You may ask, how do you skate backwards? The following are tips for skating backwards. Skating backwards is not difficult. Even though the feeling of moving backwards is not natural at first it will come to you with practice. Both hockey players and figure skaters are proficient at skating backwards.
Make sure to have a helmet and pads on before trying to skate backwards. Also make sure there is no one behind you before you start your backward progressions. Make sure to keep your knees bent, like your siting in a chair. You can put your hands on your knees if you feel more comfortable. The worst way to fall is to fall backward. If you have to fall try to fall forward. There are two different ways you can start. One is to push off a wall gently and slowly glide backwards.
The 2nd is to put your toes together (snow plow position) and push gently back from that position and glide slowly backward. Once you start to feel comfortable with slowly moving backwards you can start to make a curving action or an "S" action with your skates to continue the backward momentum.
To pick your speed up you want to start turning your skates so that your legs start to go into a small splits. First start with small splits and then turn your skates to bring your skates back together. The further you split-steer your legs apart before you bring-steer them back together the faster your backward speed will be. Redo this steering of the skates out and then back in over and over to continue the backward progression. To skate backwards faster, make these turns quicker and more powerful.
Once you have this split type of backward skating down you can start crossover backward skating. You simply cross one foot over the other. The same way you do crossovers skating forward you do crossovers skating backward. Practice doing abrupt direction changes using backward crossovers. Or try going in circles while doing backward crossovers. Learning backward skating technique and advanced backwards skating is a big part of skating. It's definitely fun to have another thing to practice at the rink. It may take a few tries but you'll get it as long as you don't give up.
