Skateboarding
Learn the fundamentals of loosening up those muscles and joints most associated with injuries in the skateboarding world.
One of the very perplexing things about skating is that it's an extremely physically demanding activity: exhausting, painful, and punishing in a thousand different ways. And yet, it's not a sport in the conventional sense of the word – it can be practised in solitude and in the same clothes you put on that morning, which has always meant that the sporty aspects of skating like cross-training or stretching have always been anathema to skaters, who tend to warm up for skating by skating gently.
With that said, the really big revelation of the last few years, besides the influx of women skateboarding, has been the return to skateboarding of men who may have drifted off to have families or start careers and who now, in later life, find the passion for skating re-ignited. So, for them and for anyone who hopes to continue skating for as long as possible, here's a handy guide to limbering up using the wonderful tool already at your disposal: a skateboarder's guide to stretching.
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1. Ankles
Your ankles are the one part of your body that skateboarding is guaranteed to give some grief. The good news is that unlike knees, ankles can come back to something approaching normal given time and care if you are unlucky enough to roll one, but there's one other thing which your ankle does during skateboarding that's unique and that your ankles will really thank you for warming up to do: pushing.
Pushing on a skateboard hyperextends your Achilles tendon in a way even sprinting does not and a pulled one is an extremely difficult injury to shift, because the only thing which really tests it again is - you guessed it – pushing.
- A great warm-up for your Achilles tendon is as follows: put your heel on the tail of your board with your toes pointing toward your nose and rock back until the tail is firmly on the ground. Hold the nose of your board for stability and step through the gap between the two so that your legs are now crossed.
- Since your foot on the tail is pointing upwards you will instantly sense a tightening all the way from your heel to the sciatic nerves of your lower back. Lock your knee back and dip your head as if to touch the nose of your board with it.
- Make the motion gentle, but steady – don't bounce – and exhale once you reach the first point at which you sense resistance. Allow gravity to use the weight of your torso as a gentle pulley and you will feel not just your Achilles, but your hamstrings stretch as well.
- Repeat for the other foot and once completed place the tip of your toes of one foot on the ground about six inches behind where you're standing and use that as a pivot to rotate each ankle in turn half a dozen times slowly in each direction. Hey presto, warmed-up ankles.
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2. Shoulders
While skating predominantly works the lower half of the body, limbering up shoulders is always a good idea, because we reflexively throw our arms up every time we spring up to Ollie.
- Once again here the skateboard is a very useful instrument to help us, not just because of its weight, but because the standard 32" length is just a bit wider than human shoulder width to really help with stretching. Baseball players loosen their shoulders before batting by taking the bat at both ends and raising it up as far over their heads and behind their backs as they can.
- The fact that your hands are further apart than your shoulders here creates leverage that you will feel stretching every single muscle in your shoulder and the effect of gravity on the board behind your head applies a continual gentle pressure to the stretch.
- Once you've established how far you can go here, roll the board left and right using your fingertips and feel the sense of elation and release that you get from those great yawning sleep stretches you have in the morning.
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3. Lower back
If ankles are the short term injury that hamper skate careers, then lower back problems are the slow burner that give veteran skateboarders most long-term issues. In the end, skateboarding isn't what our bodies were designed for and the accumulation of impact, G-forces and all the other pressures and strains skateboarding inflicts all needs a repository within your body and the lower back is that energy sump, unfortunately.
- Following on from our ankle and shoulder warm-ups, again hold your board in front of you at both ends and flip it over griptape side down (this is so your wheels won't contact the ground) and lock your knees so that your legs are poker straight.
- Now, slowly let gravity do its work and let the weight of your board double you over toward the ground. You'll discover that your board is just heavy enough to stretch you fractionally further than you otherwise could, but not enough to strain anything. When you reach your limit, exhale, relax and sink and repeat. Don't bounce.
- Do 15 seconds like that and then repeat cross-legged both ways to really feel the hamstrings stretch on that back anchor leg.
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4. Groin
It's really very easy to pull your groin skateboarding, because when you think about it, you spend a large proportion of the time with one or more of your feet off something designed to offer minimal motion resistance, so doing the unintentional splits is an occasional but painful inevitability. Again, your board itself provides great stretching assistance here.
- Stand facing the rear truck of your board from the side, toes almost touching the side of your back wheel. Place one foot flat on the griptape just in front of that back truck, so that your toes and heel touch either rail as you would when rolling down the street.
- Now, gently drift that foot laterally away from you and let the board roll as far as feels comfortable. It will feel like a ballet stretch, because it is. The longer you can hold that position without bouncing the better. Repeat for the other side and you're ready to rip.
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