Roller skating is no longer just for kids. It may be an exercise for the kid-at-heart, but that doesn't mean it doesn't provide a cardiovascular and muscular workout. Roller skating burns calories, firming the muscles from the abs down. Being on wheels works your coordination and flexibility, while improving your muscle and respiratory endurance. Talk with a doctor before skating if you have a pre-existing medical condition.
Roller Aerobic Facts
Depending on your speed, rollerblading and skating are considered both moderate and vigorous activities. That’s convenient since you need 30 minutes a day, five days a week, of moderately paced exercise to lose weight, according to the Mayo Clinic. You can pick up the speed, though, and shorten your workouts. Use a vigorous pace and cut your time down to a minimum of 25 minutes, three days a week. If you’re able to talk in a complete sentence without pausing for a breath, you're skating at a moderate pace. Skate at a comfortable, moderate pace for longer distances to see weight loss and toning in the legs. If you're able to talk but not chit-chat, then you've accomplished a vigorous pace.
Weight-Loss Basics
Aerobic exercise, or cardio, raises your heart rate and burns calories, which can lead to weight loss. But when you lose weight, you lose it everywhere. You can tone muscle with strength training and reduce your weight with cardio, but spot reduction is a wives-tale. Weight loss hinges on two factors: calories taken in and calories burned. This weight loss and gain system is based on 3,500 calories. For each 3,500 you shed, you'll lose one pound. Eliminate 500 calories from your daily diet and, after a week, you'll lose one pound through diet alone. Lace up your roller-skates to burn additional calories.
Skate To Burn
Roller-skating or inline skating can burn up to 548 calories an hour for the average 160-pound adult. Go for three hour-long moderately paced skates and you'll burn enough to lose an extra pound, with some calories to spare. Load your music player with energetic music and put in your ear buds. Keep your legs moving in rhythm with the music and your heart rate elevated. Be conscious of your body positioning for maximum calorie burn. Swing your arms and tighten your abs to engage your upper body, and bend into turns. Slightly squat as you go around a corner or turn and engage your glutes and thighs.
Building Muscles
You'll notice more muscle definition each time you skate. Skating isn't just a cardio exercise, it flexes and firms your glutes, thighs and calves. Your glutes are actually a group of three muscles -- the gluteus maximus, medius and minimus, and as you twist and bend around corners, you engage your rear. By the end of an intense skate, you'll feel your quads and hamstring, or your thighs, burn from dragging your legs forward, and pulling them back. Plus, you're calves see major action as they help stabilize your Achilles tendon. The Achilles tendon supports your ankle, which is working hard while you're on roller skates or blades. Your legs will look leaner once you've lost excess weight.
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Writer Bio
Having studied at two top Midwestern universities, Catherine Field holds degrees in professional writing and patient safety. Writing since 2000, Field has worked with regional newspapers while publishing fiction online. She conducts medical communication research at a Midwestern medical institution and is slated to write a book based on her research findings.