Getting faster on roller skates comes down to three things: refining your stride mechanics, reducing the forces that slow you down, and choosing equipment that matches your skating surface. Small changes in each area compound into noticeable speed gains, whether you skate quads or inlines.
Fix Your Stride First
Most recreational skaters lose speed because they push backward instead of sideways. Your wheels can only grip and propel you when force is directed laterally, perpendicular to the direction you’re rolling. In a standard skating stride, you push outward on an inside edge, then glide on the opposite foot before repeating. That glide phase is where speed bleeds away. Friction from the surface, air resistance, and bearing drag all slow you down while your muscles are doing nothing productive except holding a bent knee.
The most effective way to eliminate that dead time is a technique called the double push. Instead of gliding passively after each push, you place the recovering foot on its outside edge and drive it inward, underneath your body. This creates a second burst of propulsion during what used to be wasted time. Then you steer that same foot back across the centerline for a regular inside-edge push. The result: you’re generating force through nearly the entire stroke cycle.
The double push has two major advantages beyond the obvious extra push. First, it extends your effective stroke length, meaning the same leg at a deep knee bend travels a longer productive distance by pushing both inward and outward. Second, it smooths out your speed. A standard stride creates a surge-and-slow pattern with each push. The double push keeps velocity more constant, which is mechanically more efficient and faster over distance. Learning it takes weeks of focused practice, but it’s the single biggest technique change you can make for speed.
Get Lower and Tuck Your Arms
Air resistance is the dominant force working against you at higher speeds, and your body position determines how much of it you face. Research from Delft University of Technology found that optimizing your deep sit position, specifically your trunk angle and knee bend, reduces aerodynamic drag by 7.5%. That’s a meaningful difference when you’re trying to maintain speed over any real distance.
The key is bending deeper at both the knees and the hips, bringing your torso closer to horizontal. This shrinks your frontal profile, the area of your body that the wind has to push against. Your arms matter too: skating with one or both hands tucked behind your back reduces drag compared to swinging both arms freely. Interestingly, the difference between one arm loose and two arms loose wasn’t statistically significant in wind tunnel testing, so keeping at least one hand on your back is the priority.
Holding a deep position is physically demanding. Your quads and glutes fatigue quickly if you’re not conditioned for it. Start by holding a lower stance during straight sections and gradually extend the duration as your legs adapt.
Choose the Right Wheels
Wheel diameter and hardness both affect your top speed, and the ideal setup depends on where you skate.
For diameter, larger wheels roll faster. Speed skaters typically use wheels between 90mm and 125mm. Bigger wheels maintain momentum better and cover more ground per rotation. The tradeoff is that they raise your center of gravity and make you less stable, so if you’re still building balance and confidence, stepping up gradually (from 80mm to 90mm, for example) makes more sense than jumping straight to 110mm or 125mm. Larger wheels also accelerate more slowly, so sprinters sometimes choose slightly smaller diameters to get up to speed faster.
For hardness (measured in durometer), the general principle is straightforward:
- 81A (soft) offers the most grip, ideal for sprinting or rough outdoor surfaces where traction matters
- 83A (medium) works for about 70% of track and road conditions
- 85A (hard) reduces rolling resistance on ultra-smooth tracks and is best for longer distances
Softer wheels deform more on contact with the ground, which increases grip but also increases rolling resistance and wears them down faster. Harder wheels hold their shape, roll with less friction on smooth surfaces, and last longer. If you skate outdoors on rough asphalt, a softer wheel actually helps because it absorbs surface imperfections instead of bouncing over them. On a polished indoor floor or smooth road, harder wheels let you carry more speed.
Don’t Overthink Bearings
ABEC ratings (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) are one of the most misunderstood specs in skating. The common belief is that higher ABEC means faster. It doesn’t, at least not in the way most skaters think. ABEC measures manufacturing precision tolerances, which only matter at extremely high RPMs, well beyond what roller skating produces. A bearing engineer quoted in a Skateboarding.com feature put it bluntly: “Unless the skateboarder is going 70 miles an hour, the precision of the bearing doesn’t really matter.”
What does matter is the lubricant inside the bearing and the materials used for the ball retainer. Factory bearings often come packed with thick grease designed for longevity, not speed. Switching to a lighter lubricant reduces internal resistance and keeps dirt from accumulating as readily. Synthetic ball retainers also outperform metal ones under the side-loading forces that skating creates. If your bearings spin freely and don’t make grinding noises, upgrading the ABEC rating alone won’t make you noticeably faster. Cleaning and re-lubricating with a light skate-specific oil will.
Build Skating-Specific Power
Speed on skates is ultimately limited by how much force your legs can produce laterally and how long they can sustain it. Research using muscle-activation sensors on speed skaters found that the muscles running along the front of the shin and the front of the thigh showed the strongest relationship to maintaining speed over a race. When those muscles fatigued, skating velocity dropped. The glutes and inner thigh muscles (adductors) are also critical, especially for the inward push phase of the double push stroke.
Off-skate exercises that build lateral power translate directly to faster skating. Lateral lunges, single-leg squats, and lateral bounding (jumping side to side) all train the movement pattern you use on skates. Focus on explosive lateral movements rather than just heavy squatting, since skating demands quick force production at deep knee angles.
On-skate interval training is one of the most efficient ways to build speed endurance. A simple and effective structure: warm up for five minutes at an easy pace, then do five rounds of 60 seconds at maximum intensity followed by 40 seconds of recovery skating. Finish with a two-minute cooldown. This type of workout trains your body to produce power at high heart rates and recover quickly between efforts.
Practice Stopping at Speed
Skating faster is only useful if you can control that speed. Many skaters rely on the T-stop as their only braking method, which works for moderate speed control but cannot reliably stop you on a downhill or in an emergency. You need at least two or three braking techniques that you can combine depending on the situation.
The plow stop (angling both feet inward, like a snowplow) is excellent for controlling speed on slopes and can bring you to a full stop. The power stop, where you turn sharply and skid both skates sideways, is the go-to for emergencies. For inline skaters, a backward powerslide entered from forward skating is one of the most efficient ways to stop quickly. Quad skaters can use a backward toe-stop drag for the same purpose.
Experienced skaters chain methods together: a T-stop to scrub initial speed, then a stepping plow to finish stopping, for example. Practice these at progressively higher speeds so they’re automatic when you need them. The confidence to brake reliably lets you commit to going faster in the first place.
How Fast Can You Actually Get?
For context on what’s humanly possible, the current world record for the 100-meter inline sprint on a road course is 9.53 seconds, set by Colombian skater Jhoan Sebastian Guzman Bitar at The World Games in 2025. That works out to roughly 23.8 mph (38.3 km/h) over a very short distance. Recreational skaters who apply solid technique and appropriate equipment typically cruise between 10 and 15 mph, with trained fitness skaters pushing into the high teens. Every improvement in body position, stride mechanics, and equipment gets you closer to the upper end of that range.