There’s no doubt about it: skaters raise the stakes when it comes to cardio. This is a common exercise found in HIIT workouts (high-intensity interval training). Whip out your mat, start your warm-up and use these tips from the FizzUp trainer to get the most out of this fun and unusual exercise. No roller rink required!
This exercise is all about strength, speed and agility. You need skilled coordination and balance to do it right. The first step is to learn the sequences of moves involved. Here’s what to do for perfect and effective skaters.
Starting position: Stand with your back straight, your feet slightly apart and your arms at your sides.
Step 1: Jump to the right as you move your left leg behind your right leg. At the same time, your left arm should swing forward while your right arm swings backward.
Step 2: Next, jump to the left as you switch legs and move your arms in the opposite direction. You should feel like you’re skating.
“Start slowly”: Although your ability to use strong and quick movements is what makes skaters effective, try to start slow if you’re a beginner by breaking down the exercise and doing it step-by-step. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you can pick up the pace.
“Use your arms”: Balance is crucial with this exercise. Using the momentum of your arms correctly helps with your stability. When you do so, this enables you to move faster and put a maximum level of energy into the exercise.
Strictly speaking, cardio exercises won’t build muscle, but they still work a good number of muscles in your body. As a multi-joint exercise, skaters work all the muscles in your upper body synergistically, besides your heart and stabilizer muscles.
With a personalized total fitness training program from FizzUp, you’ll boost your cardiovascular endurance and improve your agility, balance and coordination skills in many more ways than one. Among the 200 exercises included in your fitness training program, plenty of them are purely cardio exercises. Here are three examples of alternative exercises you can do to replace or in addition to skaters.
Suicide drills: This exercise takes speed. As you move quickly from side to side, it triggers an intense calorie burn.
Square jumps: With this jump training exercise, you’ll mainly target the muscles in your lower body and put your heart to work. Do a regular squat, then jump four times: once forward, once to the left, once backward and once to the right in the shape of a square.
Burpees: This is the ultimate cardio exercise. It combines a squat, push-up, double mountain climber and a jump. Burpees are great for working all your body’s muscles for improved overall functional fitness.
Do your body good with by making skaters and its alternatives a regular part of your workout routine.
These exercises work to boost your cardiovascular endurance. They trigger a high energy expenditure to make weight loss possible. Use them to supplement the strength training part of your workout to unveil your muscles by burning the layer of excess fat that’s hiding them. This is an ideal strategy to achieve or maintain a lean, muscular and sculpted physique!
Skaters and their alternatives are dynamic exercises, enabling you not only to improve your balance, coordination and reaction time, but also to improve how fast and strong your movements are during the exercise.
We make at-home cardio a piece of cake! With skaters, you can work out on your own terms using FizzUp’s equipment-free fitness training programs.
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