It is undeniable that roller skating brings up several health benefits and increases our stamina. But do you know exactly how it does wonders for our body? Have you ever pondered to yourself what muscles does roller skating work?
In fact, roller skating is described as a Full-body workout, which means several parts of your body would be trained simultaneously while skating. The practice of uphill and downhill climbs while skating is an efficient way for your muscles to work their magic
This article will help you figure out which of your muscles body would be positively impacted when playing skating. Scroll down to see some useful tips to prevent muscle injuries while skating also. Let’s begin!
What Muscles Does Roller Skating Work?
It is proven that inline skating involves all of your body’s muscle practices, from your arm and leg muscles, abs, glutes, hips, and buttocks. Each skating training would take about at least 1 hour, which is such a long-enough training to put your muscles on pressure of training.
We have listed out 4 main muscles zones that would have advantages most when you play roller skating.
Leg Muscles
It is crystal clear that roller skating plays an important role as an excellent lower body strength training. You know why? To be clearly defined, roller skating is the practice workout which focuses mostly on leg muscles.
If you are a fitness-lover, you may know that leg muscles are the largest muscles in your body and it is even harder to train them than abs or arm muscles. In fact, most pressure while skating would be stressed on your leg, which would significantly burn more calories and improve your leg muscles’ endurance in the long-term.
Roller skating requires leg muscles to challenge with several turns, twist at high speed, direction control or instant stop, which aid in helping to maintain active and resilient leg strength. Moreover, for advanced roller skating, leg strength is recognized as a core success of any challenging technique. That’s why leg muscles are the most beneficial muscle zone when you are practicing roller skating.
Glutes Muscles
In addition to the benefits of roller skates on lower-body zones, it is proven that glute muscles are the second most beneficial muscle zone for roller skaters.
In case you don’t know, glutes muscle is the scientific name for butts. However, we’re quite sure that you may wonder how glutes would be affected while skating, don’t you? In fact, there are 3 types of glute muscles which may be in charge of 2 special movemental functions: flexion and abduction.
Once you skate, with every twist, turn, or even while moving ahead, it has also made positive impacts on all 3 kinds of glute muscles. In the movement of skating, you may flex your hip to move toward or backward. Moreover, in order to get frick from the front side wheel, you may need to use gluteus maximus to rotate.
All of these movements with your roller skate shoes would need glutes to balance your lower-body position as well. This may put a lot of forces which may benefit your glutes muscles in the long-term.
Core Muscles
Roller skate also works efficiently for your core muscles. In fact, core muscles, which may also include abdominal muscles, are the connection between your upper body (arms, heads) and lower-body (hips, legs, feets).
While performing twist and turn in roller skating, your hip and core muscles may support for over 10 times the forces put on your leg muscles to stabilize the hip joint.
Moreover, in order to achieve perfect balance and coordination, your core muscles would be the most helpful muscle zones handling these tasks perfectly. Therefore, stabilizing your body movement and remaining your balance on unstable surfaces are vital functions of core muscles while skating.
Arm Muscles
Next muscle zones that roller skating affects most are the arm muscles. However, it comes to your mind that how the upper-body will be benefited while skating, isn’t it? Skating does not put any pressure on your arm, so how would it be beneficial in this case?
Arm strength is also extremely important to the success of skating training to some extent. It is easy to observe that jumps and spins in roller skating requires good control of arm movements. Without arm strength and control, you may fail to balance your body movement, or even cause injury with bad fall.
In fact, practicing roller skating frequently would improve your arm muscles to ensure you are balanced while skating. You must need to use arms and lower-back muscles to control forward and backward and to achieve perfect balance. This action also put muscles in these zones to be trained as well.
Heart Muscles
You may wonder why roller skating also works for your heart muscles, it is so irrelevant. However, the benefits of playing skating can be compared to your daily workout exercise. Similar to fitness, roller skating also helps to reduce the rate of heart diseases.
Roller skating, in fact, can significantly benefit your cardiovascular function. According to one recent research, heart rate while skating will range from 140 to 160 beats per minute, or even reach at 180 beats per minute if you are skating at high velocity.
Moreover, when practicing roller skating, your circulatory system will be pushed faster, your heart beats quicker, so more blood will be provided to all of your body organs. This results in a healthier and active heart, which can reduce heart disease rates for you.
Tips To Prevent Muscle Injuries While Skating
It is undeniable that roller skating is an exciting sport activity; however, it may carry several risks for muscle injury as well. We have come up with some useful tips to prevent muscle injuries while skating. Let’s check it out!
Warming Up And Stretching Frequently
It is vital to warm-up and stretch your limbs properly before beginning any workout exercises. And roller skating workout is not an exception ! Hence, make sure your flexibility is also warmed up beside your excitement before skating.
In detail, let’s spend enough time stretching legs, arms, hips, buttocks carefully because these muscles are the most under-pressured areas when you play roller skating.
Well-equipped With Protective Gears
A good investment in protective gears before playing roller skating is also necessary. Check these protective equipment for your safety problems before skating:
- A high-quality helmet
- Wrist guards gloves
- Knee and elbow pads
- Fitable and comfortable pair of roller skating shoes
Final Thoughts
Roller skating is not only an interesting sport but also a good way to endure your body’s energy, strength, and resiliency. It is so obvious that it is such a perfect fitness sport for everyone who is looking for a healthy lifestyle. If you want to engage in some sort of muscle-building sport, roller skating is not a bad idea!
We expect our experience with Roller Skating and what muscles does roller skating work would be reliable, helpful, and able to expand your knowledge to some extent. Thank you for reading!
