If you ask skaters why they love to roller skate, you will probably hear many reasons, but two among them will stand out – for exercise purposes and to have fun. Both reasons are the major reasons why people skate.
And yes, roller skating is good for the body in many ways that you can possibly imagine. If you are looking forward to burn some calories, roller skating is one of the ways to get started. However, it requires some technical know-how to be able to skate efficiently.
But is roller skating good for your knees? Can you skate if you have a knee problem, or does roller skating pose any threat to your knees? Let’s find out if it is.
What is Roller Skating?
Roller skating is basically an activity that involves you gliding on top of set of wheels for recreational or exercise purposes. Call roller skating a fitness exercise activity and you won’t be so wrong.
When you think of burning some calories and getting back to your top shape, you may begin to think of several exercise regimes and popular weight-loss methods like going to the gym, jogging, etc. Most people do not consider roller skating and doesn’t deem it as an exercise that will quickly help them achieve their weight-loss goal. Instead, they consider it as a form of recreational activity.
Apart from getting in shape, roller skating has other amazing benefits that we shall discuss in the next subheading.
What Are the Benefits of Roller Skating?
- It’s a Weight-loss Solution
Yes, roller skating will help you shed a few pounds of weight in just thirty minutes. If you want those extra pounds to be a thing of the past, then you need to turn to roller skating.
What makes roller skating amazing is while you are using it to burn some calories, you are having fun doing it. It’s like killing two birds with a stone. This is what you can’t really get from running or walking, even though they are great at burning calories. Whether you are roller skating indoors or outdoors, it’s an effective method of staying fit and healthy.
However, skating alone cannot do the magic. Combining it with a healthy diet plan will. Following up a healthy diet plan strictly and adding it to a 30-minute roller skating exercise for five times a week will burn about 1200 calories. Imagine burning 1200 calories every week? In no time, the fat will be long gone.
Your weight determines the amount of calories that will be burned, so you can burn less than 1200 calories in a week if you are not so overweight. Others can burn more.
- Roller Skating Improves the Heart
Roller skating is a cardiovascular sport, which means that it betters one’s health upon doing it. Heart disease, heart attacks, strokes, etc. are the leading causes of premature death in the USA, with death amounting to about 780,000 people yearly, according to the NHF. This speaks a lot why you should skate.
Roller skating is an effective aerobic exercise that will strengthen the heart to work harder by pumping more blood and increasing blood flow. The heart rate of an average skater will rise to between 160 – 180 beats per minute.
- Roller Skating Improves Your Stamina and Balance
One of the core benefits of skating is the balance it provides to your body, muscles, and bones. While some people have natural balance, a vast majority of others do not. This is easily noticed in the way they walk, and this can affect the way they do certain activities.
For example, not having balance will make you expend more energy in doing tasks, like walking that would have required little amount of energy initially. This results in more fatigue.
Besides being a cardiovascular activity, roller skating is also a musculoskeletal activity. It can improve your balance by stretching and working on your muscles. While roller skating, your spine, abdominal muscles, and your thighs are stretched by the back and forth movement of the wheels. Skating demands that you stand upright, and by doing this, all postural defects are corrected and balance is improved.
- Builds Muscles and Improves Muscular Coordination
Roller skating will not only shed a few pounds of your body weight, but build up your muscles more.
Each time you skate, your muscles are toned up and you will notice how firm, defined, and flexible your calves, thighs, glutes, etc. are.
Not only that, you will notice that many areas of your body are not as stiff as they were before you began skating – and if you are carrying some fats around that area, roller skating will reduce some weights, and then tone up the muscle.
- Skating Improves Endurance
Ride harder, ride longer! Roller skating is beneficial in improving muscular endurance and you will be able to skate for an extended period of time without feeling exhausted.
We told you that skating is good for the development of the muscle and as such, will coordinate the muscles, making you fitter. Endurance comes as part of muscle development and work hand in hand with skating.
- Roller Skating Manages Diabetes
This might come as a surprise to you, but roller skating indeed helps your body in the fight against type 2 diabetes by regulating and helping your body use insulin better.
Just like heart diseases, diabetes is another common health issue that has been on the rise. Diabetes is related to unhealthy lifestyle, poor diets, and lack of exercises.
According to the American Diabetes Association, there are two physical activities that can manage and prevent diabetes – aerobic exercise and strength training. The body recommends a 30-minute, light to moderate exercise for at least, five days a week. Aerobic exercise and strength training are interrelated with roller skating. In other words, roller skating is beneficial in managing and preventing diabetes.
As an aerobic exercise, roller skating relieves stress, lowers blood sugar levels, strengthens the bones and the heart. When bones are strengthened, it makes the body stronger and also limits the body to diseases. Roller skating builds the immune system and this is essential in fighting off diseases because only a strong immune system can fight off diseases efficiently. Roller skating also reduces the chances of the bones developing osteoporosis and fractures.
