How to Ice Skate
Ice skate for the first time. Fit and lace rental skates, practice a safe fall off the ice, find your balance at the boards, march, glide, stop with a snowplow, stride, and turn.
You will end up able to cross the rink on your own, stop with a snowplow, steer a wide turn, and get up from a fall. Those are the skills a first-time skater needs for a public session.
The order of the steps is deliberate. You fit the skates, put on a helmet, and practice falling and getting up before you step on the ice. Learn to Skate USA's first-day guide puts the same things at the start of a beginner's first day, and its curriculum is endorsed by U.S. Figure Skating, USA Hockey, and US Speedskating. On the ice you march first, then glide on two feet, and you learn to stop before you learn the full stride.
You need no skating experience, and rental skates are enough for every step.
A pair of figure or recreational skates (rentals at the rink are enough, and FAQ 2 below covers hockey skates) One pair of thin socks, the ones you will skate in A helmet (bring a bicycle helmet, or ask whether the rink lends them) Gloves or mittens Layers you can move in, with a jacket on top Wrist guards, knee pads, and elbow pads if you own them
Pick the right skates and lace them properly
Ask the rental counter for figure or recreational skates (FAQ 2 below explains the choice), and start from your shoe size. Rental skate sizes do not always match shoe sizes, so try pairs on, in the socks you will skate in, until one fits. The fit should be snug without pinching. Tap your heel all the way to the back of the boot. Your toes should have just enough room to wiggle, and the rest of your foot should not move inside the boot. If your foot slides or the boot pinches, ask for a different size. Nemours KidsHealth's ice skating safety page explains that skates that are too big do not support the ankles the right way, which makes falls more likely, and that skates that are too small cause blisters. Lace from the bottom up. Pull the tongue straight up, then pull the second or third set of laces from the bottom tight, so the boot closes over the front of your foot. Keep the laces snug through the ankle and the bottom two sets of hooks. Leave the top two hooks a little looser, so your ankle can flex when you bend your knees. Cross the leftover lace over the hooks and tuck the ends in. Do not wind the lace around the boot or leave long bows, because loose bows lead to accidents. That is the lacing method in Learn to Skate USA's first-day guide. Stand up and walk a few steps on the rubber mat. If a skate hurts or feels loose, relace it before you go any further.
Good to know: Wear one pair of thin socks. Learn to Skate USA's first-day guide says that bulkier, thicker socks limit support and bunch into uncomfortable bumps inside the boot.
Put on your helmet and practice falling before you step on the ice
Put your helmet and gloves on now, before you go near the ice. Wear the helmet low on your forehead and level, with the chin strap buckled. The gloves protect your hands when you fall and when you push yourself back up. If you have wrist guards, knee pads, or elbow pads, put them on too. Nemours recommends all three, with a helmet, for new skaters. The helmet is for the part of the body ice skaters hurt most. A 20-year study of US emergency room visits, published in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine in 2023, found that the head, face, or neck was the top site for ice skating injuries, at 34.5% of them. In the same study, 5.9% of injured ice skaters were diagnosed with a concussion, against 1.2% of inline skaters and 1.5% of roller skaters. Bring a bicycle helmet if you own one. The CPSC's helmet chart says no helmet standard exists yet for ice skating and that, until one is written, wearing a bicycle, skateboard, or snow sport helmet may be preferable to wearing no helmet at all. You will fall on your first day, so practice the fall on the ground first, which is what Nemours advises. Stand on the rubber mat in your skates and run through three moves. To fall backward, bend your knees, tuck your chin to your chest, and sit down as if into a chair, so you land on your bottom and not on your arms. The tucked chin keeps the back of your head off the ice. Do not reach back with a straight arm. In the emergency room study, 60% of ice skating fractures were in the shoulder, arm, elbow, or wrist. When you feel your balance going, choose this fall if you can. To fall forward, use your arms, because they keep your face and head off the ice. Put them out in front of you with your elbows slightly bent, never locked. To get up, roll onto your side and come up onto your hands and knees. Place one skate flat on the ground in front of you, put both hands on that knee, and push up to standing. Repeat the three moves until you can do them without stopping to recall the order.
