Beginner’s Guide : Roller Disco / Roller Fitsco

Like other inventions from the same glorious decade – think, Apple computers, Post-It notes and liposuction – the 1970s roller disco is alive, well and positively thriving. With spectacular lighting displays, thumping beats and four-wheel fun creating an electric atmosphere, the roller disco has everything you could want in a cracking night out… not to mention the opportunity to work up a sweat. Add a coach who turns up the workout with aerobics instruction, skate training and high-energy team challenges… and you have yourself a roller ‘fitsco’, Possums!

You will need:

• Socks! My picks are these or these.
• The rink will provide skates, wrist (and knee) pads which are really your only other essentials.
• Consider wearing ¾ tights or leggings so your knee pads can sit over the top.
• With a disco lighting set-up, I wholeheartedly recommend a white / fluoro t-shirt so you can maximise the black lighting to its fullest glow-worm-creating potential.

​8 things You’ll Learn Very Quickly from Your First Roller Disco

1) A Beginner’s Class will take you from Bambi-on-ice to I-think-I’ve-got-this within an hour, so don’t worry too much – you can do it.

2. Knee pads have a right way and a wrong way up.

3. Falling over doesn’t hurt anywhere near as much as you think it will (in reality, probably the only bruising will be to your ego).

4. You will feel like this when you get off you skates and back onto solid ground:

5. ​Learning to stop is very important – especially when you find yourself skating at high-speed towards a stationery gathering of unsuspecting skaters.

6. Uptown Funk is the best roller skating song ever recorded in human history. Closely followed by It's Tricky.

7. You’ll be able to pick the Roller Derby crew (out for a spot of casual skating) as they are: (a) inherently cooler than you, (b) wearing awesome black ankle skates.

8. Light up roller skates exist in the world (you’re welcome).

Look Fabulous, Feel Fabulous Rating

Fun

Once you get the knack of life on eight wheels, you start to relax your previously iron-cast shoulders and intensely scrunched brows, skate a bit faster and actually begin to take in the awesome soundtrack pumping through the venue. Building up speed is SERIOUSLY fun and incorporating cool new moves is fun insofar as you can stay upright! Though, I know from experience that stacking into a crowd of unsuspecting skaters can also be downright hilarious. Skating can be as social or as solitary as you like – laugh and jostle with your pals, dance the beat or get your head down and go full throttle!!

Heartrate / Intensity

As you begin to build up speed and really up the exertion of your skating, you’ll start to feel your heartrate kick into rhythm. If you’ve never skated before – you’ll likely spend much of your session getting comfortable being on your skates. While you won’t feel overwhelmed by the workout, you’ll feel plenty of heartrate quickening from the sheer terror of toppling over! If you’re taking a roller fitness class – as opposed to a regular roller disco or speed skate session - you’ll get lots of aerobic goodness from the 45,000 squat and/or squat-like skating moves you’ll undoubtedly do in the class.

Confidence Boost

The feeling from nailing a lengthy backwards skate or mastering a cool-looking turn is pretty life-affirming and there is almost endless scope to get more and more accomplished (like my pal Jim in the video!).

Ease for ABSOLUTE Beginners

If you have never EVER skated before then there really is a window of time it will take before you can skate confidently enough to incorporate some actual enjoyment/pleasure in what you’re doing. Having said that – I hadn’t skated in YEARS (as a 90s kid – rollerblading was my jam) and within 10mins I was competent enough to start thinking about more than not falling over. Funnily enough – it was only when I started thinking like this that I actually DID fall over (hey, you gotta push them boundaries, kiddo…).

All round Faaaaabulousness

The flashing disco lights, the iridescent blue leopard print skates, the thumping tunes and the electric vibe give the roller fitness 100% on the fabulousness scale. Short of showering skaters in chocolate unicorns at 10 minute intervals, I actually don’t think it can be improved in any practical/pragmatic/nutrition-friendly way.