But I know what you're thinking,
1. It builds leg strength, improves balance, and stability.
2. You can do it forward and back
3. With swizzles and slaloms to strengthen your knees and ankles
4. You'll get faster
5. You can throw in power pulls, spirals, shoot the ducks and lunges for variety
6. With crossovers on the ends it helps you work on your basic skating skills
USFS actually has a fitness program for adults.
Anyway, the pdf has a pertinent paragraph:
If you want to keep track of what you're skating, here's the data.Lap skating for adults can be a terrific exercise utilized to aid in weight lossas it can burn up to 250-810 calories per hour with just recreational skating. Forexample, a 150-pound man skating continuously for an hour burns as many calories as when he is running five miles in an hour.
a. For Olympic Rinks 9 laps is one mile
b. For Hockey Rinks it's 11 laps for one mile
I usually lap skate 11 laps during my warm-up, consisting of stroking, crossover, swizzles, forward and backward skating, and power pulls. So my initial warm up is a mile and takes about 10 minutes.
Here's the thing, I wish USFS lap skating program had badges! I think people might enjoy that. But you know USFS.....
But they do have pins (sadly, probably not for recreational lap skating). However, most skating clubs are too cheap to buy the pins and award them to their skaters who pass various tests. Luck to get an "atta-boy" virtual pat on the head via the club's FB page. I suppose after seeing one's name, one could always hit the like button--or is that too much like a selfie...? Badges are one of the little perks via ISI. Nobody wears them but we all get a sense of accomplishment when we receive one and tuck it away in the underwear and sock draw with all the others.
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