Skating Essay Research Paper Skating Imagine that

Skating Essay, Research Paper

Skating

Imagine that you’ve just turned 16 and your parents bought you a brand new Mustang. You’re cruising on the street at approximately 25 miles per hour. So maybe you’re not breaking the speed limit, but everyone’s staring. You feel the light breeze through your hair. Then you’re in the air, 12 feet high. Finally, you land on your back and come this (gesture 6 in.) close to cracking your skull. What happened. You were skating.

As Aaron Spohn, a well respected ramp builder for the National Inline Skate Series, Extreme Games, and many pro inline skaters, said, When you tell someone you are an in-line skater, you automatically assume they envision you sporting a tangerine body suit, waist pack and a pair of wraparound neon sunglasses.S1 Or maybe you see me as one of those with $35.00 generic skates, moving my arms more than my legs and rolling down the street at a rate of 1 mile per day. This is not the type of skating I am talking about. I’m talking about aggressive inline skating.

Maybe this aforementioned misconception is due to the many aspects of inline skating, and the amount of people involved. About 12.3 million kids are currently inline skaters.2 There is a 57.2% rise in participation in inline skating from last year, compared to basketball, which dropped 4.9%, and football, which rose only 5.8%.3 This is obviously a growing sport, and it’s one that you’re probably already doing.

Whether or not you want to do inline aggressive skating, it is one of the best all around sports because it provides benefits to three core areas: physical, social, and mental.

I believe I started inline skating in about seventh grade, and I would have to say I had no life before then. But I guess now, I still don’t have a life because all I do has to do with inline skating and its representation as a sport, which is why I am giving this speech. In the summer I skate every day for 4 or more hours. I have been acquainted with the manager of Team Paradise, a nationally recognized mail order store. I have also helped in the production of CDS Detroit products, made locally in Grosse Pointe.

Today I would like to talk to you, using my personal experience along with knowledge gained from magazines and other sources, about the physical, social and mental benefits of inline skating. One of the more popular ideas is that inline skating doesn’t provide physical training. On that note

Physical benefits are found in inline skating. In fact, it has some of the most surprisingly positive benefits any sport can produce, proven by the Henry Ford Heart and Vascular Institute here in Michigan. Inline skating provides cardiovascular fitness, and it is an ideal low-impact strength builder. How is this. Well, in terms of cardiovascular fitness, skating produces a higher heart rate response than does any other normal activity.4 So if you were running instead of skating, your heart wouldn’t beat as much while running as if you were skating.

Also, there are great fitness benefits that skating provides. If you are 140 lbs. and skate at 18 miles per hour, which is not uncommon, you could burn 600 calories in an hour. Impressive. Not to say the least. The study done at the Ford center also shows that skating in a upright position causes the calorie burning to increase by 10 percent.5 In addition, the study shows that the burning of calories increases by a whole 50% when traveling three miles per hour faster than an average pace.6 So by simply skating fast for an hour, you could burn off one fourth of your daily intake.

The idea of low impact training in inline skating is surely a fact. Frank Fedel, who helped in the study at the Ford center, says that sports like running induce impacts of up to six times the body weight on the joints, while inline skating doesn’t have that Pounding.S7 The skating helps build the knee joint because the low impact nature of the sport allows for the building of the muscles around the knee. Also, acceleration of the joints is brought up to seven times faster than during sports like cycling. Even Frank Andreu, a professional cyclist for the Motorola team, uses inline skating for training and maintaining his fitness level.8

Skating provides social benefits you wouldn’t imagine. One of them would be acts of kindness of the people you meet. In Box magazine, Andy Kruse describes one of the common things to happen to skaters. He met a skater, Angie Walton. After having lived in a tent for three months alone, Andy had his bike stolen, so he asked to stay at AngieUs house, and she let him in her backyard. She would have let him in the house, but there were already too many people in the house who she let in without pay.9 Her kindness is not solitary. Aaron Spohn also allows people to stay in his house for free, and he has three halfpipes in his backyard.

Skating is great in that it provides a feeling of social acceptance for those who are not normally accepted, and even those who are. With 1,200 members in City Rollers, a Detroit based skate group, how hard could it be to meet someone skating. For example, after the death of his grandfather, skater Michael Buechner changed completely. Formerly a great student, he ended up considering suicide. Eventually, he ended up getting Pumped, or tortured, by his gang, and had his house robbed. Finally, he started skating, and n