Have you ever looked at surfers and thought, “Why are they always so lean and fit?” Well, one clue could be the sport they partake in; surfing! But what do you do when you are not lucky enough to live by the ocean?
Well, longboarding is the closest thing to surfing that you can do; and you don’t even have to be in the ocean. It is so close to surfing, they christened it “street surfing”! Just like its inspiration, longboarding comes with a host of physical, as well as mental advantages.
In this post, we are taking a look at the longboarding health and fitness benefits!
Offers Great Cardio Workout
Longboarding is a nice way to exercise your heart. Riding a longboard entails speedy movements of the body, which increases the heartbeat. This results in a boost to your cardiovascular system by making your body deliver more oxygen to the muscles of the heart. Another consequence of longboarding is that more fat is burned, preventing various heart diseases.
But it’s not only cardio exercise that you get when riding a longboard, it also helps to enhance your lung capacity and improve your general body stamina. Being able to constantly stay on top of your board helps to condition your heart muscles to work optimally for extended periods.
However, if you want the best cardio workout from your longboard, try to incorporate riding it into your daily schedule. For instance, you can make it the primary mode of commute, whether to school or work. The shorter models work wonderfully when it comes to personal transportation. They are conveniently lightweight, portable, and can easily fit inside a backpack.
To further improve the intensity of your cardio workout, you can add a skate paddle while riding. This will cause you to kick your feet and paddle at the same time, ensuring that your whole body is engaged by the exercise.
Helps you to Lose Weight
Riding a longboard is probably one of the best ways to shed that extra weight. The benefit is that you’ll be having so much fun while at it, you won’t even realize just how many calories you are burning. According to estimates, one hour of longboarding can burn around 300 calories for a person weighing 125lbs or 400 calories for a 185lb rider.
This means if you skate every day for a couple of hours, you can burn up to 3000 calories in a week. Do you now see why most skateboarders are so lean? Generally, longboarding can be a nice weight losing alternative if you don’t fancy changing your diet. Just remember to be committed and dedicated!
Builds Muscle Strength
Longboarding also engages several muscles throughout the body, helping to strengthen them. To start with, your legs do most of the work with the kicking and steering of the board. There are also instances when you need to brake, turn, pump, and do tricks that all involve using your legs. This means leg muscles, such as the glutes and quads get the most exercise during longboarding.
But when you decide to add a paddle into the mix, you start to exercise a range of muscles in your upper body. Paddling is a physically demanding activity that involves muscles such as the biceps, triceps, Rectus abdominis, trapezius, obliques, and latissimus dorsi. Longboarding can as well help to strengthen your core and even work on your abs.
While your leg muscles do most of the work, your core comes in handy when you want to remain standing on the board during tricky maneuvers. In fact, riding a longboard for a while may feel like you’ve been doing crunches.
If you are not very active on the longboard, you might feel a slight degree of tightness in your arms. This is because, during turning, carving, and stunting, your arms are usually spread outwards, if not moving along with the body. So, expect the tightness to spread to your triceps and biceps.
Improves your Flexibility
If you’re struggling with body fitness, longboarding can be a reliable way to loosen up. It involves a lot of body movements and switching body positions when trying different maneuvers. The turning and twisting make your body more flexible.
Flexibility is an essential aspect of body fitness that doesn’t get enough credit. Having a flexible body allows you to stay younger and more active. It also ensures that you easily keep away injuries, both on and off the skate park.
Enhances your Balance
If you have trouble standing up one leg (and not just when you’re taking a sobriety test), longboarding will help you achieve this physically Herculean task more easily. This is because before riding a board, balance is one of the fundamental skills you must develop (as explained on prolongboarders.com).
Staying upright on a piece of board moving at top speeds and managing to negotiate tight corners is a remarkable balancing act. Overall, longboarders learn the art of body coordination, so that different parts of the body like the legs, feet, shoulders, and hands are in sync with one another during riding.
Prevents Cholesterol
Excess cholesterol in your body is a great cause for concern. Typically, it attracts a host of health conditions and is the leading cause of stroke and heart disease. Thankfully, longboarding can help to keep your body cholesterol levels in check.
Since longboarding offers cardio exercise, it helps to eliminate the fat around your heart muscles and generally in the body that might put you at risk of cholesterol. So, every time you step on a longboard, know that you are moving farther away from this dreaded condition!
Refreshes the Mind and Prevents Stress
Longboarding also helps to clear your mind and saves you from any harmful thoughts that might be suffocating you. It allows you to get out and engaged whenever you have free time. This keeps your mind from wandering into your problems at work and home, thus, preventing feelings of anxiety and depression.
Not to mention that you get better sleep at night when you have a clear mind with nothing to think about. At the end of the day, longboarding is a crucial activity when it comes to improving your mental health.
Final Thought
If you’ve been skeptical about joining the longboarding crew in your neighborhood, this post should be enough to make you give it a second thought. The sport comes with numerous health benefits and can be a nice way of staying in shape.
From boosting your cardiovascular health and body stamina to relieving stress and providing you with better sleep, the list is simply endless.
It is an interesting activity that you can learn anytime you have free time on your hands. The best part is that it doesn’t discriminate against age or gender. Basically, anyone with interest can get into longboarding!
