Skate Safely for Fitness and Benefits

Skating is the transferring the body on icy ground with special slippery boots or on the road with wheel boots. It needs good fitness and techniques for speedy and successful race. It is also a good workout for the whole body. Below are the exercises, which defines properly the benefits of skating.

In-Line Workout Benefits: Skating gives the most desired goals like aerobic fitness, strength, endurance and weight loss. Skating has been proved to be just as aerobically beneficial as running, compared to cycling, an equal skating effort results in a better muscular workout for hips, thighs and shins.

Better aerobic fitness: Skates of certain minutes is for improving aerobic capacity seems much too soon to stop.

Strength gains: Consistent skate training has been found to tone and build stronger, more stable pelvis, hip, and leg muscles. The quadriceps--the muscles on the fronts of the thighs - are strengthened both from the sustained isometric contraction while gliding in a tuck position and from the repeated contractions and extensions of stroking. Each stroke puts hamstrings, buttocks and hip flexors into play for balance and propulsion, while the abdominals and lower back remain contracted to stabilize the upper body. This also works the inner and outer thigh, pulling muscle and pushing muscle.

Weight Loss: Aerobic activity of certain minutes in sets of a week can gradually turn your body into a fat-burning machine. Your body burns more calories, even when sleeping when your muscles get firmer and denser. Inline skating burns the same number of calories as running.

Type of Skating

Ice Figure Skating: Done on freeze ground and sometimes combined with artistic skating.
Artistic Skating: Various actions streams are followed with one skater or a couple of skater.
Mountain Boarding: Done with the boards under feet on icy mountains also competitions are well common.

Balancing Exercise

To develop and enhance one-foot balance while skating. You should be able to skate on one foot and maintaining balance is fundamental to smooth skating. Practice will help develop the muscles in the lower leg and foot to support your body in a balanced position.

To assist your balance, you will keep your center of balance over the wheels - by keeping your Nose, Knees and Toes aligned on the balancing foot.

Notes: Don't force to keep hands on knees if balancing is performed comfortably on one foot. Use slow speed during exercise to focus on the technique. The faster the wheels are turning, the more stability skate provides, so by working slowly, the focus is on developing balance.

Stopping Exercise

To feel comfortable skating at the higher speeds required for aerobic workout skating, you must be able to control your speed on down hills and stop effectively without losing your balance.

T-stop is an advanced technique and often used by skaters who choose not to mount a heel brake. It involves dragging the wheels of one skate at an angle behind you to create the friction required to stop.

Power Stroke Exercise

This exercise develops more powerful, effective and efficient stroke to recruit the large muscles of the leg and obtain higher speeds. To maximize the fitness and aerobic benefits of skating, the large muscles of the leg must be fully recruited to get the intensity of the exercise into the aerobic training region. The longer the stroking foot is in contact with the ground, the more power from the leg muscles is transferred into forward motion.

Speed Turning Exercise

At the increased speeds required for an aerobic workout, you will often have to negotiate turns.

Maintaining balance while turning on the outside edge of the skate means that during counter-clockwise turns, the ankle of the left foot will be allowed a slight outward tip to force the skate into a left turn; likewise, during the clockwise turn, the right foot will tip slightly outward to force the skate into a right turn.