What’s the difference between freeride and recreational inline skates?

Even people who’ve been skating for years might not quite get the difference between freestyle, fitness and recreational inline skates… And to make it even more confusing, there’s also a type of skates similar to freestyle called freeride as well! What are all these skates for, what’s the differences between them and which one’s right for you?

What’s the difference between freeride and recreational skates? Recreational and freeride skates are both for skating around your local park and town, but whereas recreational prioritise comfort and can’t be upgraded, freeride skates are focused a bit more on performance, often have a harder shell, and the wheels and frames can be changed, so you could move from four wheels to three bigger ones.

What about freeride versus freestyle? To an outside observer these skates may look exactly the same. However, unless you’re into doing slalom (cones on the ground), you probably want to get freeride skates, rather than freestyle. Though, you could happily get either.

What’s the biggest difference between freeride and recreational?

Recreational and fitness prioritise comfort, and are used for skating up and down a nice flat surface, great for beginners learning to skate.

Freeride and freestyle are used for the same type of skating, but just are a bit more tough, a bit more performance focused, and allow you to do a few jumps and tricks with a bit more manoeuvrability.

Those whizz-genius-skaters you see riding around on Instagram won’t be using recreational or fitness skates, because they need something a bit more sturdy that reacts to their moves better.

That, in a nutshell, is the main difference.

Freestyle and freeride are skates for skaters who want to take their skating a bit more to the next level. Recreational skates are a strong favourite amongst beginner kids, whereas adults that have been skating for years might usually go for freestyle/freeride.

You could actually use either as a beginner skater. And there is a strong argument for going for freeride rather than recreational, because you can upgrade your freeride later whereas you’re normally stuck with your recreational ones as they come out of the box.

Freestyle or freeride might be a little bit more pricey but not necessarily. They might be maybe slightly less squidgy and soft because their boots are sturdier for performance reasons to transfer your stroke power to the wheels more efficiently.

So with freeride, with the right wheel set up, you can probably go a bit faster than recreational. You can also do jumps and skate across more surfaces a little better. Freestyle – even more specialised – put up those cones and do the slalom – that’s what freestyle are specialised for really is to help do, with their extra manoeuvrability.

What types of skating are the different skates made for?

Fitness and recreational – well, the name says it doesn’t it. If you’ve got a local pathway or park near you and you skate around it to keep in good shape and for fun, that’s where these skates come in. They offer fantastic comfort and keep you in good spirits skating around like that.

Freeride and freestyle -if you want to skate fast across a city, or you want to do slalom with the little cones, or if you want to be jumping off things as you skate across a city, then freeride or freestyle are for you. More freestyle if you want to do ‘stylish’ slalom, and like skate dancing type stuff, whereas with free ‘ride’ the clue again is in the name, a tiny bit more for expressing yourself whilst riding a further distance.

What are the difference between the boots and components in freestyle/freeride and recreational?

There are some differences in the construction of the boots, wheelframes and the wheels chosen between fitness/recreational and freestyle/freeride. Basically, as mentioned, freeride skates have been designed with performance in mind whereas recreational, though made to perform well, also focus a bit more on comfort.

More control and power with freeride than recreational, because of sturdier boots

There’s a better transfer of power from your foot to the floor with the freeride compared to recreational (and potentially actually a little more with freestyle than with freeride, but only a small difference that a beginner would not notice).

Freeride are usually built with slightly tougher, sturdier materials and as there’s not as much ‘give’ this means that the power transfers more to the movement of the wheels on the ground. So with fitness skates some of that push is transferred instead to the bending or cushioning of parts of the boot, in order to keep you comfortable.

But you still get okay transfer of power in fitness skates, just not as much as with the sturdier freeride.

Freeride are more customisable and upgradeable compared to recreational

Once you buy recreational skates, that’s pretty much the skate you have to stick with for as long as you have it. it’s not usually very easy to change or upgrade parts such as the wheels or the wheel frame. But in the case of freeride skates they come ready to upgrade the different components. This can be very useful for you to work out in the future the perfect components for your skates. The main benefit is you might want to go from four medium sized wheels on freeride skates to three large wheels, for example. Three large wheels are very popular because they give both great speed and pretty good manoeuvrability, and this might be something you want to change to once you’ve got used to skating. With freeride/freestyle you have the option at least…

What’s best for a beginning – freeride or recreational?

