Warm Up Exercises for Roller Skating

Welcome to the Moxie Skates YouTube channel. I am Estrogen, founder of Moxie Roller Skates, and I wanna thank you so much for coming to my very first ever free roller skating lesson live. All right, let's get started. The main muscle groups that we need for skating are our quads. These are our power. The other really, the big muscle that we build up while we're skating are our glutes. So we've got quads and glutes. And the joints that we really want to be warmed up are our knees. Our knees are our shock absorbers. So at any point in this class, I would like you to always have either a micro knee bend or a deep knee bend, or even a squat, because our knees are our shock absorbers. So every time that you feel a little unstable or off balance, you wanna go to your knees. Almost all skating tricks and skills have a head, knee, and toe line here. So these are always in alignment. And when we're skating, we're shifting right and left, and we're also pumping up and down. So I'm gonna show you three squats off skates, and then we're gonna put some skates on, and we're gonna warm up our hamstrings. So the first squat that we're going to do is just a simple squat, head, knee, and toe in alignment. We can make the first one real low and slow and get comfortable in it, because our groins really wanna be stretched out a little bit before we start. And when we start, we're gonna take a nice big inhale, and we're gonna exaggerate the exhale to practice big, deep breathing, because that's gonna make our body relaxed. Off skates, you really don't want your ankles to go too far over your knees over your ankles. And you're gonna keep your arms forward, because we wanna practice good habits. You never wanna put your arms backwards. We wanna fall forwards into our side body. And we're just gonna do this until it burns. And if you're just watching me, how awkward. But I hope you're practicing at home, because this stuff really works. Okay, do this till you feel warm, then take a water break. All right. The reason why we're gonna breathe so much is because when we fall, sometimes we forget to breathe when we get too used to skills. But when we fall, we don't wanna fall like a rock. We wanna fall like a sandbag. So if we're breathing, then our body's really loose and comfortable to take the impact. All right. The next one we're gonna do is a jump squat. So we're gonna take a nice inhale. We're gonna squat, exhale, and then jump on the inhale. Just do it till it burns. There's no magic number, because we're all starting at different levels. Starting to feel it. Okay. Another little water break. Feeling the burn. When I was learning some martial arts skills last year, my trainers were like, make sure you exaggerate the out-breath. Because then I know that you're breathing and I know that your body is comfortable and in the best place that it can be to learn the new skill that your body's trying to learn. So try to do that. I definitely do that on the vert ramp, which is where I'm a beginner. All right, the third exercise we're gonna do to warm our bodies up is called a skater squat. And we're gonna go alternating elbow with knee, and we're gonna put our back foot behind us. So you're gonna take a breath in to start, and then switch. Head, knee, and toe in alignment here. All right, I'm definitely warm. How about you? Give me a nice flex if you're warm. All right, good. All right, now we're going to pull out our piece of carpet or our towel. I'll just pull out the grass. We're in California. All right. So if you're on your grass patch or your carpet, we are going to put our skates on. Make sure that you're not around any furniture right now, like instable furniture especially. Be sure to have at least five feet of space for these exercises. This last one is concluding our warmup part. We're gonna put our skates on first for this. This is my favorite exercise for hamstrings. Oops, yeah. Moxie no Soxie. For the hamstrings are real easy to pull for skaters. Hamstrings and IT bands. And I think it's because our quads are so overbuilt. Last year I was doing some splits and I pulled my IT band and it took me out of skating for a really long time. So there's this hamstring strengthening exercise that I love that a Pilates instructor that I used to play roller derby with taught me. Boba, that I'm gonna show you. I like to wear skater socks because they're the perfect amount of thickness and I love Ivan, the owner of skater socks. They are made 100% in America and we co-branded with them recently with some special colors. So we're gonna put our skates on for this exercise. And when you put your skates on, you want to be sure that your toe stops are screwed in. Piece of chalk. So just always give them a good check because you don't want those coming off. And then the Moxie roller skate laces, which are 90 inches long. It's a very popular question. You want to start at the very bottom when you're tightening your skates up. So starting at the bottom, tightening the laces. All right, we're gonna go up and over when we're lacing these up. And the reason why is because if you go under and over, it puts a lot of tension onto the eyelets or the hooks and the hooks can bend and you just wanna go around and down. You want them also to be very snug in the ball of the foot and also in the heel. The length, you shouldn't have much wiggle room, just a teeny bit of wiggle room in the toe box where your toes live. And yeah, you really want your skates to feel your natural feet have sprouted wheels from the balls and the heels of your feet. So nice and snug. Long Beach is kind of alive today, it's a sunny day. All right, once you got them all laced up and you've got your pads on, if you're a beginner beginner, I want you to get into a nice bridge pose. And I'm just going to sanitize, birds. All right, so this is going to be strengthening our hamstrings. You can do this on a grass patch or on your living room floor. And it's also going to strengthen your glutes. So go ahead and prop your back of your hip bones, your hips into your hands. So you've got your hips propped up into a bridge and you're just gonna take five seconds to roll your right leg all the way out keeping your hips level for your upper thigh bones. And then come back in and then switching. You'll really feel this one in your hamstrings. Do it very slowly, keeping your hips level. I've lost count. Okay, and if this is real easy for you for any reason, you can also do both at one time and then you might really feel it. That's my favorite hamstring exercise. Really strengthens the IT bands. All right, I think we're ready to skate. Please subscribe to our channel so that you can get notifications of all the lessons that are gonna be rolling out. I'm so excited to teach you dance moves and ramp moves and street moves. And I can't wait for the day that I can bring my friends so that they can teach you too. All right, thank you very, very much for joining me in my driveway in my backyard. Hope you have a lovely night. All right, signing off. This is Estrogen. Bye-bye.