Hey, it’s Harry (the website manager) here. This is a post about aggressive inline skating, written for both veteran skaters and those newer to the activity. In a time when skating is constantly broadcast through social media, it’s hard not to notice that visibility and influence often correlate more with volume. Therefore, it's appropriate to highlight an approach less focused on this culture which participates in a different kind of conversation.
So, you’ve probably not heard the term Modern Aggressive Skating and I’d like to change that.
What is Traditional Aggressive Skating?
I've mentioned in other (more SEO-driven) blog posts that:
“Aggressive skating involves stunts like grinding on rails, sliding on obstacles, and jumping or spinning off various structures. It's similar to skateboarding, with an emphasis on tricks at skateparks or in urban environments.”
This is a reasonable description of “Traditional Aggressive Skating”. It was built on high-impact tricks, technical switch-ups, and pushing the body to its physical limits. This foundation still defines much of the scene today, carried on at the highest level by skaters like Julien Cudot, Nils Jansons and Anthony Pottier (for example).
But, something new is brewing. A shift. A perspective where skaters do not use skates only as means to do tricks, but to explore something more nuanced. Something I call “Modern Aggressive Skating”.
What is Modern Aggressive Skating?
Modern Aggressive Skating is a movement-oriented approach to inline skating that takes influence from (but not exclusive to) dance, parkour, wizard-style and dare I even say - philosophy? It values creativity, environment interaction, and originality over repetition and trick hierarchies. It still includes grinding, sliding, jumping, and spinning, but often only as a way to loosely anchor the activity in the aggressive skating category. Modern Aggressive Skaters seek to find meaning somewhere between their ability and their surroundings, often resulting in something more profound than simply sliding on a rail.
To fully understand this evolution let's take a look at some skaters who are (in my opinion) redefining the possibilities of inline skating.
1. Stuart Brattey - All My Friends Do Mushrooms 🍄
Stuart Brattey is incredible on skates. With extensive experience in wizard-style, you can see how the language of both disciplines merge, creating a highly enjoyable approach to movement. His skating highlights the idea that we can push beyond the boundaries of our usual mechanics. Having wheels under our feet gives us a superpower and Stuart Brattey utilises his equipment in ways that seemed unimaginable 5 years ago. It’s almost as if we’re witnessing the beauty of mechanics in its purest form.
2. Danny Beer - FIRED UP!
Danny Beer is raw power and energy, combined with a playful unwillingness to ever let us know what’s coming next. His awareness of the camera injects personality into his moves, reminding me of being a child playing with friends. I’m 99.9% sure that this is everyone's goal when they put on their skates and head to the skatepark. He uses aggressive skates, and sometimes you'll see him sliding on a rails, but often he's using the equipment to get from one part of a move or sequence to the next in extremely novel ways (this reminds me of the earlier years of Parkour). If you've ever asked "what is a trick?", Danny Beer will keep you pondering on that for some time.
3. Collin Martin - My Friend Collin
This online edit is a great example of how experimentation can lead to mainstream adoption. Some of the ideas presented in this video, as well as earlier ones, may have been groundbreaking at the time but are now commonly used without people knowing their origin. Collin’s approach to skating has always followed this path: it starts off as confronting, then becomes inspirational. When he speaks it's time to pay full attention.
In Closing...
The purpose of this article is not to suggest Modern Aggressive Skating is a better approach to the activity than Traditional Aggressive Skating. That’s subjective. Traditional Aggressive Skating remains elite and impressive, requiring a level of mindset, ability, and confidence well beyond my own. But it rarely surprises - or maybe more importantly - excites me.
Modern Aggressive Skating is one of the more exciting things happening in skating today. That’s not an opinion. It’s a visible shift. It draws from other disciplines of skating and even other sports, pushing inline skating into unexpected and creative territory.
I deeply appreciate my roots in Traditional Aggressive Skating, it was my upbringing, my inspiration, my escape. But, I often wonder if it can progress beyond what legends like Chris Haffey, Brian Aragon and Alex Broskow have already achieved.
Skaters like Stuart Brattey, Danny Beer, and Collin Martin make me believe that watching skating can truly live up to common clichés and platitudes like “poetry in motion” or “painting with movement” and in doing so, they offer far more value than is often recognised on a broader level.