Skateboarding has emerged as a form of life for a large number of people around the world. The popularity of skateboarding keeps on growing notably in the public eyes. People are enjoying the ride of skateboard for decades and it has turned into an extreme type of sport. Along with an art form, skateboarding is reshaping a new culture and lifestyle.
So does it only amuse us?
Or are there any benefits of skateboarding?
You may have lots of questions like this. Well, for you I am here my friend. In this article, I will discuss the mental, social and health benefits of skateboarding. By providing you relevant discussion, I will pinpoint some questions and answers regarding skateboarding.
And if you are in a hurry, then just take a look at the info-graphic we designed for you!
Then without any delay, let’s take a look into this.
The Mental, Social & Health Benefits Of Skateboarding?
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As we all know, similar to other sports activities skateboarding is certainly a perfect way to maintain your health. You will stay fit by riding a skateboard. Because it will help you to build up your muscles and burns body calories. Obviously, you will be able to lose weight and thus you’ll lose belly fat too! These are some of the skateboarding benefits.
Now our center of attention will be on different aspects of the benefits of skateboarding.
Social Benefits Of Skateboarding
1. Making new friends
During skateboarding at the park, you will come in contact with other skaters. You are gathering with the people of the same internet and taste. With having the same ideology, you can develop a strong emotional connection with them.
This will allow you to make new friends. You will have a great fun time with them. This will make you more social. You will able to build friendships with others.
2. Make fashionable
You have noticed that skaters are getting popular because of wearing nice fashionable clothes. Clearly, there is a deep connection between fashion with skateboarding. Skateboarding fashion will be the fashion trend for you by advancing the social appeal.
Consequently, by using an electric skateboard, you can also upgrade your fashion trend. Thus you will become more fashionable due to skateboarding.
3. Creative autonomy
In all of the conventional sports activities, there are some specific rules to follow. But skateboarding does not have rules and regulations to follow. Therefore, you will be able to improvise some creative tricks. This will allow you to get the social benefit which is creative autonomy.
For this, you are being free to improvise some innovative forms, modes, and stunts. By applying new tricks and moves, you can fully boost your creative autonomy.
4. Elevate bravery
The fear of falling decreases as you fall while riding a skateboard in front of people. This will allow you to elevate bravery as a skill.
Hence, the ability to prepare various new types of stunt until you become an expert on it which inculcates the expertness of staying calm following the pressure in front of the public.
Your determination will help you to stay focused. These are some skills that elevate bravery. As a result, you can shift these skills to ordinary life.
Skateboarding Health Benefits
Skateboard health benefits are enormous. If we divide it into two parts as follows-
A. Mental Health Benefits
1. Helps in reducing stress
Our assumption of positive impacts of skateboarding is only considering it as a good exercise. According to mental health experts, engaging with physical activities have the possibility of relieving mental stress. While skating, you are deeply engaging with this activity. This will allow your mind to depart things that are responsible for mental stress.
Moreover, you will be capable of thinking clearly about any tasks given after doing physical activities. Apart from this, you can control your thoughts and feelings. All of these will help you to reduce stress.
2. Helps in building diverse relationships
As through skateboarding, you will be able to mix with people from all different kinds of backgrounds. Research finds that because of skateboarding you can develop communicating with others.
Thus leads to build new relationships with persons from various backgrounds. This will help your mental health by providing scopes to share your feelings with other skaters.
3. Get relief from mood swings and depression
It is sometimes hard to come out from mood swings and depression. Lots of people discover; they may have something wrong in their head. You go out and skateboarding, you can not think about anything else like mood swings and depression. You are in a whole new environment. You have to look after yourself. This is an escape for you. You just forget about what you are worrying about. You just focus on the new tricks to perform.
So undoubtedly, there might be a link between people who are struggling with mental health a bit more and doing something a bit different like skateboarding which is opposed to the mainstream team sports.
Hence it unites people who are different. It will help you to come out of your comfort zone and enable you to express yourself. You will feel much better and your head will be cleaned from mood swings and depression after skateboarding.
4. Improving brain function
Many people have a history of long terms of traumatic experience which may induce a permanent negative effect on attitude and behavior. It also causes serious changes in brain chemistry.
Recent research finds that engaging in daily physical activities will stimulate your brain performances. This helps you to regulate emotional thoughts and behavior by improving mental health. So skateboarding can be highly effective because it helps in the stimulation of the brain.
5. Improve the better quality of sleep
We all know the importance of sleep for our bodies and mind. If you have difficulty in sleep, you cannot function properly. Skateboarding will be helpful for you. After skateboarding, you will feel tired. Your exhausted body becomes numb when you go to bed.
So those who are suffering from a sleep disorder, they find it helpful to get a better sleep due to skateboarding. Along with the physical benefits of skateboarding, you will get the benefits of a better quality of sleep.
6. Upgrade mental performance
According to the research, skateboarding will help you to improve mental performances like focusing better, thinking positively, etc. It will also boost your confidence by increasing self-esteem. You will be able to fight any psychologically critical situation.
In critical conditions, you will attempt planned risks accompanied by skateboarding. The outcomes are very rapid & real. With practice and proper patience, you will be capable of mastering the skills of skateboarding.
Meanwhile, you will become a qualified human being while you are growing the quality of skateboarding.
7. Getting outdoors
If you have to stay at home all day long because of the video games and computer etc, it will hamper your mental health. So skateboarding creates a great opportunity for you to get outdoors.