Step onto the ice and find your balance at the boards
Walk to the rink entrance on the rubber mats. Look left and right for other skaters before you step on. Then step onto the ice one foot at a time and take hold of the boards, the wall around the rink, with both hands. Do not let go yet. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and bend your knees, as if you were sitting a quarter of the way down into a chair. Keep your weight over the balls of your feet, not your heels, with your chest up and your shoulders over your hips. Every later step uses this bent-knee stance. With straight legs your weight sits higher and your knees cannot absorb a wobble. When something feels wrong, check your knees first. Still holding the boards, shuffle sideways for a few feet to feel how the blades slide. Then repeat the fall drill from step 2 once on the ice, with the boards within reach. Sit down, roll onto your side, and get up. Move on when you can stand with your knees bent and only one hand resting on the boards.
Heads up: After any fall, get up or get out of the way quickly. Nemours warns that other skaters might not see you or be able to stop or skate around you. While you are down, keep your hands close to your body and away from passing blades. Never grab another skater to break a fall, which Nemours says usually injures both skaters.
March along the boards
Let go of the boards and stay within an arm's length of them, so you can take hold again. Keep your knees bent and your arms out to the sides at about hip height. You march before you glide, and marching is the first skill Learn to Skate USA teaches on the ice. Lift one foot a few inches off the ice, set it down, then lift the other. Take small steps. Each step puts your whole weight on one blade for a moment, which is the balance that gliding and the stride ask for later. March the length of the boards. If you start to wobble, lower your hands and bend your knees deeper. If you lose your balance completely, fall the way you practiced in step 2, get up, and keep marching. Move on when you can march a full length without touching the boards.
Transition from marching to gliding with a duck walk
Point your toes outward so your feet make a V shape, with your heels close together. This is the duck walk, also called the V-walk, and it turns the march into a glide. Take a small step forward with your right foot, pushing gently off the inside edge of your left blade. Then step forward with your left foot, pushing off the inside edge of your right blade. You will feel a short glide between steps, and that glide is what this step is for. Make each push and each glide a little longer. Go slowly. The aim is to get used to sliding forward on one foot while the other is off the ice. After three or four steps, set both feet side by side, pointing straight ahead, and coast on two feet until you slow down. This two-foot glide is the position you stop from in step 6 and turn from in step 8. Keep your knees bent and your weight over the balls of your feet the whole time. If your arms start windmilling, bend your knees more, because you have straightened up.
Stop with the snowplow
Learn to stop before you learn to go faster. Stop with the edges of your blades and never with the toe pick, the row of teeth at the front of a figure blade. A dragged toe pick digs into the ice and tips you forward. The snowplow is the first stop to learn, because you do it on two feet at low speed. From a slow two-foot glide, turn your toes slightly inward and push your heels out, so your feet form an upside-down V. Bend your knees and press the inside edges of both blades into the ice with steady, even pressure. The blades shave the surface of the ice, and that friction slows you to a stop. Start gently. Pushing too hard too soon sends one foot shooting out. Practice at walking pace first, then from a slightly faster glide. If the two-foot version will not come, do it with one foot. Glide on both feet, then turn one foot inward and press its inside edge into the ice while the other foot keeps pointing straight ahead. Move on when you can come to a full stop from a two-foot glide without reaching for the boards.
Push and glide on alternating feet
This is the basic skating stride. Start from a standstill with your feet in a slight V. Bend your knees, push off to the side with your right foot on the inside edge of the blade, and let your left foot glide forward. Hold that glide for 2 to 3 seconds. Then bring your right foot back next to your left, bend your knees again, and push off with your left foot. Glide on your right foot and hold it. Bring the left foot back, push with the right, and glide on the left. The push goes sideways and slightly backward, not straight back. Think of scraping the ice to the side, as if you were spreading peanut butter with your foot. The gliding foot points straight ahead. Look where you are going, not at your feet. Looking down tips your head and shoulders forward and takes your eyes off the skaters ahead of you. If you need to check your feet, glance down and look back up. Move on when you can skate a full length of the rink in strides and finish it with the snowplow stop from step 6.
Heads up: Now that you are moving at speed, follow the traffic. Skate in the same direction as the other skaters, keep a safe space between you and the skater ahead, and do not cut in front of anyone. Stay close to the boards while you are still learning. That is Nemours KidsHealth's advice for new skaters.
