Skateboarding is a trendy sport that is popular with the younger generation. And because it was associated with young people, it was once regarded as dangerous and rebellious. However, times have changed and now people have realized that there are multiple health benefits of skateboarding.
Are you wondering how it all started? Here is a fun fact. This fun sport was started by Californian surfers who wanted to have something to turn to when the waves were too weak or too rough. That is how it came to be, quite interesting, right?
So, if you are wondering whether you should buy a board to start on this life-changing sport or not, read on to know why you should definitely do so.
Here are some health benefits of this sport:
- Increase in metabolism
- Builds muscles
- Achieves overall fitness
- Improves physical endurance
- Keeps you safety cautious
- Improves balance
- Relieves stress
- Enhances coordination
- Promotes precision
- Improves flexibility
Increase In Metabolism
You heard that right! Skateboarding does improve your metabolism rate. For a healthy metabolism, the body needs a good amount of workout which is everything that skateboarding offers. Whether you are simply doing a frontside boardslide or doing some tricks, your body metabolic rate becomes elevated.
Skateboarding increases your metabolic rate in two ways:
- It increases the resting metabolic rate. This is the number of calories that your body burns during rest. When the resting metabolic rest is increased, your body burns more calories than it usually does.
- Afterburn is also increased. This is the metabolic rate that continues to burn calories way after the exercise session. Once you’re done with skateboarding for the day, your body stays in a state of increased metabolic rate for hours.
Builds Muscles
When the metabolic rate is increased, the body easily loses calories which would have been stored in the body as fat. The calories are shredded while skateboarding and during rest because of the increased rest metabolic rate and the after-burn.
Once the calories are lost, all the energy that comes from skateboarding is diverted from burning calories to building muscles.
In addition to this, the tricks and movement on the skateboards build muscles such as the quadriceps, core muscles, and hamstrings. These muscles are all exerted during exercise making them stronger in the process.
Therefore, if you are seeking to build lean muscles you can add skateboarding to your workout routine. It is not only efficient but also fun.
Achieves Overall Fitness
Apart from building muscles, skateboarding can help you achieve overall fitness because it is a sport that involves the whole body. Since it burns calories, it helps you stay in great shape.
While it is not easy to calculate the calories you lose while skateboarding, most experts suggest that skateboarders can lose a hundred and fifty calories to five hundred calories depending on the individual routine.
When on a skateboard, your arms, core, and feet all coordinate to give you a perfect balance. Your body movements also change from time to time depending on whether you are cruising, curving or turning a sharp corner. All these moves help to keep you fit.
Skateboarding, therefore, keeps you in good shape and maintains your fitness to a tee.
Improves Physical Endurance
Physical activities are vital for our health but can prove hard to engage inconsistently. On its part, skateboarding is a physical activity that can wear you out in a matter of few rides. However, it gives you a thrill like no other. This can keep you going for longer.
Since it is a fun sport, it can keep you addicted to it (but in a good way). As you continue to skateboard regularly to learn how to improve your speed or master a new stunt, your physical endurance improves immensely.
If you are a regular, you will find it easy to engage in other strenuous physical activities without feeling worn out because your body is well trained. So take your board for regular spins and keep your body in shape for any physical activity out there.
Improves Pain Tolerance
You’ve probably heard of the saying “no pain, no gain.” This holds true for skateboarding. For you to become a seasoned skateboarder, you must have gone through bruises, scrapes, bumps, aches and all sorts of pain that come with skateboard accidents.
Although this sounds like a drawback for the sport, it is, in fact, a positive. Since you have experienced all these painful moments, you tend to be less fearful of pain because you’ve had it all.
And the good thing is that you learn how to stay safe and how to help yourself when an eventuality comes your way. As a skateboarder, visits to the doctor will become less scary because the bumps you’ve dealt with are far more painful than a simple needle prick.
Keeps You Safety Cautious
In as much as your pain tolerance has been increased, this does not mean that you can expose yourself to injury, does it? Of course not! As a savvy skateboarder, you must have learned all the safety tips that you need to muster while on the board.
One of the health benefits of skateboarding that comes with constant falls is learning how to fall correctly. This entails minimizing injury by correcting your skateboarding skills as well as wearing protective gear.
Regular skateboarding gives you the ability to prevent stumbles, trips, and slips as you develop alertness in the long run. Skateboarding is, therefore, an exemplary tool to help you avoid freak accidents.
Improves Balance
Well, if skateboarding doesn’t help you improve your balance then what will? As you steer your body on your skateboards, there is one thing for sure, your sense of balance improves by the day.
This happens because regular practice helps to build your core muscles which play a vital role in maintaining balance. Through the various exercises and positions that you assume on a skateboard, core muscles become strengthened.
What skateboards offer in terms of balance, is rarely found in other day-to-day activities.
Relieves stress
We are all stressed out. School, work and family life all find a way to exert pressure on us and can lead to stress. While using over the counter drugs to relieve stress is a common practice, it is not recommended due to its addictive result.
For that reason, we should look for healthy alternatives like engaging in sports and in this case, skateboarding.
As a physical activity, skateboarding has the ability to relieve stress as it keeps you relaxed. Your mind is also freed from the stressful thoughts that made you anxious in the first place.
Since skateboarding helps as a stress reliever, it may be helpful with depression as well. Skateboarding is a thrill in itself and it tends to create a happy mood. In light of that, it can improve the sad state that depression brings.
After a skateboarding session, you can now go back and face your problems head-on.
Enhances Coordination
Skateboarding involves a number of body parts working together. These parts need to work together in order to move smoothly using the board.
When cruising on a skateboard, you have to understand where to put your feet for balance. Your hands will also be stretched out or kept intact depending on the move that you are trying to do. This is all about coordination.
Coordination is important in every sport for instance it is through coordination that a player is able to score for his team. In skateboarding, coordination keeps you balanced on the board as you cruise down the street.
With constant practice, coordination is perfected and will not only be of help when on the road but also in other areas such as in decision making.
Promotes Precision
Like coordination, precision is also a skill that is perfected through skateboarding. While performing a trick using a skateboard, a rider has to make a number of trials before landing the perfect move.
This will mean you have to adjust your feet placement, timing and speed all to make this happen. As you continue with your practice you finally learn what works and what doesn’t and this is how you learn precision.
So how is this important? Precision learned in skateboarding helps in other areas of our lives such as being able to multitask. Like in skateboarding, we will need to learn all there is to completing a task because the more we learn, the easier it becomes. This is an important skill that when applied will keep us from getting stressed.
Precision can also be applied in other sports such as driving and climbing.
Improves Flexibility
Lastly, with skateboarding your body becomes flexible because you get to stretch, jump, flex, curve and do all sorts of stunts. This is important in lengthening and stretching muscles which in turn help to prevent back pain, injuries, and balance problems.
When your muscles are well-stretched, blood flows adequately to the muscles improving your overall health.
Summary
That’s all we have for you in terms of the health benefits of skateboarding. Or ice skating. Or wake boarding. Or longboarding, for that matter. And now that you have learned that there’s more to skateboarding other than colorful boards and stunts, maybe it is time you joined the team.