Roller skating is a lot more than just lacing up a pair of wheels or competitions. When you think about losing weight or fitness, your mind most definitely goes to exercises like going to the gym or swimming.
However, one popular sport overlooked for weight loss and fitness is roller skating, but how many calories does roller skating burn?
When you look deep, you realize that roller skating is a great exercise that helps you gain your fitness.
It is a manual sport that requires force to get the wheels moving, thus helping in weight loss.
This article will give you more information about roller skating weight loss and the number of calories it burns as well as other benefits of roller skating.
How Many Calories Does Roller Skating Burn?
Does roller skating burn calories? Yes, but the number of calories depends on the person’s weight and type of skating.
When you moderately roller skate for 30 minutes, you burn down around 250 calories, meaning that if you do this every day for a week, you would have burned 1750 calories.
If you combine roller skating with a sensible diet you will be able to lose weight.
Weight influences the number of calories you burn. If two people with different weights go skating at the same time and on the same terrain, the individual with more weight burns more calories during the skating as well as other exercises.
The type of skating also determines the number of calories you burn. Fitness magazine conducted a study on people with different weights who did rollerblading and roller skating for exercise.
The result was that a person weighing 150 pounds burned 482 calories while roller skating for an hour and burned 600 calories doing rollerblading for an hour.
The Metabolic Equivalent of Task (MET) value of roller skating is 5.8. To calculate calories burned while roller skating, you multiply MET value by body weight in kg, then multiply the result by duration in minutes and 0.0175.
For example, if you weigh 80kgs and skate for 30 minutes you will burn 244 calories (80*5.8*0.0175*30).
Health Benefits Of Roller Skating
The following are some of the health benefits of roller skating:
1. It helps in burning calories
For weight loss, you need to burn more calories than you take in every day, meaning you require a negative calorie deficit to shed some pounds.
There are several ways of losing weight and if you are serious about it you ought to be sensible. Running and walking are good ways of burning calories, but they are not always fun for fitness.
When you skate for weight loss, it means you just put on your roller skates and go for a leisure skate in the park.
Outdoor and indoor skating are great ways to shed your pounds. This is a cardiovascular activity as it gets your heart working harder.
Skating makes you sweat and if you make it a regular activity with a followed diet you will find your fat melting away. This is a very effective way of getting healthy and any type of skating will get you there.
2. Roller skating will help you build your muscle definition
Roller skating will not only help you to lose weight, but you will also build more muscle and get toned up.
You will notice an increase in your muscle definition every time you skate. It helps you firm up and flex in areas such as thighs, calves, and abs.
An endured intense skating will make you feel some areas of your body regardless of your fitness. Your calves will be the first place to see the tone up. When you roller skate, the Achille’s tendon that supports the ankle, stabilizes.
3. Roller skating improve your balance
Having a balance can be natural for some but not for some. Your balance affects how to do certain activities and sports, and how you walk.
It is important to have a good balance because it reduces the amount of energy used while sitting or walking. It also reduces fatigue.
For successful roller skating, balance is necessary, therefore, you need to improve on it. The muscle used during skating improves your balance. Skating requires one to maintain a steady core to stay upright, which is great if you want to achieve a good balance.
4. Roller skating improves your heart’s health
Heart disease is common and is a leading cause of premature death in the USA. Heart disease includes strokes, heart attacks, and so many others are killer diseases.
Roller skating and other skating sports make the heart stronger. The heart rate of a skater will increase from 140 to 160 beats during moderate skating.
If you are more daring and you can participate in more energetic types of skating, you can increase your heart rate further.
5. Roller skating helps you defeat diabetes
Diabetes is getting common just like heart disease. Sedentary lifestyles, unhealthy diets, and being overweight with a lack of aerobic exercises can lead to diabetes type 2.
Roller skating is an example of aerobic exercise because it helps one to use and control insulin. Roller skating strengthens your bones and heart, lowers your blood glucose levels, relieves stress, and improves the levels of cholesterol.
These are factors that cause diabetes, thus, roller skating will help you prevent it.
6. Roller skating helps you build strength
Roller skating gives you more body power. It helps build your strength by building your muscles. Strength training is another way of preventing diabetes and is also known as resistance training.
Roller skating provides a whole-body workout and helps one to improve their body strength.
7. Roller skating improves muscular endurance
Roller skating enables you to go harder for longer. The increase in body strength comes with a boost in muscular endurance. You will be able to do activities for longer without getting tired.
8. Roller skating is safer
This is one of the best forms of exercise. It is safe for your muscles and joint injuries. Sometimes walking or running can affect your joints, which is contrary to roller skating.
Roller skating is a low-impact sport. Roller skating is easy on the joints because there is fluid motion thus you are less likely to get joint damage.
9. Roller skating is beneficial to your mental health
Roller skating makes you happy by minimizing mild forms of depression and clearing your mind. Roller skating increases your happy hormones and reduces the bad ones.
The extended roller skating workout helps you feel natural. If you do it with a group of friends you get even happier.
10. Helps in stress relieve
Everyone is stressed out about somebody or something. It doesn’t matter what kind of stress it is. Roller skating will help you reduce your stress levels as it can be a relaxing activity if you look for a peaceful location when you need some quiet time.
Most doctors suggest engaging in a sport to reduce stress and roller skating can be a great option for you.
Final words
If you have been hesitating or thinking about taking roller skating for your fitness and weight loss, this is the right time to do it. Roller skating can be the greatest kind of workout you can participate in.
This is because, with roller-skating, you can get fit and have fun skating and be able to forget about all your worries.
Your muscles will get stronger, and your balance will improve. The amount of calories burned during skating is determined by weight, speed, and gender. Losing weight through roller skating is a good way to your fitness journey.
Hey there, my name is Shawn and I’m a semi-professional hockey player. I’m also the founder and chief editor here at Hockey Pursuits. I love playing hockey and helping players improve their game and that’s why I decided to start this blog.