Wizard-style Skating
By Thomas de Meijer - 20 Aug 2026
Inline skating is a sport that can be enjoyed in many ways; fitness, racing, urban, aggressive, etc. Wizard-style skating is a recent development, bringing the creativity of aggressive street skating to big-wheel skates. This article serves as an introduction to wizard-style skating, as well as somewhere to share my own thoughts and related bookmarks.
Chapters:
Background
Wizard-style skating evolved from aggressive skating; doing tricks at a skatepark or on street obstacles. Leon Basin—the originator—made a technical innovation combining a slightly rockered frame with a robust construction. The subtle rocker (much less than for example slalom frames) suddenly makes these long frames with their big, smooth rolling wheels maneauverable, while still providing a really stable platform. This allows a smooth, flowy style of flat-ground skating combining wide, powerful turns with snappy swivels, jumps and slides. At the same time, any type of street obstacles can still be incorporated without fear of breakages.
I have followed the development of wizard-style skating from early on, especially through videos like the Big Wheels series on the Mushroom Blading youtube channel. I was lucky enough to find myself in Vancouver in 2015, and tried out a prototype pair of Wizard NR100 frames. I got the Seba CJ boot at the time, and the following year upgraded to Intuition liners and Wizard NR110 frames—and have been a part-time Wizard since.
Moves
Like any sport there is a whole new vocabulary to learn. The iconic core move—called the Gazelle—is a forward to backward transition. When performed at its best it is a powerful turn into the “swivel” with another powerful turn exiting the move—maintaining or even building speed. It looks effortless when done well, but takes quite a bit of practice, and a lot of trust in your equipment and the ground. The remaining core moves are all variations such as one-footed or backwards.
Superficially it has a lot in common with figure skating, but unlike the well-defined hierarchy of tricks with their points values there is a big emphasis on free spirited creativity and self expression, as well as incorporating street obstacles—the weirder the better.
Equipment
There is now a large variety of wizard-style specific frames on the market. The basic options are 90, 100 and 110mm rockered 4-wheel frames, for either a UFS, 165-mount or trinity boot. Then there are a variety of 5-wheel frames with smaller wheels. Finally there is a range of mixed wheel-size frames (for example 100mm front and back with 3x76mm wheels inbetween). Each company has its own interpretation of the “perfect rocker” shape, as well as differences in appearance and quality. With so many options it can be difficult to choose! Having said that, you can apply the concepts to any type of skates.
Suitable boots for wizard-style skating are mostly UFS or 165-mount, with some Trinity options. This is referring to the pattern of screws attaching the frame to the boot. Depending on your chosen frame, and personal preference, you will want a boot with more or less sideways and forward flex. In general, a very stiff boot is preferred by most people, giving good support to perform skate moves on large wheels, which put a lot of leverage onto your boot.
The “perfect setup”
I'm still skating the Wizard NR110 frames I started on. I chose the 110mm version at the time because I thought I could re-use my slightly worn speed-skating wheels, which I had a steady supply of. Funnily enough I've been using the same set of wheels on them since the beginning, and they are only now needing replacement! On top of that, speed skating wheels are optimised for grip and speed, which is not really what you want for wizard-style skating!
The boot I use is also still the Seba CJ, which is now starting to show its age a little. I removed the built-in liners myself and replaced them with Intuition liners. The fit is just a touch on the small side, which is generally considered ideal for wizard-style skating. It's a good skate, but I can understand why the new wizard-specific models have higher cuffs with another top strap. It's hard to find that perfect balance between flexibility and support.
I've had the opportunity to try a few different frames over the years, which has given me a direction for my next setup. I'll try to explain my thought process here, to hopefully give an insight into the considerations and trade-offs involved—starting with the pros and cons of my current NR110 frames:
- + High quality, solid construction.
- + Quiet (no rattles)
- + Single-sided axles
- + Rocker profile not too pronounced
- + Length is great for toe presses and pivots
- + Big wheels are fast and smooth
- ± Rocker profile shape, still feels a bit alien
- − Heavy
- − Difficult to do heel rolls (due to frame length)
The first alternative frame I've tried is the Wizard NR90. For me this was definitely not the right choice. The shorter length felt too short for wizard-style moves, and the rocker made them very twitchy. I'm used to skating 4x90mm frames without rocker, and for me the added maneouverability was not welcome.
The second experience was the Rockin' VERSA frame with 100mm front and back wheels, and 3x80mm inbetween. This was quite a fun and surprising frame to try out. The slightly longer length and lower centre of gravity made toe presses super fun, even more so than on my NR110. They were also surprisingly easy to swivel, feeling more like the NR90 than the NR110. This was quite a revelation, as it shows how big an impact the rocker profile can have on the experience—and this is something that can't be seen in pictures online. In combination with the long length, this made spins feel almost out of control with the frames wanting to keep you spinning. With some practice I'm sure there are some upsides to this, especially the feeling of almost having three pivot points under your feet—front, middle and back—but I wasn't convinced overall. I think having such an easy pivot point can promote a bad style, simply swiveling on the spot rather than carving into and out of turns.
