Fitness Skating
Is one of your New Years Resolutions to loose weight or live a healthier lifestyle? Have you looked at fitness skating?
When I refer to the term fitness skating I am not referring to competitive skating. This is geared more to adults who want to use skating as a way to stay in shape or augment a gym work out.
The average adult can burn 300 - 900 calories just by skating. For competitive skaters who are doing a lot of jumping and spinning that number easily doubles. I want to focus more on the average adult skater.
Skating offers a great cardiovascular work out. You add to the mix skating on synthetic and the fact that you push 5% - 10% harder then on traditional ice it really does make for a great work out for adults
When you skate you are using muscles from your calfs all the way up to your abs and back muscles. It also offers a low impact way to exercise for adults who have issues with knee or hip problems.
A lot of fitness skaters skate to work on their over all health and endurance. The key to working on endurance is to set a pace and keep at it and slowly add to it over time.
Skating also has mental benefits to it as well. A lot of people will skate during their lunch break for 30 minutes to an hour. If gives your brain something else to focus on for a while outside the daily stress of life and work. For children and adults a like skating offers a way to boost self confidence. The more you skate the more you feel comfortable skating. There is also a mental control aspect to skating as well. Turning, which foot to glide on and other areas force more coordination between the mind and body.
Skating is also a relatively in expensive activity. Here at our rink adult open skate times are only $4 and $2 of you are over age 55. A lot of times a basic skating boot and blade will run about $130 or less. As adults our feet have stopped growing unlike our children or grand children so the initial purchase of skates will last longer in the long run.
A lot of rinks around the country have special groups that meet for adult skaters. Some rinks do special adult only sessions, some rinks do “Lunch Bunch” where for a discounted price adult fitness skaters can come skate for an hour during their lunch hour. It’s a great way to meet and network with other adult skaters not to mention make skating friends.
Our next Learn to Skate semester we will be introducing adult only group lesson classes that will teach the basics of skating. So come out and skate with us! Don’t let the kids have all the fun!