There are good workouts hiding in a variety of fun activities. Find out what health benefits roller skating can offer you.
Before going into all the positives, keep in mind that it is also possible to fall when roller skating. It can be smart to warm up before this activity and potentially wear protective gear.
1. Roller skating can improve cardiovascular health
Your body parts need oxygen and nutrients to function. The cardiovascular system which includes your heart, lungs, and blood vessels is responsible for getting these substances to the right places.
When roller skating, your more intense movements will also make it so your body parts need more oxygen and nutrients.
In turn, your cardiovascular system has to work harder.
This extra cardiovascular engagement tends to be a benefit of roller skating since it can make this system healthier (or at least slow down degradation).
Having a stronger cardiovascular system tends to reduce your risk of a variety of negative conditions in this area (1, 2, 3).
2. Roller skating works a variety of muscles
Roller skating is mostly a cardiovascular workout. This means your cardiovascular system which includes your heart, lungs, and blood vessels will typically have the hardest time.
Even so, to get and stay rolling, you will also work a variety of muscles.
You should not really expect that much, if any, muscle growth from roller skating.
At the same time, working your muscles can still improve muscle endurance, make the muscles healthier, and slow down degradation.
Some of the muscles you work out with roller skating include:
- Quadriceps (front thighs)
- Calves
- Glutes (butt)
- Hamstrings (upper thighs)
- Hip abductors (outer thighs)
- Hip adductors (inner thighs)
- Core muscles like your abs, obliques, and erector spinae
Something interesting to note is that roller skating beginners could actually work their core muscles more because of all the extra balancing movements required.
That being said, even these people likely want to consider doing resistance training exercises like lunges instead of roller skating to grow and strengthen their muscles.
3. Roller skating is a fun way to exercise more
To what extent workouts and activities offer health benefits will likely influence your choice but it is not the only thing that matters.
More specifically, how much you enjoy the exercise routine you create will play a role in how easy you find it to actually stick to your plan.
Many people don’t even consider roller skating to be a workout.
They just do this activity because they enjoy it and potentially the extra social interaction of roller skating with friends and family.
So if you really enjoy roller skating, it can be worth adding this activity as a form of workout. Even though there may be alternatives that are more effective in certain areas.
4. Roller skating can benefit weight loss
Modern life makes it relatively easy to gain excess body fat. This is not good since this tends to increase your risk of a variety of negative conditions.
That being said, you can still get healthier and a variety of benefits again by losing this excess weight.
One way to approach this challenge is doing workouts like roller skating because they help you burn up more energy than usual.
Exactly how many calories roller skating burns in your situation can vary from the estimations but these still offer a rough idea of what you can expect.
The average person will burn around 207 to 356+ calories while rolling skating for 30 minutes.
Something important to note is that while roller skating can help you lose weight, this activity is also no guarantee for this result.
More specifically, you may still need to pay attention to habits like your diet to get to the point where you are burning up more energy than is coming in.
5. Your mood could be better because of roller skating
Many people find it easy to understand that roller skating offers more physical positive effects but there are actually mental benefits too.
For example, moving more intensely with something like roller skating tends to increase how much your body produces endorphins aka feel-good hormones (4, 5, 6).
You will likely also feel good about doing something that offers a variety of other benefits.
Next, by roller skating more often you can reduce your risk of a variety of negative conditions.
Since these conditions will likely not put you in a good mood, you can say roller skating offers positive mental effects in this way too.
Lastly, any extra social aspects of roller skating by doing it with friends or family will likely put you in a better mood too.
6. Roller skating is a low-impact workout
Exercises like running and jumping rope offer valuable benefits but they can also be relatively rough on your body. Potentially to the point where you get injuries.
On the other hand, you have low-impact workouts like roller skating where your body does not experience big shocks (at least if you don’t fall down).
This can be especially useful for people who are new to exercise and/or have some weight to lose.
Being injured really reduces how many workouts you do and can make your daily life less pleasant.
7. Roller skating can improve cognitive function
This next benefit of roller skating is another surprise to many people. However, exercise can improve your cognitive function in a variety of ways.
First of all, staying physically active tends to reduce your risk of conditions like Alzheimer’s disease that involve cognitive decline (7).
Additionally, roller skating and other forms of exercise can improve brain plasticity (8, 9, 10). This involves positive effects like better memory, seeing connections faster, and learning things more quickly.
Even if you are just interested in things like a better job or academic performance, workouts like roller skating can be worth it.
8. Roller skating could slow down aging processes
Regular people are used to age as the number of days, months, and years after someone was born. However, you can also measure forms of “age” in terms of certain physical details (11).
As you can expect, roller skating will have more of an influence on this second type of age.
More specifically, workouts can slow down how fast you age in some of these other measurement methods (12, 13, 14).
These measurement methods are not perfect in the sense that only focusing will always give you the desired results.
However, they do tend to be related to the risk of a variety of conditions. Together with the other health benefits, it should not be a surprise that roller skating can keep you healthier for longer.
9. You could sleep better thanks to roller skating
Even if you already know that sleep can benefit a variety of areas in your life, you may not know how to improve this area of your health.
If this is one of your goals, it can be worth adding roller skating (or other workouts) to your routine. Doing these throughout the day tends to improve your sleep quality and duration at night (15, 16, 17).
One thing to note is that roller skating very intensely and exposing yourself to bright lights at an indoor skating rink too close to bedtime can also mess with your sleep.
If you have the ability to do so, you preferably want to end your roller skating workouts more than two hours before bedtime.
10. Roller skating can improve coordination and balance
It only takes one session of roller skating to understand that this activity can be challenging in terms of coordination and balance.
While falling down is not pleasant, the extra coordination and balance aspect can be good in the sense that it can improve your skills in these fitness components.
Over time, improving these skills allows you to roller skate at faster speeds which is useful for getting some of the other benefits to a larger extent.
However, better balance and coordination can also be useful in your daily life. They can help reduce your risk of bumping into things or falling down.
