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Are Inline Skates Good Practice for Ice Skating?

Are inline skates good practice for ice skating? If you’re wondering whether you can cross-train ice skating with inline skating, you’ve come to the right place. So, read on to find out!

Are inline skates good practice for ice skating? From experience and research, inline skates are good practice for ice skating. Ice Skating and inline skating are similar since they use the same skating techniques like bending low, stopping, turning, and safe falling.

Besides that, inline skates help ice skating with muscle development, burning more calories, safety on joints, body control and coordination, speed development, cardiovascular and aerobic benefits, and boost self-esteem and confidence.

Are Inline Skates Good Practice for Ice Skating?

This is only the tip of the iceberg. In the rest of this post, we go deep into how inline skates are good practice for ice skating.

If you’re thinking of trying inline skates are a cross-training exercise, you’ll find this post helpful. So, without much ado, let’s get to it!

1. Similar Inline Skating and Ice Skating Techniques

The main similarity between inline skates and ice skates lies in the blade and wheels’ orientation.

Both are fitted inline and run from the toe to the heels. When skating, one is expected to learn their balance on both.

Since the designs are near similar, inline skating and ice skating share the same techniques. Let’s get to how that works!

Inline Skating Posture

Due to the nature of inline skates and ice skates, it can be a hassle to gain stability and control.

It is, therefore, important to use the recommended skating posture. What is the right skating posture, you ask?

The right posture uses bent knees going above your toes and shoulders over your hips.

This technique helps transfer body weight to your toe balls to prevent forward and backward falls.

If you’re struggling to maintain balance on ice skates, training on inline skates can give you an edge.

Also, training on inline skates gets your body ready for ice skating all the time.

Stopping on Inline Skates vs. Ice Skating                                    

Stopping techniques come in handy when you’re skating fast on inline skates or ice skates.

Using the right techniques can help you out during emergencies that can potentially hurt you—in this case, stopping or slowing down when skating reduces the risk of exposure.

Inline skates use a few stopping techniques that can be applied in ice skating. Typical examples include the snowplow, hockey stop, and t-stop.

You can use inline skates to learn these stopping techniques since it’s almost impossible to be in your ice skates every often.

Turning on Inline Skates vs. Ice Skating

Flat spins are some of the cool inline skating tricks that apply to ice skating. There are scenarios where you can use these turning techniques.

One can be when avoiding an obstacle, and two, you can do the turns to show your prowess in skating.

That being said, the inline turning techniques you can use on ice skating include parallel turns, cross-overs, 180 degrees turns, 360 degrees turns, and 1080 degrees turns.

In particular, figure skating uses many turns and spins, and it can benefit much from inline skating.

Related: Rollerblading Tricks for Beginners and Intermediate Skaters (11 Easy Tricks)

Inline skating and Ice Skating Safe Falling Technique

Inline skating and ice skating use the same falling techniques to minimize injuries. Like it or not, falling is inevitable, and situations will arise where you have to fall.

This could be when skating on wet or super rough surfaces or when avoiding obstacles.

If you’re wondering how to fall on ice skates without severely hurting yourself, below is the article I did with you in mind.

The article covers how to fall on rollerblades, aka inline skates. Since inline skating and ice skating are similar, you can apply the same techniques in ice skating.

Related: How to Fall when Rollerblading (4 Incredibly Safe Techniques)

2. Muscle Development

All skating disciplines, including ice skating and inline skating, depend on strong and healthy muscles.

Otherwise, the body can be too weak to handle the skates. That being said, inline skating works all body muscles, especially the lower body.

The main muscles in this area include the core, gluteus, adductors, quadriceps, and hamstrings.

Stronger and healthy muscles gained through inline skating can be helpful when ice skating since the same muscles are involved.

In addition, because of the recommended skating posture, you need stronger core muscles and leg muscles to endure ice skating for long.

This mostly applies when speed skating or when playing ice hockey. The two ice skating sports are vigorous and require a lot of muscle endurance.

Related: What Muscles Does Rollerblading Work? The Ultimate Discovery!

3. Inline Skates More Calories

Excess calories in the body after digestion can lead to putting on weight. Sadly, too much weight isn’t cool with ice skating.

If you’re into figure skating, ice hockey, or speed skating, you may need to shed off the excess weight.

One sure way to do that is cross-training using inline skates. Once in a while, it’s a good idea to supplement your workouts with inline skating to burn more calories and lose the extra fat stored in the muscles.

Even recreational ice skating will benefit from shedding excess weight since this gets you tired fast.

Inline skating is more vigorous than ice skating. Therefore, on average, one burns between 573-1069 per hour.

On the other hand, ice skating only burns between 640-840 calories per hour. So, if you want to burn more calories to keep fit, inline skating will go a long way.

4. Rollerblades are Safe on Joints

Inline skating has tons of benefits to body joints like knees and ankles. Besides being safe on joints, inline skates also help build and develop stronger joints.

Studies show that inline skating is a low-impact aerobic exercise, meaning it is safe on joints while rough on calories.

Therefore, using ice skates on the sides to practice will help develop your ankles and knees and get them ready for ice skating.

5. Inline Skates Help with Body Control and Coordination

Balancing on inline skates and ice skates can be a hurdle, especially for beginners, because of the small contact area between the blades and the icy surface.

Nonetheless, if you can use your spare time to learn balancing on inline skates, it can help you with proper body control and coordination.

Also, it would be best to have stronger and healthy muscles for smooth control and coordination because they play an important role in holding the skeletal system together.

The good news is you can quickly achieve this by cross-training with inline skates.

6. Rollerblades Help with Speed Development

Speed development is essential when speed skating or when playing ice hockey. Figure skating can also use speed when performing tricks and styles.

This means that you need to put in a lot of effort to gain speed for excellent performance in either of the ice skating disciples.

Nonetheless, you can easily supplement your current speed by cross-training on inline skates. The average speed of inline skates is between 8 mph and 16 mph.

On the other hand, the average speed of ice skates is between 20 mph and 30mph.

So, if you want to improve your ice skating speed, inline skates can go a long way.

7. Inline Skates offer More Cardiovascular and Aerobic Benefits

Ice skating depends on a healthy heart and a good overall health status which you can quickly get by regular exercising and eating healthy foods.

The best part is inline skating can work as a reliable cross-training routine for ice skating because it has tons of cardiovascular and aerobic benefits.

These benefits include improved heart health, improved lung function, controlled blood sugar levels, and controlled cholesterol levels.

You can find these benefits by ice skating. However, incorporating inline skating into the routine helps to improve your health status more.

8. Boosts Self-esteem and Confidence

Skating on ice can be a little intimidating, considering the sleek nature of ice skating rinks and ice skates.

To that end, ice skating can be regarded as an adrenaline sport, especially when skating outdoors on frozen water bodies like lakes, oceans, seas, ponds, and rivers.

It’s, therefore, important to build enough confidence and self-esteem to make it through ice skating.

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Are Inline Skates Good Practice for Ice Skating? Wrapping Up

Are inline skates good practice for ice skating? If you’ve been wondering if this is a good idea, the answer is a big yes. Inline skates use the same techniques as ice skating. In addition, inline skates help ice skating by keeping the body fit and in perfect health.

Navick Ogutu
Navick Ogutu

Navick is a full-time freelance writer, blogger, and internet marketer. By day, he creates content for multiple sites including inlineskaterstars.com. Over the weekend, he goes out skating with friends.

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