Benefits of working out at the Gym for Skateboarders
Going to the gym as a skateboarder is about as uncool as you can get. It’s taboo to talk about. We’re mean’t to just skate, chill and repeat. The myth? Skating is the best workout for skating.
All you need to do is skate more! Sounds good. Sounds easy, but skateboarding is hard, and sooner or later, all that impact and strain on your body will catch up with you.
This is where the gym is our saviour. Our path to skating more.
Gym for skaters?
Is it really the magic to faster growth?
It’s been just over a year since I first joined my local gym. I’ve been a member of gyms before, it half hearted attempts to build some muscle, never quite knowing what I was doing, lifting some weights, getting bored, quitting. In the past skating was all I needed to stay healthy, or so I thought.
When you’re young (think 18 and under) the body repairs itself incredibly fast, it adapts, it gets stronger, it’s on a full time upward trajectory. This feeling tends to continue into your early 20s. A feeling of indestructibility. Resilience. Unfortunately the body is starting to feel the strain of all of that skating. Waking up aching more, taking longer to warm up, and little niggles of pain start appearing.
For me, I didn’t take enough notice of them. I didn’t think there was a way around it, and if there was I sure didn’t know what to do and I couldn’t be bothered to find out. Oops.
Why go to the gym as a skater?
There are a number of key benefits that I find the gym can offer for those looking to improve their skating:
Mindset - Simply being in a gym as opposed to at home can help you focus more and give a change of mindset
Access to heavy weights - Lifting heavy weights is the ONLY way to increase and maintain bone density as we get older. If you want strong bones that don’t snap when you land an ollie, you need to lift heavy weights occasionally
Varied Cardio - Skating is good, running is good, lots of things are good for you but too much of one for of exercise will cause an unbalanced strain on your body. You need to also include counter forms of exercise and restorative forms that give less impact on your joints to help you recover better and become stronger
What should a skater do at the gym?
There are lots of different reasons to go to the gym, even as a skater, and everyones body has different requirements, however here are some things I do at the gym to help my skating":
Light straight, active recovery days - After a big day of skating I don’t just go lie around the house drinking beers until I feel better again. I drink lots of water, eat well and engage in ‘Active Recovery’. This means light cycles, rowing machine, lunge exercises and even low intensity box jumps and weight lifting. The goal is to maintain blood flow, flush out the built up toxins from the skate, and encourage to body to maintain it’s range of movement.
Skate Specific Training - It’s really beneficial to practice skate specific movements in a controlled environment, without the addition of a rolling skateboard. Think jumping 1 legged onto a box, jumping 180 and 360, landing in torqued positions of a nose blunt and holding it. All these things mimic skateboarding in a slower and more controlled way that help your body prepare itself better.
Lifting heavy - Want more pop? Want to be able to skate stairs for longer? Heavy weights will be the way to safely introduce more strain to your body and learn to manage this weight and impact.
Recovery Tools - Some gyms have saunas, spa baths, swimming pools, foam rollers and even massage guns or NormaTec boots. Make use of these recovery tools to help you get back to skating sooner. An infrared sauna can really help stimulate blood flow and collagen production.