Needless to say, skating is such a wonderful recreational and competitive sport, together with its benefits, that it never fails to meet your demands. But before doing any complex trick, you must first equip yourself with the knowledge of how to strengthen your legs for skating.
Whether you are a beginner or a pro in skating, one thing for sure is that legs are the soul of skating. Legs with excellent strength and endurance are the key to smooth skates, sharp twists, and turns.
Still doubt our words? Let’s follow to the end of this article to get a more in-depth insight into the importance of strong legs and gain some handy tips right now!
Should-know About Skating
First and foremost, let’s break down the basics of skating!
Skating is one of the most popular sports, and its presence is prevalent all over the world. What sets skating apart from other games is its combination of sports and artistic characteristics. That means besides an excellent physical activity, a skater needs to be flexible and skillful enough to make impressive skates. This partly explains why you need good legs and should know how to strengthen your legs for skating!
So what is skating involved specifically? Skating is both an indoor and outdoor activity, in which skaters wear a “special” pair of four-wheeled shoes, and travel on the surfaces or ice using skates smoothly. More amazingly, every move, turn and twist considerably reflects skaters’ emotions and thoughts
To go into detail, skating comes in various categories, which are mainly divided into two main ones, namely skating on wheels and skating on ice. Sounds interesting, right?
The most popular types of skating are roller skates and figure skates. While the former is a common hobby among people around the world, the latter appears as an artistic sport for the primary purpose of competitions.
One interesting fact is that people of all ages ranging from 4 to 70, and of different skills are capable of learning how to skate! As long as they have a passion and enough resilience and determination, then taking up skating is by no means a challenging task. That’s why it’s common to see a little kid or an old woman skating skillfully on the pavement, parks.
How To Strengthen Your Legs For Skating – The Importance
Accepting it or not, legs are the most crucial factor of skating. If you are not a skater, you can still see numerous skating performances made by your friends, relatives, or on television, and see how enormously the legs contribute to the success of these performances!
Strong legs are literally the “soul” of skating. No matter what type of skates you opt for, you still need good legs, as they provide you with superior control, enhanced balance over every skate move. And “healthy” legs enable you to make twists, turns, bends, and even tricks much more quickly, firmly, and skillfully!
More importantly, they save you from unexpected accidents, as well! For example, in case you are about to fall or hit the walls, thanks to strong legs, you are able to go back to the T-position (the posture that keeps you standing still, and stopping), or change directions quickly enough to avoid obstacles. As a result, you can fend off accidental harms, and look professional, too!
For such reasons, all skaters, including the amateurs or beginners and experts, go to great lengths to protect their legs from injuries and take daily exercises with a view to strengthening legs.
Such pieces of training may be an uphill struggle for you, but let’s face it! It plays such a crucial part that it can determine the survival of your life- long passion, or even your livelihood ( various people consider skating as their job ).
Basic Instructions For Strengthening Legs For Skating
We are sure that you have acknowledged the great importance of enhancing the health of your legs if you want to skate. And now, let’s get down to the most important matter: How!
Protect Your Legs From Serious Injuries
Avoiding all accidents and injuries during skating is not as easy as pie. However, we advise you to minimize the seriousness of your injuries as much as possible. Why? If you accidentally have your legs broken, it will take at least three months until you can walk normally, and much longer to skate again! Therefore, remember to keep your legs “safe and sound” all the time.
How? Before skating, recheck all safety gear and make sure that all your toe laces are tightened properly. Knee pads are indispensable as well, so keep it company every time you skate. All this preparation will help you glide with more confidence while protecting you, too!
An Adequate Supplement Of Nutrition
Some people misunderstand that only working hard and taking exercise is enough for their legs, and thus don’t take nutrition factors seriously. What a mistake! You should be more sensitive to your health!
According to nutritionists, well- nutritious meals are of the same importance as exercise. A proper diet with sufficient nutrition provides your body, in particular, your legs with energy and materials to control the whole body when skating, and build up muscles.
Therefore, one of the essential methods of making your legs stronger is a well- balanced diet. Besides taking in a variety of vitamins, namely calcium and vitamin D, you should include white meat and red meat, especially beef, in your daily meals.
Moreover, vegetables shouldn’t be ignored as well. Additionally, to maintain lean muscle mass, you also need proteins from grains such as black beans, soybeans, tofu, and chickpeas. Interestingly, coconut is included in this list, and we are sure that you don’t want to miss out on the tastefulness of it!
Physical Training
Here are our recommendations of leg exercises that you can consult:
- Balance:
Working on your balance proves to be one of the best methods to strengthen your ankles and knees, as it helps you engage both large muscles and smaller ones, which receive less attention with daily movement.
Firstly, start by standing on one foot and hold it for 30 seconds, then switch to the other. If you want harder exercises, let’s combine bending down to reach your foot. Do it ten times a day, and you will see improvements. - Strength exercises:
These exercises, especially squat, mostly focus on the muscles like your quads, hamstrings, and calves. If you are not acquainted with this type of training, try simple ones by sitting down on a chair, push your hips as you sit or stand. Then you can move to advanced ones later on. - Flexibility:
Undeniably, flexibility is one of the most crucial factors in professional skating. Without it, you are unable to do turns and twists smoothly and easily. More seriously, if your muscles and your joints are tight, you are more vulnerable to sprains and pulls.
So this exercise is introduced to solve all these problems with your legs. Just lie on your stomach, bend your legs and try to grab your ankles. Do it time after time during your training lessons. - Slimming exercises:
Like cardiovascular movements, this exercise helps you practice skating postures, and strengthen your legs as well. Now lean forward, keep your back flat, and your core tight. Then, move back and forth with one leg behind the other, much like skate moves.
Make sure that your core is always tight! Keep doing this for 30 seconds and do it in three sets a day. Your legs will look slimmer and more durable!
All these tips mentioned above are highly recommended to anyone who wishes to have strong legs. However, as you are a skater, bear in mind that not only should your legs be healthy, but they have to look slim and nice! Therefore, have nutritious meals, together with a moderate amount of training so that your legs don’t look clumsy with giant muscles!
Most notably, ice skaters who have to perform in front of the public’s eye, don’t forget to always look attractive and healthy with smooth skates and professional glides!
The bottom line
We bet that you have gained a lot of useful tips after reading this article. Maybe it’s hard to resist the lure of skating, but don’t rush too much. An insufficient amount of preparation and training, in particular for your legs, will blow a deal to your dreams of mastering skating and becoming a pro.
Therefore, we highly recommend you take regular exercises to enhance the strength of your legs. And in case you can’t find suitable activities, our instructions and advice on how to strengthen your legs for skating above may be of great assistance. Just stick to them, keep going, and everything will go into places.
And now, don’t hesitate to try out what we have shown you and have a whale of time skating!