If you have diabetes or knows someone who has, encourage the person to engage in regular roller skating, even more than the recommended five times a week. This will improve their health tremendously.
This is probably the most interesting part of roller skating. Roller skating is so easy on the joint that you won’t feel you are even doing anything. You won’t mind skating for an entire night. Why? Because the joints and muscles are protected.
Compared to regular sports like running and cycling, roller skating prevents muscles and joints injuries. This is not about the falls that you get or the injuries you sustain around your knees, roller skating is much a safer sport than the former and here is why.
There is a consistent fluid movement around the joint when you are skating, unlike the jerky movement that you experience when running or walking. This is the reason why you don’t feel any pain around your joints and muscles, even after long hours of skating. So skating and running will provide the same results on your body, except that with skating, you are going to experience less joint damage. Skating is a low-impact sport that will not cause your knees any permanent injury.
Talking about falls and knee injuries that you sustain while skating, you will not experience those if you wear knee pads as well as other safety gear. We will discuss about safety tips that you should know while skating much later in this article.
- Roller Skating Minimizes Depression
When you are happy, you will unlikely feel depressed and sad. This is what roller skating brings to the table. It clears the blockades in your mind and increases all the helpful hormones in your body (endorphins) so that you feel excited.
Endorphins, which is known as the happy hormone relieves stress and makes you feel naturally good. Your concentration levels and mood are improved and you will experience more fun.
So Is Roller Skating Good for Your Knees?
Roller skating is a good way of restoring some muscle coordination, repairing the tissues, and providing strength to your knee joints. It’s an aerobic exercise that is now used as a form of rehab technique to strengthen the knees after surgery. So roller skating is indeed a good exercise for your knees.
However, it can be detrimental to your knees if you are not keeping the correct posture or not skating as you should. Most times, it all boils down to inexperience. Skating requires strength, stamina, and good muscular mobility. Although skating improves all these areas, if you don’t develop your body physically by doing some strength-building and muscle exercises, it may just be hard skating well. Thus, you will have more knee injuries.
Safety Tips
Many times, injuries to the body occur while roller skating because of one reason to the other, especially if the skater isn’t adhering to certain safety rules. Also, the skater might be inexperienced and not know the basics adequately. Hence, may likely sustain injuries.
It is improper to just jump on a skate wheel and start roller skating without first of all, learning the basics, which is knowing how to tread, developing your muscles and maintaining your balance and your core muscles, and how to stop. Without knowing these, you may be putting yourself and your knees under undue pressure.
Most roller skating injuries are musculoskeletal, which means that either your muscle or bone will be affected if you should sustain any skating injury. This is why you must abide by the safety tips that we will be sharing in this post.
Wear safety gear. This is very essential to prevent road accidents. Put on a helmet, elbow pads, wrist protectors, and most importantly, your knee pads. Never roller skate without putting all these on. Else, you will be risking the safety of your life.
In addition to wearing safety gear, always put on the appropriate pair of boots – that is one that correctly fits you. If it’s loose, it will result in your toppling over while skating. Your skates shouldn’t be too tight or too loose to avoid putting undue pressure on your feet as it might cause some blisters. If you don’t have any idea of how the boot will feel on the skate, try skating for a while with it, let’s say for a few minutes. That way, you will know if your boots and skates fit properly.
Do some warm-up exercises before you roller skate. These exercises are to prepare the body and the muscles for the activity that you are about to begin. They will condition your body, so that your body doesn’t feel any shock or strain. Your calf muscles, adductors, and hamstrings should be your focus during this warm-up session.
Lean how to keep the correct posture when roller skating. This is vital to your balancing. Do not bend an maintain a straight posture. Your head mist be above your shoulders at all times. Likewise, your shoulders should be above your core. Bending will out unnecessary pressure on your knee and you wouldn’t want that while skating.
Avoid skating if you are too overweight. It will out extra pressure on the skate, which might result to multiple injuries. Try to shed a few extra pounds with normal exercises before proceeding to skate. Remember, skating is a form of exercise that helps to burn some calories.
Finally, obey road and traffic rules. Always drive towards the right side of the road and avoiding changing lanes.
What Happens If You Are Involved In an Injury?
If you sustain any injury that’s beyond your handling, kindly meet up with a medical practitioner to administer the right kind of treatment to your injury.
Conclusion
The benefits of roller skating is numerous. It’s an exercise that’s great for your health and highly recommended as a rehab method for people who had a knee surgery.
Apart from that, it’s a great exercise if you want to burn some calories and get in shape. And the fun aspect? Yes, roller skating can make you happy and relieved of all stress and depression. This simply tells you why you shouldn’t skip roller skating in your daily schedules.
