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Prepare Your Body for Inline Skating

Inline Skating Requires Strength, Endurance and Flexibility

By Carlesa Williams, About.com

Photo© Josef Philipp, iStockphoto.com

Strengthen Your Legs

Skating puts enormous demands on your leg muscles. Squats and lunges will develop your hip and butt muscles, as well as your quads and hamstrings. All the power needed for the skating stride comes from these muscles. Add leg extensions and leg curls to your workout for a more thorough leg routine, if you are planning to do more than just recreational skating.

Strengthen Your Back

To get faster on your skates you’ll eventually need to get lower for a more aerodynamic posture and to get more push from each stride. This will put a strain on your lower back muscles. Balance back muscles and stabilize your torso by strengthening your tummy muscles with stomach crunches.

Stretch Everything

Be sure to stretch all of your muscles before and after skating so they won’t get too tight.

Strengthen Your Upper Body

Balance your lower body development with upper body work including push-ups, or do a light upper body circuit at the gym a couple of times a week.

Build Your Stamina

Skating requires endurance, so cardio exercise will help build stamina for inline skating. Walk, run, ride your bike, use a stepper, or do aerobics on days when you can't skate.

Get a Physical

If you are over 35, you should check with your doctor before starting inline skating or other similar activities.If you are over 65 years old, get a physical examination to make sure there are no existing conditions that need consideration or restrictions to your inline activities.

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