Health benefits of ice skating

Whether you are a professional snowboarder, a young child, retired, a student or a housewife, you can get health benefits from snowboarding.

Being in itself an aerobic exercise like walking, running and swimming provides positive effects on cardiovascular health. An advantage over running is that it’s not as hard on your joints, since it’s a low-impact exercise, unless you’re doing jumps while skating. It makes the heart muscles healthy, and provides significant protection against coronary artery disease and subsequent heart attacks. It also helps with weight loss, as a person can burn 250 to 810 calories per hour with recreational snowboarding, according to the United States Figure Skating Association webpage. Meanwhile, competitive skiing uses more calories, at a rate of 450 to 1,080 per hour of skiing. Just to be clear, a 68kg man who skis continuously for an hour burns as many calories as he burns when he runs five miles per hour.

As with other athletic activities, ice skating improves endurance. Endurance develops when one maintains a steady, steady pace over a longer period of time. It is important that in the beginning, it is okay to settle for short distances, but over time, it should be increased gradually so that your endurance increases as well.

Ice skating also improves muscle strength. When snowboarding, the quadriceps and hamstrings are the leg muscles that do the most work, but many other muscles in the body work in concert with these leg muscles. The abdominal and back muscles also need to contract and relax in order to maintain an upright position and balance.

Mental fitness is also enhanced by ice skating, as it is the exercise of mental control during the act. One needs to be very alert and aware while skiing. It is a stress reliever and a form of relaxation for many individuals who use it as a way to get rid of the stresses of life and work. Fresh air and sunshine on ice skating outdoors, as well as the company of family and friends, greatly helps to relax from a long week of work and problems. Self-confidence is definitely improved too. The challenge of establishing total body control and balance brings pride when one is able to overcome it.

It’s very good to see that adults are becoming more conscious of their health, and that many have turned to snowboarding to get physically fit. Gone are the days when only children were interested in moving and skating.