With ice skating season officially being over after the World's competition, many skaters will need to adapt a fresh new strategy for both staying motivated and fit. Boredom is the bane of many a sport so to keep moving forward, you may need to break some new ground athletically. Effective cross training will take you to new levels of performance and endurance if chosen correctly. What are the best off ice exercises for ice skaters? Sasha Cohen who took silver at Worlds this year likes to run and jog. She's often seen in the corridors before a competition sprinting with her headphones on. This is a quick way to get the blood flowing in the leg muscles and warm them up. Likewise, most ice skaters keep a jump rope in their skate bag for the same reason. Just take care not to use it on hard surfaces as jumping can really stress your knees. I like to jump on the neoprene padded surfaces inside the ice rink. This padding is put down to protect the ice skates. They have a natural cushion and bounce which makes skipping rope that much more comfortable.
Stefan Lindermann found cycling to be a major boost to his ice skating technique. It landed him a bronze medal on the podium at the 2004 World's competition. I saw that performance. The power and skill seemed to flow out of him as you could see how very toned his legs were. According to Lindermann, this was all from cycling each day with the national German team of speed skaters. Yes and he did have speed. Often times, lack of power will make even the most simple moves difficult. More than that, how often have we seen a skater's program fall apart at the end of the 3 or 4 minutes because they did have the endurance to go the distance?
A combination of cross training exercises will also include weight lifting and core training. It is a known fact that toned abdominal muscles are necessary for power stroking and footwork sequences among many other maneuvers. While you don't want to bulk up, you certainly want to tone up your muscles with low repetitions and lots of them. This also helps make your muscles fatigue resistant. Likewise if you are using a stationary bicycle or taking spinning classes at the gym. The idea is to use the lower gears and have as little pressure on the pedals as possible. This will not only produce strong, compact muscle tissue but will help protect your joints from unnecessary strain and damage.