Finally I've tried the One Skates frame (4x100mm). These immediately felt great—almost like the frames got completely out of the way of what I was trying to do. The length of the 4x100mm frame feels perfect, just putting heel rolls back into reach while still providing great stability and momentum. On top of this, they are super light. Really night and day compared to the NR110 frames. Some say added weight provides a benefit, but I think 4 100mm wheels already provide enough mass all by themselves, and not that much extra frame weight is needed. Technically I do have some small reservations about the construction, especially with the thin side walls where the axles pass through, requiring special bearings. Still, I think this might be “the one” (get it?).
So what about the boot? I'm still on the lookout. If the One skates frame is a sports car, the boot should match that. Slim and lightweight. Options are pretty limited, especially within UFS. Most UFS skates are designed primarily for aggressive skating, and are quite bulky. Moving away from UFS means either a different frame or using adapters, which is probably acceptable. It seems like there are some interesting options now with Trinity mounting.
Resources
References to find out more about wizard-style skating.
- Moves - by Wizard Skating
- The perfect primer by the inventor himself.
- Wizard Skating - Youtube
- The official Wizard Skating Youtube channel, still putting out great content
- Eccentric Inline - Turn On, Lean in, Drop Down
- The website and blog of Billy Arlew. Especially check out the amazing trick guides, with slow motion gif's to help you learn the way of the Wizard.
- Rockerd - MAGIC MOVES app
- Wizard trick generator - combines moves for you to try out
- The 5 Principles of Wizard–Style Skating by Bas Bavinck
- A book? A book! Bas has developed a framework to help you master wizard-style skating. The book introduces the framework as well as practical tools and exercises, interviews with skaters and industry people, and more.
Media
Get inspired below! There is so much more out there so expect to see more added here over time.
- Big Wheels
- Just before the wizard-style skating era.
- The Wizard of Wall Street
- Leon Basin showing what's possible on the NR110 frames.
- My Friend Collin
- An “aggressive skating” edit that somehow perfectly captures the essence of wizard-style skating.
- SKATELINE | CONTINUUM • Floésie
- A recent wizard-style video release—amazing quality.
Closing remarks
I hope the above was interesting to some people. The Appendices below have some additional hard-core technical information for the real skate nerd. Had enough? Consider taking a look at what else my website has to offer (some old-fashioned web surfing!)
All writing here is completely my own. If you have any feedback or suggestions on what to expand on I would love to hear from you! Contact me here.
Appendix A - Rocker
Rocker is when the wheels of a skate frame are placed at slightly different heights, leading to unequal weight distribution between the wheels. If they are all in a line, this is often called flat or flat rocker—it's harder to turn. By raising the outer wheels ever so slightly, you create more of a pivot point in the middle, allowing easier turns. When describing a rocker profile the wheels are numbered starting with 1 being the front and 4 the back wheel (assuming 4 wheels).
The original NR series Wizard frames have what the brand calls a Natural Rocker. Here wheel number 3 is the lowest, creating the main pivot point under the back half of your foot. This is supposed to mimic the natural wear the wheels get with time, with the front wearing a bit faster than the back. The total rocker is less than one mm, distributed something like 0.8, 0.5, 0, 0.5mm from front to back. If you imaging this frame perfectly level, wheel number three would be touching the ground, and the neighbouring wheels 2 and 4 would be the next wheels to touch the ground. The average height of those two wheels is 0.5mm. If we now lean our weight and the skate forward a bit we can get it to balance on wheel 2 instead. The neighbouring wheels 1 and 3 have an average height difference of ((0.3 + 0.5) / 2) = 0.4mm. It sounds like a small difference but it is 20% less rocker. You really notice this change in behaviour when you execute your moves, and having your “balance” right is very important to get consistent turning results.
Of course there are more factors affecting the behaviour of the rocker—take wheel hardness. The urethane of the wheels compresses under your weight. With the NR110 example again, this means in reality that 0.5mm difference between wheels pretty much disappears. Instead, you will be rolling on say the back three wheels, but wheel 3 takes most of the weight, and 2 and 4 are only just touching the ground taking a little bit of your weight each. When you turn, you are therefore not freely spinning, you're actually dragging those other two wheels around the “pivot wheel”. This effect is more noticable with softer wheels or on an uneven surface.
That introduces the third variable; distance between wheels. This is typically about double the average radius, so two 110mm wheels are about 110mm apart, and an 80mm next to a 90mm wheel are about 85mm apart. The effect is that the “same” amount of rocker (in mm from the ground) feels very different depending on wheel size. Since you are usually dragging some wheels sideways when you turn, the further apart those wheels are, the harder this gets. To illustrate—let's compare a 5x90 frame to a progressive rocker frame (say 100-80-80-80-100). Imagine the same rocker profile on both. If the 5x90 frame is perfectly centred, it's balancing on the centre two wheels. Assuming they both take the load evenly and all the other wheels are not touching, this gives a wheelbase of 90mm. The progressive rocker frame has a wheelbase of 80mm, so would turn more easily. On the other hand, if we now press down on the toes and lean on the front two wheels, the situation changes—the 5x90 frame still has the same 90mm wheelbase, but the progressive rocker wheel distance is now (100+80)/2 = 90mm—the same!
You can see how with this many variables it's very hard to predict the performance of a frame based on just the “specs”. The description of the designer on the intent of their design, or user feedback, is a more reliable guide. Aside from that the general frame selection criteria still hold—for example if you have smaller feet you generally want a shorter frame, and you should consider the mounting options of your skate.