Hello skaters and welcome back to the NorthShore Inline Marathon blog! Spring is here and we are working together to get ready for the NorthShore Inline Marathon on September 17th. In our last blog, we learned how we can increase our ankle strength and flexibility to get ready to start skating after a long winter. If you missed our last blog don’t worry you can find it right here: How to get ready for the skating season! - Fix your ankles.
So now that we are working on our ankles let’s continue to move up our body and look at our skating position and strengthen the muscles we need to maintain that position. To help us with this we’re going to check in again with 2-time Olympic Long Track speedskater and elite inline marathoner Viktor Hald Thorup. Once again we are going to be learning techniques and drills we can do in our shoes before we put the skates on.
In this first video, Viktor is going to start by showing us the proper skating position and will progress into exercises we can do while we are in the skating position to strengthen our muscles while improving our balance. A great way to practice this is in front of a mirror while watching the video. This way we can see how it is supposed to look and compare that to what our body is actually doing. Another great thing about this video is that all of these drills can be done in a small space. This means that whether we are at home or in a hotel room there is no reason we can’t be doing these regularly.
Top 10 Skating exercises you can do with 3 feet
The next video we are going to look at is Viktor’s DRYLAND Bible. If you haven’t heard the term “dryland” before it simply means “off-skate” drills. The first thing you will notice about this video is that Viktor uses some of the same drills he showed us in the first video so you already have a head start. This video adds more exercises and can also be used as a workout in itself. Whether you are new to skating or a pro this will be challenging.
One of the great things about trying all the drills in this video is you will soon find out where your weaknesses are. There are going to be exercises that are significantly more challenging for you than others. If you would like to try using this video as a workout we suggest pausing between exercises to give your legs a brief break. If you want to keep moving try doing some abdominal exercises between each leg exercise. This is a great way to keep moving and working out, but also gives your legs and back some time to recover.
You may feel silly at times and it might not be as fun as skating outdoors, but if you make time to work these exercises into your training program you will have your best season yet! Thanks for joining us again and come back soon as we will get our skates on and learn how to find our balance on skates.
We hope this helps and we can’t wait to see all of you on September 17th at the NorthShore Inline Marathon!
The NorthShore Inline Marathon is North America's largest skating event. Hosted on the beautiful north shore of Lake Superior, NSIM offers 8 unique races for all skill types. To learn more about the NorthShore Inline marathon check out their website at www.northshoreinline.com.