This past week, one of my learn-to-skate students cried and complained that her feet were hurting because her mom bought her new skates.  I wished the mom approached me first before she blindly went out to buy new skates at her local sporting goods store.  I would have helped save her time and money and most importantly, the pain her daughter is now enduring due to her poor fitting and low quality skates.  The new skates were hurting my student so badly that she couldn't continue with her lesson and had to get off the ice early and in the end, made the trip to the rink to skate for less than 15 minutes.  Given this unfortunate incident which could have been avoided, I thought it would be best to take the time and provide my advice on how to select a good pair of skates.

There are two important things to remember when shopping for a new pair of skates - quality and proper fit. If a skater enjoys skating and wants to continue learning then the parent should be asking the following questions - should I invest in new skates?, what kind of skates to buy?, where should I purchase skates? and how much do skates costs?  For those students in my higher level free skate classes and who are more serious about pursing the sport, I definitely would recommend purchasing your own pair of skates. Rental skates are often damaged, worn out and even broken down, and lack the required support so it would be safer and more beneficial for skaters to have their own pair if they plan to continue to skate. I feel it's very important to have the best fitting and most comfortable skates because if your child doesn't, he/she will constantly complain and possibly experience blisters and worse of all, dislike skating.