Practice basic turns
Once you can glide and stop, learn to steer, starting with a two-foot turn. Glide forward on both feet with your knees bent. To turn left, shift your weight onto your left foot and press gently on the outside edge of that blade. Turn your head and shoulders to the left, and your hips and feet follow. Keep both feet on the ice the whole time. To turn right, shift your weight onto your right foot, press its outside edge, and turn your head and shoulders to the right. The weight shift and the head turn do the work. If a turn stalls, check that you are looking where you want to go and not straight ahead. Start with wide, sweeping turns around the ends of the rink, in the same direction as the other skaters. At the same speed, a tighter turn needs more lean and more edge pressure, so leave tight turns for later visits. Practice the turn to your other side on short curves in a quiet patch of ice, without skating against the traffic. When you can skate forward, stop, and turn in both directions, you have the skills for a public skating session.
If your ankles tip inward on the ice, check the skates before you blame your balance. Relace them snug through the ankle (step 1), and ask for a smaller size if your heel still lifts, because skates that are too big do not support the ankle. If your feet keep shooting out in front of you, go back to the stance in step 3 and check two things, bent knees and weight over the balls of your feet. If you cannot stop, drop back to walking pace beside the boards and practice the one-foot snowplow from step 6. If your blades keep catching in ruts, ask the rental counter for another pair, because dull blades catch more often. Then come back and practice. Learn to Skate USA's first-day guide tells skaters to practice the skills from each lesson at least once before the next one, and it names public skating sessions as the place to do it. FAQ 6 below covers lessons. When the rink closes for the season, our guide on how to roller skate starts from the same duck walk, on wheels.
Questions we get asked about this
Answers from experience, not a textbook.
We could not find a study that times it, so measure progress by checkpoints. The first is marching a length of the boards without holding on (step 4). The second is a full stop from a two-foot glide (step 6). The third is a length of the rink in strides (step 7). For a benchmark from a teaching program, Learn to Skate USA's first-day guide says that after a first session of group classes, a beginner should be able to skate reasonably well on their own, get up from a fall, attempt a stop while moving slowly, and get around a public session. A session there is a series of classes, not a single visit.
Use figure or recreational skates for a first visit. Put the two kinds side by side at the rental counter and you can see the difference. A figure blade is longer, runs past the back of the heel, and has a toe pick at the front. A hockey blade is shorter and rounded up at both ends. We recommend the figure blade because it gives you more length to balance on from front to back. We could not find a page from a skating federation that ranks the two for beginners, and the Learn to Skate USA curriculum is endorsed by both U.S. Figure Skating and USA Hockey as a foundation for either sport. On figure skates, do not rise onto your toes, because the toe pick will catch the ice. If you plan to play hockey, switch to hockey skates once the steps above feel comfortable.
The emergency room study linked in step 2 estimated about 400,000 ice skating injuries treated in US emergency departments from 2002 to 2021. It did not count how many people skated, so it cannot tell you your odds. It does show where injuries land. The head, face, or neck came first at 34.5%, followed by the shoulder, arm, and elbow at 14.4%, then the wrist at 14.1%. A helmet protects the first of those sites, and the fall technique in step 2 is aimed at the other two. In the same study, a fracture was the most common type of injury. The steps above assume a rink. Before you skate on a frozen pond or lake, have the local police or parks department check the ice thickness, which is Nemours KidsHealth's advice, and never walk onto ice that has not been tested.
Dress for about 50°F (10°C), which is the temperature Learn to Skate USA's first-day guide says indoor arenas are kept at. Wear layers with a jacket on top, and take a layer off as you warm up. The guide prefers sweatpants or warm-up pants to bulkier snow pants, because a new skater has to be able to move freely. Wear one pair of thin socks (step 1). Wear gloves or mittens, which the guide says are there to protect your hands as you fall and stand back up, not to keep them warm. Wear a helmet, which the same guide says all beginning skaters should do (step 2).
Pick the quietest public session your rink offers, because it gives you room to practice without faster skaters passing close by. Which sessions are quiet differs from rink to rink, so ask at the front desk, and ask whether the rink runs beginner or adult-only sessions. If the ice fills up while you are on it, step off and wait until it is less crowded, which Nemours KidsHealth says is fine for a new skater to do.
Take lessons if your rink offers them. Nemours KidsHealth calls lessons the safest way to learn, and an instructor sees mistakes you cannot see yourself. Learn to Skate USA has an adult curriculum as well as its Basic Skills levels, and its website has a program finder. If lessons are not possible, Nemours says to learn some basics before you lace up, which is what the steps above are for.
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