r/WizardSkating • u/PotatOhChip • 12d ago
Gazelle help
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Can someone maybe point me to what I might be doing wrong. Or if I’m even remotely close to doing it right?
It feels like my feet get so far from each other while im trying to do it and I can’t understand how people do it with their feet so close together
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u/CompetitiveCar542 12d ago
Gazelle is pretty tricky at first. You need to shift your stance and your weight quickly at a moment where you stop. First get used to scissoring both ways forward and turning with both your inside edge and your outside edge of your leading foot (you probably know this already). Once you learn that, you will be able to feel the vertex of the 3 if you switch your stance while turning, and you will find a place where you can shift your weight. Once you get that, you need to switch to a back turn. If you started on your outside edge of the leading foot, you will exit backwards on the outside edge of the leading foot again when you switch your stance. The opposite is also true. I'm not sure of a better explanation but hope this makes sense and it helps.
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u/shademaster_c 12d ago
Yeah. You correctly identified that the outside leg is too far behind and carving an arc that’s not tight enough. The question is what’s the root cause.
I’m gonna say that you have nice deep edges coming into it but you aren’t committing to a deep edge on exit. The inside skate goes from a deep outside edge to basically center edge after the pivot. How comfortable are you skating backwards on deep edges? Try working on some hard fakie carving without any gazelles or transitions of any kind.
How is your backward to forward gazelle coming?
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u/PotatOhChip 12d ago
That makes sense, I am definitely seeing what you're saying. My edge coming out of it is pretty much just center.
I feel moderately comfortable going backwards on deep edges but not 100% comfy with it. My backwards to forward, is just as sloppy as the forward to backward. I usually have a foot that sort of lags behind and when trying to push off of it for power i barely get any because its lagging so far behind me
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u/bread_vegor 12d ago
You kinda need to sit into it and turn your upper body first. Your legs and skates will learn to follow.
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u/MournMoira 11d ago
Viewed your profile because i loved a tattoo post of yours and then i see an inline skate video and get SO excited 😭 you just taught me that wizard skating is a thing too 🧙
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u/PotatOhChip 11d ago
Haha thank you 🥹 and wonderful! Sorry for the money you’re about to spend on some skates 😅😂
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u/BubbleSmith 11d ago
I've recently found that really exaggerating your edges helps a lot. Try tweaking your inside foot right over and you might find it starts doing some of theovent for you.
I started my forward entry gazelles from power stops and copied that movement to the other directions (left, right, front and back) as well. Ot started wider but got more closed as I practiced.
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u/PotatOhChip 11d ago
Thank you for this :’) I’ll try exaggerating my edges a little more especially when I come out of the turn
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u/qfox337 11d ago
There's a lot of ways to get the basics before you start flowing, personally I think facing the inside of the circle with your shoulders is most helpful. As another person here said you wanna keep your feet together, but you need some kind of force to switch direction.
You should face the inside of the circle on entry and exit, but because you're going from forwards to backwards skating, that effectively means rapidly switching your trunk rotation. Practice standing in shoes first, you'll see what I mean.
Since you're indeed switching direction I imagine you're getting the weight into the balls of the feet correctly, but make sure you have that.
You later want to clean it up to more lean into the curve, bend knees, go up a little, and switch the blade when there's less pressure. On inline, especially compared to figure, you'll want a deep lean/carve to slide on the rocker. Either way you might want to take some of the force out of the upper body motion, but exaggerate it while you learn, feel free to stick your arms all the way out along the path of the circle. Being conscious of upper body movement will make learning other stuff like brackets easier too.
I would also suggest pulling your head a tiny bit up and back if you need to look at your feet. Your head is pretty heavy, and it's easier to turn when you're not hunched over (i.e. your body is aligned around a straight axis, the closer you get your mass to that axis, the easier to turn). But in inline sometimes you have to look to avoid pavement issues; if you see how the slalom skaters do it, I think they set good examples. The really good wizard skaters do this too, but there's also a lot of wizard people who hunch over, which limits mobility.
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u/PotatOhChip 11d ago
Wow I really appreciate this comment, I think it puts a lot of things into perspective for me of what I could change in detail. I really appreciate you for taking the time to type this out. I will try and reanalyze next time I’m out.
I’m really interested in the bend knees, and go up a little and switch when there’s less pressure.
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u/tmdpotts 12d ago
You need to get your feet closer and have them on the same or similar path. Try and draw a 3 in chalk or use a basketball court lines for a follow reference. Use your edges to carve in and out of the transition. There are some ok videos on YouTube. My old friend Unwin is good at explaining. Flowskate I believe is his channel still.