How to Prevent Foot Cramps while Ice Skating

How to prevent foot cramps while ice skating is a primary concern many ice skaters deal with. If you’ve experienced agonizing foot pain, know you aren’t alone in this. The feet scrunching up problem affects ice skaters of all levels, especially beginners and intermediates.

The ice skating sport is fun and therapeutic! However, foot cramps and other foot pains can ruin the fan. The good news is, I’ve put this detailed guide to help you prevent foot cramps when ice skating. Below is a quick rundown of what to do.

Use the Correct Ice Skating Posture to avoid Toe Pushing
Use Appropriately Fitting Ice Skating Shoes
Wear Socks and Ankles Sleeves for Ice Skating
Avoid the Urge to Over Skate
Always Stretch before and After Every Ice Skating Session
Use Orthotic Insoles
Strengthen your Foot Muscles

How to Prevent foot cramps while ice skating

But, this is only the tip of the iceberg. In the rest of this guide, I walk you through the details to better understand how to stop foot cramps once and for all. You don’t want to miss out. So, I urge you to read on. Let’s get to it!

1. Use the Correct Ice Skating Posture to avoid Toe Pushing

Foot cramps mainly occur when you use your toes to push. Pushing using your toes isn’t the main problem, though since it’s as a result of using the wrong skating posture. When you push using your toes, your muscle feet naturally scrunches up, leading the agonizing pain.

Instead, you want to push using your entire foot, which is only possible if your feet are well-rested inside your ice skating shoes. By all means, both your toes and heels should do the work to reduce the pressure exerted on one part of your feet.

With that being said, what’s the correct ice skating posture? You’re probably asking. The correct posture for skating involves properly bending your knees. By all means, your knees should be shoulder-width apart and above your toes. Also, your shoulders should be over your hips.

The correct ice skating posture is crucial for body weight transfer and proper balance. When skating in the bent position, like you’re sitting on a bench, your entire foot sole rests on the ice skating shoes. However, when ice skating like you’re walking on street shoes, you’re more likely to push using your toes instead of the entire foot. When there’s too much around the toes, they scrunch up.

Most importantly, loosen up your body to avoid being stiff. Too much stiffness around the feet can cause tension in your foot muscles, leading to foot cramps.

2. Use Appropriately Fitting Ice Skating Shoes

Ill-fitting ice skating shoes also play a crucial role in causing foot cramps. An ill-fitting skating shoe can be either too tight or too loose. However, too tightly fitting ice skating shoes cause more foot cramps than loose ones.

As a rule of thumb, the correctly fitting ice skating shoes are neither tight nor loose. Instead, they’re a snug fit and allow your feet breathing space. If you’re experiencing foot cramps, there’s a high likelihood you don’t use the correct ice skating shoes.

That’s why it’s important to shop around for best-fitting ice skating shoes. If possible, you can check with your local brick-and-mortar skate store to try out several skating shoes before settling on the right one. However, if it’s not possible, measure your foot length and width when ordering online.

3. Wear Socks and Ankles Sleeves for Ice Skating

Some ice skating shoes can be a little rough on the feet when skating. This is especially true when skating without proper ice skating socks or ankle sleeves. You, therefore, should always wear the correct ice skating socks every time you go out to skate.

The right socks for ice skating should be of moderate thickness—neither too thin nor too thick. Most importantly, they should provide comfort to your feet by absorbing much of the pressure. In turn, this makes your feet relax properly and helps prevent foot cramps.

4. Avoid the Urge to Over Skate

There’s no doubt ice skating is fun whether you’re skating outdoors during winter or indoors at an ice skating rink. The problem is, avoiding the urge to go ice skating can be pretty hard when starting to skate. However, it’s important to do quality skating than quantity skating.

Let me explain:

Over skating exerts pressure on your foot muscles, especially when you haven’t skated in a long time or when you’re still new. The last thing you want is to strain your foot muscles because this is the number one cause of foot cramps when ice skating.

Therefore, try to skate 2-3 times a week if you must. However, skating once or twice should be sufficient when starting. The best part is, spending quality time skating also goes a long way to strengthen your foot muscles, making them fit for ice skating.

5. Always Stretch before and After Every Ice Skating Session

Stretching before and after every ice skating session is one good skating practice you shouldn’t overlook. Here’s the thing: many ice skaters take this for granted and end up hurting themselves. You shouldn’t be one of them!

Stretching allows the foot’s extrinsic and intrinsic muscles to relax and contract smoothly without scrunching up. That’s why you always want to take a few minutes (around 5) to stretch your legs and feet before wearing your ice skating shoes. After the session, it’s also recommended to stretch the leg and feet muscles.

6. Use Orthotic Insoles

Orthotic insoles are crucial for people with pronating or supinating feet. Your feet will naturally bend inside around the ankle joint when you have pronation. On the other hand, if you have Supination, your feet will bend outwards. But that’s only the scratch on the surface.

Pronation and Supination cause fatigue to your foot muscles. If you skate longer, the muscles will naturally scrunch up, resulting in more excruciating pain and discomfort. There are many ways to correct the problem.

However, for this guide, I’d recommend you try out Orthotic insoles. You can find the best Orthotic insole deals on Amazon by clicking here.

7. Strengthen your Foot Muscles

Your foot muscles are likely to squeeze when they’re weak. There’s only one way to get this right—strengthening them for ice skating. Once they’re strong and ready for ice skating, foot cramps should be a thing of the past. So, how do you go about it? You’re probably asking.

The best way to strengthen your foot muscles is to do dry land exercises for ice skating and other foot muscle workouts. According to MedicalNewsToday, some foot workouts to try out are;

Toe raise, point an curl
Big toe stretch
Toe splay
Toe curls
Marble pickup
Sand walking
Toe extension
Golf ball roll
Achilles stretch

How to Prevent Foot Cramps while Ice Skating | Wrapping Up

Ice skating indoors or outdoors is fun, but not when foot cramps get in the way. The pain is often excruciating and agonizing. However, you don’t have to give up your skating passion because of foot cramps. Below is the summary of how to prevent foot cramps while ice skating.