Longboarding and skating are two different sports but are considered to be almost the same. But still, people compare them and try to find benefits among them and this debate has never come to an end. But experts say that both sports have a certain number of benefits for your health.
And that tells us that longboarding is also a form of exercise now and people are joining in because of its health benefits as well. So does longboarding count as exercise?
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Does Longboarding Count As Exercise?
Yes, longboarding is a fun sport that helps you maintain your health by making you do some physical activities. You sometimes, jump while longboarding, stand, push, lean and all these kinds of activities have a certain amount of benefits for your health.
So we can count longboarding as a form of exercise that is entertaining as well.
All the actions that you perform during a longboard ride have certain positive effects on your muscles, joints, abdomen, brain, and overall. So let’s take a deeper look at how longboarding affects your life in a positive way.
Longboarding can be counted as cardio exercise
Your body is always in need of a good amount of exercise on a daily basis to maintain its workflow of the system. And when you ride the longboard, you do all kinds of activities that it takes to keep your body maintained.
Another benefit of longboarding is you have fun during the sport and have so much adrenaline rush that acts to help you with cardio exercise.
Longboarding helps you strengthen your muscles, and joints, better heart rate, great stamina, and more balance in your body. Overall, this sport is what you call the best cardio exercise as compared to those that you do in the gym because they don’t cater to all these factors.
Longboarding effects on the cardiovascular system
Longboarding is like a free cardio exercise that you don’t even feel like doing exercise. It increases the heart rate that strengthens heart muscles, increases blood flow makes the blood reach each cell of your body.
In short, your cardiovascular system becomes so balanced that it enhances your overall health in the long run.
Longboard dancing
Now you must be wondering what kind of dancing is this if you never heard about this term right? Like what do you do tap dance on the deck of your longboard? No, actually when you stand on the longboard and push your board forward using your core leg muscles, and gain the required speed, this is called longboard dancing. This also includes carving on the deck that helps in burning fat. And this small exercise of longboarding is very important and has many effects on your health because your lower body stays in shape or at least gets increased stamina.
Enhanced lung capacity
Longboarding also helps in immunizing your lungs and increasing their capacity exponentially. Middle-aged people don’t activate all their muscles so this sport is for them as well. This is because when they ride the longboard, the oxygen reaches each pore of their lungs and that’s how their lungs stop declining. Therefore, the energy intake of your body becomes great when mixed with other health benefits of longboarding.
Balance
There are certain people facing issues of balancing. This is a pretty big issue for anybody that’s facing it. But how can you counter that? It’s longboarding on a regular basis because according to doctors it teaches you what you don’t yet know about balancing.
Balancing includes eating a healthy diet, having a good time of routine exercise like longboarding, and then complimenting it with some weight lifting. It all gets you in very good health and a balanced body shape.
Mental health
According to the latest research, longboarding also helps you in improving your mental health. We told you about the positive effects of longboarding on your heart health but now is the time to not forget about your mind as well.
When your longboard, you focus on the road and enjoy the ride no matter how stressed you were before stepping on the longboard. And that’s how longboarding has become a stress buster for real.
Improved sleep
When your longboard, your mind is always busy during the ride and if you keep riding the board for quite some time, it takes a toll on your mental energy. But that’s a good thing because human nature requires humans to take a good sleep when it’s time. Therefore, you should ride it regularly so that when you go to bed, you always fall asleep peacefully and relaxed.
Treats cholesterol problems
Cholesterol is a very big enemy of your overall health. It increases the risks of you getting a heart attack and even induces too many calories in your body. But thanks to longboarding, your cholesterol levels are maintained in good condition while you don’t even feel like you did something extra on purpose. Also, losing weight becomes a lot easier if your cholesterol level is maintained.
Joint Pain Relief
As longboarding is a great cardio exercise, cardio has also some positive ripple effects on your body. The cardio doesn’t let osteoporosis catch you and you never feel pain or brittleness in your joints. So you’re safe if you’re doing it like how you should do it.
Flexibility
While longboarding, you maintain your balance by using your core muscles and that’s how your body is balanced. Similarly, flexibility is another great benefit of longboarding because you keep shifting your weight from one leg to the other.
Overall good body and flexibility are what everyone wants to have but without putting any effort. Therefore, longboarding is the only way out of this.
Longboarding on The Popularity Scale
Longboarding has always been there but it was not so famous in the beginning. But ever since it started picking up in 2020, the youth of almost all the universities have started using it as a means of easy transportation.
Also, when they saw its health benefits, they even urge middle-aged and a little aged people to try this amazing sport.
But now the game has changed a little bit because now adult people are also coming into this with featuring weights. And that’s how it has started to become weight longboarding which is now a new trend for a full-body workout while having fun.
This sport is not just in the streets and small towns as now it has become one of the major sports competitions in the Beijing Olympics. People from multiple countries participated in that competition and made it recognition and worldwide.
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Basically, all your body is involved directly or indirectly in this sport when you’re pushing a longboard. But the major muscles of your body that get positively affected by this sport are the quadriceps and the calf of your legs. It is because you stand on one leg and push with the other one. Also, your glutes are the second most activated muscles of your body because they help you actively in maintaining your balance while you push the board.
Well, even though longboarding is a great sport with a lot of health benefits as well as an enjoyable sport. But still when it comes to the comparison table, running actually involves more of your body’s parts actively. Running burns a lot of calories but longboarding only burns about 4-7 calories per minute. So longboarding is not as good as running.
If we calculate the burnt calories per minute, then we would have to take it to an hour. Longboarding burns an average human 240 – 420 calories per hour continuously longboarding. And if we even break down a little bit more, then we get the results that you burn between 4-7 calories per minute with longboarding. These range differences are there just because you never stay still in your performance and change according to the situation.
Yes, skateboarding actually is a completely healthy workout for your body. This is because when you activate your cardiovascular system in your body and a lot of muscles. So when they are actively performing in your body during the ride, your body becomes strong and it makes up for a complete exercise.
Yes, you can easily lose weight with longboarding but it a lot from your side to concentrate on your workout for this. You lose weight by burning calories and that happens at a certain level with each longboarding round. If a person weighs 125 pounds and longboards for an hour, they will burn 300 calories on average. Similarly, if you weigh 185 pounds, you will burn 444 estimated calories from one hour of longboarding. So each passing week of regular longboarding will help you burn between 2000 – 3000 calories on average.
