Blog 2000 & Roller Skating: Check It Out!

by Heather Long | More from this Blogger

28 Jan 2007 04:18 PM

This is my 2000th article posted here at Families.com. I started with the first batch of bloggers back in 2005. Fitness was my primary blog and I've since taken on Marriage and Baby, but my first love - fitness, remains. I thought about doing a retrospective here for my 2000th blog, but instead, I wanted to talk about a new passion that I've got and spend some more time exploring it. So I hope you'll join me here for my 2000th blog and Roller Skating.

The Fun Way To Get Exercise As many of my regular readers may know, I've been enjoying a visit to my childhood with my daughter and getting back into the fine art of roller-skating. Now, I don't necessarily consider roller-skating to be a fine art, but it is a heck of a lot of fun. It's also one heck of a workout as my sore and quite loudly complaining legs could tell you.

So What Kind of Workout Does Roller Skating Really Give You?

According to studies, roller-skating provides a complete aerobic workout. It also works out all the muscles in your body, not just your legs. Roller-skating requires that you engage your core to maintain your balance and trust me, my back and my abs know all about it. You also burn about the same amount of calories when you roller-skate that you do when you jog - and since I'm not a huge fan of running, that's a really great benefit.

The American Heart Association (our fitness tracker and Hoops for Hearts friends) also recommend it as a great aerobic sport that can get you burning about 350 calories an hour for a 150 pound person and if you are really skating vigorously, you can burn up to 590 calories in an hour. In other words, if you are skating about 10 miles per hour, you're going to burn about 600 calories in that hour.

Did you know that according to National Sporting Goods Association statistics:

2.5 million people participated in roller hockey (more than once) in 1999. 8.2 million participated in quad skating. 24.1 million participated in in-line skating.

In-line skating ranks at the top of the list of sports with the greatest growth from 1993 to 1998, with a 118% increase. Roller Hockey came in second with a 106% change in the number of participants.

The number of youth ages 7 to 17 who in-line skated in 1998 was 15,944. Bicycle riding was the sport most participated in by youth ages 7-17 Basketball ranked third with 14,519 participants.

Skating is Better for Your Joints

The University of Massachusetts conducted a study on in-line skating and they found that in comparison to the average jogger or runner, skating caused about 50 percent less impact shock to the joints. And if you were to alternate between bicycling, roller-skating and swimming, you would maximize your aerobic fitness.

Do you skate regularly or are you interested in skating?

Related Articles:

Take Summer Fitness Outside

Fitness Gifts for Kids

"Mom, You Need To Work Out More!"

Stroller Skating - Do you Stroller Skate?

Learn more about Heather Long

Heather Long is 35 years old and currently lives in Wylie, Texas. She has been a freelance writer for six years. Her husband and she met while working together at America Online over ten years ago.

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