What about if you’re just starting out skating, what’s the best between the two of them.

Feel free to skip this section if you’re not a beginner of course.

If you’re starting out, it’s easier to say which types of skates you don’t want.

You don’t want aggressive skates because they’re for doing tricks like going up and down ramps or sliding down stair poles (unless you want to START this type of skating, in which case go ahead).

You don’t want speed skates because they’re insane, and for crazy people to go really fast and well, uncomfortable and no support for your ankles, etc.

You are basically left with the ones we’re discussing.

So, actually you could get either.

It does depend how ‘pedestrian’ and ‘restrained’ you are. If you really are just after simple skating round the park, you can’t get a more comfortable skate than some of the soft-boot recreational fitness skates out there. They’re like having a warm blanket wrapped around your foot and ankle, sometimes.

These recreational skates often come with brakes and look similar to the ones you can buy for children with a brake sticking out at the back. These are for skating up and down to help burn calories and enjoy yourself.

But actually, a lot of skaters recommend you get a full-on freeride skate instead. Because, technically I suppose these are bit more like a ‘proper’ skate, in that the boots are almost always hard and more supportive, allowing you to skate with more manoeuvrability and power etc.

It’s a bit like a slightly more professional version of a recreational skate…

But, also fine for beginners…

So if you love comfort I’d stick with recreational.

If you want to perform a bit better, go with freestyle/freeride.

What’s all this talk about freestyle and freeride?

I’ve been talking a lot about freestyle and occasionally mentioning freeride and hinting there’s a small difference and right now, half way down the article, it occurs to me actually that probably I should speak more about the difference between them.

Freestyle

Freestyle, is basically EVEN MORE specialised than freeride.

But for a specific purpose…

The main difference being that generally freestyle are narrower, have a liner that’s built into the boot, and possibly made from carbon fibre, and are specialised in all these ways to help you perform precise tricks.

Freestyle is if you want to do slalom, in a nutshell.

This is the thing with cones on the ground where your skates move around them really quickly. They’re designed with features like having the wheels bunched up closer under the boot (rather than extending out in front and behind) that make them optimised for that type of skating. Basically, you can buy them to skate around all purpose as well, but really they’re specialised for that type of skating and may be in general more expensive than freeride.

Freestyle are a bit further along on the performance spectrum.

Shorter wheelbase

Freestyle may also have a slightly shorter wheelbase. This means that the wheels seem to almost fit underneath the boot, they are slightly smaller wheels and closer together. That means they turn on the spot a little more easily. So the further out the wheels from the front and the back on the boot, like happens in some speed skates, might be good for maximum speed, but it does mean the turning circle of the skate is so much bigger because of how long and straight the wheels are in a line, whereas when you bunch them closer they turn in a shorter circle overall which makes them easier to manoeuvre. So when it comes to freestyle in particular the wheels are closer together to help with the aforementioned tricks with cones and movements that require particular precision..

Free ride

Free ride come with a tough plastic boot, with a removable liner. I’m talking about free RIDE now, not free STYLE. Are you confused yet?

These are made tougher and basically ideal for skating around a city from one side to the other. The bigger the wheels you get on this, the more surfaces it will be able to deal with. But bigger wheels are harder to balance on, and the three-wheeled variety are not recommended for beginners at all.

As the liner comes out you can replace the liner if it wears out.

The wheel set up that comes with freeride boots tends to allow you to skate around further and faster a bit easier.

The removable liner is technically an extra moving part and reduces the precision just a tiny bit when it comes to executing the most precise of tricks it makes it a tiny bit harder. But this isn’t something you’re going to notice if you’ve never had freestyle skates before.

Recreational versus fitness

There’s even a tiny bit of difference between fitness and recreational, sort of!

These terms are used interchangeably and fair enough because there’s almost no difference between the two.

One possible difference is that recreational boots could have slightly higher cuffs, which means again more for stability and comfort rather than performance.