wearing their brand new skates. It’s the best feeling ever, to be right at the beginning of a new, exciting hobby.
At the same time, you witness people’s fears surrounding skating, which is totally understandable. No one wants to get hurt. My tactic is to be as empathetic as I can, give them some basic safety advice (how to fall safely, how to get back up, etc.) and encourage them to be brave and give it a try. Usually this works.
This weekend at the rink, there was a middle-aged woman sitting on the benches wearing a brand new set of inline skates and safety gear. I asked her how she was doing, and she said that she was afraid of falling. “I’m a tattoo artist and I can’t break my arm:”
I told her that fear of falling was totally normal. But the reality was that she was likely to fall, perhaps a bunch, at the beginning of learning to skate. So she should learn first how to safely fall and get back up again.
I recounted how, when I started skating 4 years ago, I would spend the first 5 minutes at the rink just practicing falling safely and getting back up again. I did this for several weeks, every day. That way, when I did actually fall, my body already knew what to do and how to get back up again efficiently.
She said that sounds nice, but she just COULDN’T fall. I tried to convince her that the best strategy to avoiding injury was to get GOOD at falling safely. But she seemed unconvinced, and I didn’t see her leave the bench area that day.
I suspect that skating is just not going to work for her. Unfortunately for some people the IDEA of falling is so terrifying that skating (and skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, etc) is never going to get fun. Which is a bummer.
Because with skating, falling is just a part of learning.