This will make your mind jolly and refresh your monotonous life. Besides, it is good for your eyes to play outside.
B. Physical Health Benefits Of Skateboarding
1. Muscle strengthening
While skateboarding, you require to maintain a high range of balance with coordination. This will work on your muscles in every part of the body. You will get a perfect exercise by skateboarding.
Performing new tricks raises the demands on the muscles as it requires several joint movements. For skateboarding, you have to keep balance on the surface. So core muscles are one of the muscles that pick up strengthening. Core muscles are built by the muscle obligated structure of hips, abdominal muscles, and muscle covered by the backbone. Core muscle keeps your body strong.
Aside from the core muscles, skateboarding also strengthens your quadriceps muscles. These are four muscles situated in front of the thighs. They help in extending the legs at the time of acceleration. Skateboarding will also strengthen hamstring muscles and larger muscles like gluteus maximus muscles.
Thus it help to build leg muscles too!
2. Calorie Burning
If you want to burn calories, skateboarding will be a perfect workout for you. It will help you to train all parts of the body. Just similar to other action sports, it will depend upon you. Plus frequency of riding the skateboard has an effect on burning calories.
If you ride a skateboard on a daily basis, you will be able to lose extra weight. By skateboarding aggressively, you may able to burn around 700-800 calories per hour. But just driving the skateboard, you may able to burn about 300-400 calories per hour.
According to Harvard Medical school, the calculation of burning calories during skateboarding is-
- An individual having125 pounds body weight is capable of burning about 300 kilocalories by one-hour skateboarding.
- An individual having 155 pounds body weight is capable of burning about 372 kilocalories by one-hour skateboarding.
- An individual having 185 pounds body weight is capable of burning about 444 kilocalories by one-hour skateboarding.
- If you ride a skateboard for 5 hours in a week, you can easily burn approximately 1500-2220 calories that may vary upon your body weight.
But if you can include a healthy diet and other sports besides it, you may able to burn calories rapidly. So for fighting with obesity, skateboarding is the best solution.
Read: Can fat people skateboard?
3. Provides Flexibility
In terms of involving your body activities, skateboarding is the best way of exercise. When you skate, you are driving and this increases movements in each part of the body. You are proceeding the ride in various way of directions.
For keeping balance, you have to use your legs and arms. Your ankles are remaining flexible together with the body at the time of skating. This will provide you flexibility with a variety of movements.
4. Pain Tolerance
Skateboarding is a risky action sport, you have to face multiple injuries. But as you love it from your bottom of heart, you accept these consequences willingly. Bruises, scars, pains, etc are part of the ride. This will enable your capacity for pain tolerance.
5. Improves Coordination
Skateboarding includes a variety of coordination with your eyes, legs, and arms. Additional skateboarding will improve your coordination more. And in the future life, you will be capable of doing all types of different things like climbing, etc.
Read: How Skateboarding Works Your Legs?
Economic Benefits Of Skateboarding
1. Inexpensive Sport
For any types of sports, you must have to spend a larger amount of money for pieces of equipment and other things. But in skateboarding, you do not have to spend a huge amount of money. This is an inexpensive sport.
With being budget-friendly, you may start skateboarding with reasonable expenses. As a beginner, you may need to spend around 30-40 dollars. And you may need to spend some additional expenses for precautionary gears. This may cost you around 20-30 dollars up extra for the protective gear.
Overall comparing with other sports, these expenses are little. So this is one of the most important economical benefits of skateboarding.
2. Transportation
You can easily use skateboarding as a medium of transportation. You can reach out to any places timely by skateboarding. With no traffic jam, your time and energy can be saved. Plus you can save transportation costs.
You do not need any parking plots for the skateboard. You can easily carry it anywhere. You will get complete freedom of traveling by top quality skateboards.
3. Creating New Jobs
If you learn how to skateboarding perfectly, you can be an instructor for beginners. This will help you to earn money. Besides, you can earn money by opening a skateboard shop. Skateparks will be a great source of income for the community. It will also attract tourists and new residents.
Frequently asked questions
1. How does skateboarding help your body?
Skateboarding has both physical and mental health benefits.
Physical health benefits are-
- It controls body weight.
- It increases blood circulation.
- It can improve the immune system.
- It strengthens body muscles.
Mental health benefits-
- It reduces mental stress and depression.
- It improves the quality of sleep.
- It charms the mind.
- It improves mental performances like thinking, focus, etc.
- It increases the confidence level.
2. How healthy is skateboarding?
Definitely, skateboarding has health benefits depending on how you skate. If you skate for a long time, you will be able to get more benefits.
3. Does skateboarding make you stronger?
Absolutely, it does. As skateboarding strengthens the muscles, you will become stronger physically after regular practice.
Final Words…
Above this discussion, I am sure you would get enough information about what are the mental, social and health benefits of skateboarding. With all this well-being, you can lead a healthy lifestyle by skateboarding. So, if you want to stay healthy, let’s start a ride with the skateboard!
References
- https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-02-26/skateboarding-improves-mental-health-helps-build-diverse-relationships-usc-study-says
- https://www.bbc.com/news/av/health-49130396/mental-health-the-skateboarding-club-helping-students-well-being
- https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2013/11/20/physical-activity-guidelines-how-much-exercise-do-you-need/
- https://sportstotry.com/benefits-of-skateboarding/