Roller Skating
Roller skating offers a low-impact way to exercise that burns calories and strengthens the heart. It also benefits muscles throughout your body.
The Return of Roller Skating
Over a decade later, I never would have believed that we’d return to roller skating. Just ask the teenagers on TikTok, whose skating videos are reaching millions of viewers across the globe daily, leading to pairs of skates quickly selling out online.
“There’s an impression that skating is ‘coming back,’ which is true in some sense, but it’s actually been on the rise for about 10 years slowly and then picked up within the past 2-3 years,” Arnav “Sonic” Shah, a two-decade-long multidisciplinary skate artist and teacher based in New York, told Health. “Skating now is nothing like when I started in the 90s.”
Other roller-skaters are overjoyed by the activity’s popularity, especially as a form of solo activity during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Is Roller Skating a Good Workout?
Roller skating is an effective full-body aerobic exercise that you can do outdoors or indoors. During aerobic exercise, your heart pumps blood through your body faster than usual. Your body must work hard to enrich your blood with oxygen, quickening your breathing. That process helps strengthen your heart. Also, aerobic exercise increases HDL (“good”) cholesterol, protecting your heart.
What’s more, roller skating has a metabolic cost of about 6.0–7.0 calories per minute. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises 150 minutes of exercise weekly, or 30 minutes five days per week. Therefore, roller skating for 30 minutes burns about 180–210 calories.
In terms of muscles worked, roller skating utilizes nearly every muscle in your body.
“You’re using your arms and shoulders, but also your abs and back to keep balanced,” explained Shah. “It uses your whole body in a lot of ways.”
Benefits of Roller Skating
As a workout, roller skating has several benefits. For example, roller skating is a low-impact form of cardio. So, you’re less likely to encounter the same knee issues you often get with high-impact cardio like high-intensity interval training (HIIT) or running, explained Shah.
Low-impact exercises reduce the stress you put on your joints while working out. Therefore, roller skating suits people with chronic muscle and joint pain, like arthritis or fibromyalgia. In addition to being low-impact, roller skating is also a low-intensity exercise. Compared to high-intensity activities like running, roller skating involves minimal surface friction. So, roller skating helps burn more calories from fat.
Also, research has found that low-intensity exercises help improve endurance. In one study published in 2021 in Healthcare, researchers studied the effects of low-intensity exercise on endurance among 20 adult men. The researchers found that men who did eight one-hour-long low-intensity sessions over four weeks improved their endurance.
Roller skating also works your lower-body muscles. Lower-body exercises help improve your balance, which is key for older adults. Maintaining balance helps prevent falls.
Risks of Roller Skating
Warming up and stretching before roller skating will help prevent injuries, especially in the hamstring area, noted Dean.
“When I start my classes, as soon as they get on the floor, we stretch as you would before any aerobics class,” added Dean. “With skating, your feet are shoulder-length apart, and your body is tilted forward. Being in that position for a long time can tense your hamstrings, so focus on keeping them pliable.”
Proper safety gear is essential if you consider taking up roller skating. Invest in quality equipment if you can, emphasized Shah and Dean. That includes a helmet, wrist guards, elbow pads, knee pads, padded bottoms, and a decent pair of roller skates. Also, a roller skating teacher can help you get the right footing.