May/June 2003

Good Jammin' News

ADJUSTING YOUR SKATES [The following are excerpts from an interview RST conducted with Bill Butler, (BB)] RST - Can you explain how to adjust skates? BB - You have to adjust the bolt and the nut.   To loosen the nut is to give you full use of the bolt, up or down, looser or tighter.  Once the adjustment is correct, you then tighten the nut which holds it in the place where you want it.  The key to adjusting the skates is that you have to loosen the nut just enough to adjust the bolt.  You don’t crank it back too much, because if you loosen the nut too much, once you get the adjustment you want, you’re now trying to lock it into place.  If you crank the nut too much you’re changing the adjustment you just worked for. The key is to just loosen the nut one crank so there’s one crank to tighten it, that’s key to getting your adjustment.  If you crank the nut too much,  you’ve created a problem because you’re thinking you’ve got the adjustment but you don’t have it. RST - Should the adjustment be the same on front and back? BB - Yes, [for Jammin they have to be exactly the same.]  You should have [an adjustment] for any kind of skating, period.  For certain styles, it requires a very loose truck and some styles not so loose, so there is a particular adjustment per style - you have to know what that is in order to get the skates to do what you want them to do. RST - So for any style, it’s not good to be without flexibility [on the trucks]? BB - Exactly.  Certain styles require different flexibility and you have to know which one you need.  Whatever it is, it requires the right adjustment...i.e., there’s no one adjustment, there are several, so each skater has to know what his/her adjustment should be.  Trust me, most people don’t know what that is and that’s the unfortunate part about roller skating. It’s a matter of education, you have to know what [the adjustment] is and once you know what it is, you have to know how to make [it].  This is for people who are serious about skating and are really interested in the sport,  those are the only skaters that I really want to talk to only because they would want me to talk to them.  I'm only talking to those who want to listen.  Most people just want the truck on there so it doesn’t fall off and that’s good, but at the same time, if you want to do certain things specifically, you must have the right adjustment for those specific things. RST - To find the right adjustment,  skaters have to have on their skates and experiment until they find the right flexibility? BB - That’s right - you have to know what it is you’re going to do....Once you make the adjustment, that’s the adjustment to do all these different things, not that you have to keep adjusting your skates.  That’s why I say you want to make sure that once you get the adjustment, you can lean on the skate and they should be able to lean in enough of a degree that they will handle your body weight at different speeds so the trucks feel the same to you in any position or direction. ....You can stand on your skate, lean right or left and you should be able to comfortably lean without your skate touching your wheels.  Your adjustment should more or less be perfect at that point.  If the skates are touching the wheels you know they are too loose which means they are going to cause you to trip on yourself or give the effect of rolling over an object . Once you get the right adjustment and you understand the skates, what they do, when they do it, how they do it, pivots and things of that sort, that’s the only time you really understand what an adjustment is for, once you really start to skate.  That only occurs with people who are serious about roller skating.  Other than that, you just make sure the trucks don’t come off. At any rate, they should be adjusted, whether you are going to do anything on skates, so you get a nice skate in a session and one skate doesn’t take off in one direction and one in the other direction or something that’s uncomfortable for you because it’s not good for your posture.  Skaters should be aware of that. RST -  These are things most skaters don’t think about. BB - Exactly, they don’t think the seriousness of it.  It’s a serious thing, you must have the right adjustment, no doubt about it.  Without the right adjustment, the skates don’t give you a good ride. RST - Do your skaters make their own adjustments? BB -   I give them a clinic so they know how to do them because I don’t want them calling me each time they need an adjustment.   That’s part of learning, you have to learn how to adjust your own skates. - More next issue -

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS Q. I am a 42yr old mother of five, I love to skate. I've been skating now for about 12yrs. I have been fortunate to have taken some of your classes....I was never able to get the hockey stop down pack. I have just relocated to Baltimore M.D.. So my question is what do I have to do to master the hockey stop? Bill can you help me? A.You just keep after it until you learn to do it, there are different ways to go about learning it, and there are many approaches to learn how to practice the hockey stop. If you don't have the right [wheel] durometer, you have got a problem - you have to have the proper adjustment and equipment. The right durometer is the particular hardness of the wheel you use. The wheels I skate on are rental wheels, not these new things they are making but the old, old, [orange] All American Plus wheels. If you want to do a hockey stop, that's the wheel that you need, or comparable to that. I don't care about the color as long as the durometer is the same. *NOTE - Once RST finds out the durometer of this wheel, that info will be published in Good Jammin News. Thank you for your questions.