INTRODUCING THE DAILY PUSH — Weekly Fitness Series

photo: Roland Dittmer (@rofilesshots)

When you’re a kid, going for a big session one day and then waking up and doing it all over again the next day isn’t a problem. You can take slams all day long and wake up feeling fine, running on just Coke and potato chips as fuel. But as you creep into your early 20s, things start to change: you start making sounds when you get out of your seat and waking up with aches and pains becomes common. Then, once you hit 25, every day after you skate you feel like you’ve spent eight hours farming watermelons. 

We’re slowly starting to see pros take up different habits to take care of themselves, skate better, and prolong their time on a skateboard. You’ve got Koston foam rolling, P-Rod stretching before and after he skates, and, according to Forrest Edwards, Andrew Reynolds eating fruit. Things like this are slowly becoming accepted as a necessary part of skateboarding beyond your youth, but it’s not all about preserving your body for the future; you can improve how you feel and how you skate right now along with being able to skate more because your body recovers faster. Guy Mariano put it best: “We’ve exercised and gotten personal trainers, … not in a jockish way, but it’s more for a better lifestyle and to preserve being able to perform at your best on a board. We love skateboarding so much and we want to do it as long as we can.”

Warming up before you skate can increase your power, strength, flexibility, joint range of motion, improve your coordination, reaction time, leave you feeling lighter on your board, and more energized. It even greatly reduces the chance of injury. A few simple things done at the end of your session like foam rolling, stretching, eating right, or icing the spots you slammed on can help your body recover faster and leave you more energized for your next session.

If you love skateboarding and you want to do it as long as you can, The Daily Push’s guide to staying fit will be your best friend. Beginning tomorrow, we’ll be posting regular tips and regimens to help you bounce back faster and maybe even improve your skating overall. —Matt Beare, The Daily Push

Tomorrow: Warming up, part 1.