The Pros And Cons of Ice Skating: Benefits, Challenges & More
Ice skating is one of the most popular winter recreational activities and sports – especially in Canada and the colder regions of America. People in these regions frequently visit ice rinks. Even if they don’t take up an ice skating sport seriously, spending time on ice rinks is never completely alien to them.
But because ice skating is an integral part of the social culture – very few people analyze the pros and cons of ice skating.
The key benefits of ice skating are health-related. From building stamina and endurance to working out every muscle group of the body, ice skating is an excellent physical activity. It develops balance, builds confidence, and brings joy to people across all age groups. But it comes with the risk of injury and could be financially demanding.
In this article, I am going to go into the details of the pros and cons of ice skating. This way you will know whether to give it a shot or to skip it for now.
Note that in this article, I will be writing about ice skating as a whole and won’t go into the specific advantages and disadvantages of figure skating, speed skating or ice hockey.
The Benefits of Ice Skating/Pros of Ice Skating
Muscle toning
Ice skating employees almost every muscle of the body. You need to balance on your ankles, use your leg muscles to glide, extend your arms and shoulders to balance, and use your core and back to stay upright. Thus, it engages every part of the body. This engagement helps tone your muscles.
Developing balance
In my opinion, the biggest benefit of ice skating is development of balance. Technically, any form of skating can help you develop balance but ice skating often beats roller blading and street skating.
Roller blades are much thicker than ice skates. Plus the rough surface, in itself, assists with balance. On the contrary, an ice rink is far more slippery.
The combination of thin ice blades and a slippery surface force you to keep your body in check and all the parts including your head, neck, shoulders, arms, core and legs need to work together in co-ordination as a single well-balanced unit.
Weight management
Ice skating requires you to perform tricks or skate at high speeds on thin blades on a slippery rink. To prevent any falls and to hold yourself upright, your body can’t afford to have bad fat. Ice skating regularly helps improve lean body mass and thus keeps your weight in check. When combined with proper dieting and healthy food choices, it can also assist in fat loss, lean muscle building (not the body building kind) and improvement in metabolism.
Improving cardiovascular health and stamina
Therea are reports that suggest that an hour of ice skating can burn up to 200 calories. That’s almost as much as an hour of walking, cycling or dancing.
Plus the low impact nature of ice skating makes it an ideal form of exercise for people across all age groups.
Like any other form of exercise, ice skating gets your heart pumping. The increased heart rate works like any other cardio exercise and helps improve stamina.
If you add speed, turns, jumps and tricks to it, even half an hour of regular skating can provide a full body workout that feels as challenging as HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training)
Boosts confidence/Improves mental health
Confidence is often directly associated with our ability to learn new skills. When we first learn to walk, we celebrate. When we paint a canvas for the first time, we beam with joy. The same applies to skating.
Learning to balance on skates is a fairly difficult skill – mastering it often requires a great amount of determination and control. Therefore, learning to ice skate very often gives an immediate confidence boost.
This confidence further multiplies with every new trick that you learn to perform on ice skates.
Ice skating also teaches you to live in the present moment. You can’t afford to get distracted out of the risk of losing balance and falling. Regularly spending time on ice skates can help destress. You learn to focus on what’s important and forget about your woes.
Plus the movement and the exercise also release endorphins t the way any other workout does – thereby improving your happiness quotient.
The Downside of Ice Skating/Cons of Ice Skating
Nothing in this world is perfect and ice skating is no exception to it.
No matter how rosy you feel imagining yourself gliding on ice, performing stunts, winning ice hockey matches or speeding to your limit, ice skating comes bundled up with some inherent challenges, risks and downsides.
Here they are
Injuries
In my opinion, ice skating is one of the riskiest individual sports.
You are constantly exposed to the risk of
- injuries or lacerations on account of falling or being run over by other skaters or overworking your body
- developing muscle damage on account of improper technique, improper size and fit of gear
- suffering concussions or other brain or nervous wound
Wearing protective gear can help minimize the risk to an extent but it is not a foolproof solution.
Plus the exposure to risk is not related to your skill level. Everyone, including a recreational skater to a pro skater, stands an equal chance of getting hurt while skating.
Cost
Ice skating is not a cheap activity.
At the very minimum, you need to pay for
- the rink
- classes/coaching
- skates
- attire
- bag
- accessories
- protective gear
- maintenance of gear
Plus, the trends in ice skating are ever changing making you buy new clothes, new type of gear ever so often.
Kids even move out of sizes frequently.
Thus, whether you choose to rent some parts of your gear or buy your gear, you still need to incur a substantial amount of expenses if you want to regularly pursue ice skating.
Extreme competition
If you decide to pursue any form of ice skating seriously i.e. from the point of view of participating in competitions, you need to put in a lot of effort. The competition level in any branch of ice skating – figure skating, dance, ice hockey, speed skating is very steep.
Excelling at any competition takes a toll on
- your body – as it requires you to maintain a certain level of fitness, flexibility, body type and endurance
- your mind – as it requires you to overlook pain on account of injuries and practice for long hours without taking frequent breaks
Summing up
To sum up, ice skating can be an exhilarating experience but it does come with its own baggage.
| Pros of ice skating | Cons of ice skating |
| Muscle toning | Continuous exposure to the risk of injuries |
| Developing balance | Financially demanding |
| Managing bodyweight | Extreme competition can take a toll on the body and mind |
| Improving cardiovascular health and stamina | |
| Boosting confidence/overall mental health |
