Every beginner asks this question at first. Veterans will ask it later while trying to maintain their skills. Depending on your goals, you will want to practice skateboarding at different frequencies.
You should skate as much as possible when you are first starting out. It will take time to get comfortable with your board and riding it. Later on, how much you practice will depend on your goals.
- For Fun or Exercise: 2-5 hours a week
- For Improving Your Skateboarding: 6-10 hours a week
- For Competing or Quickly Improving Your Skateboarding: 10+ hours a week
There are a lot more factors that go into this question and there isn’t a single answer that is correct for everyone.
How Often Should I Practice Skateboarding?
Rodney Mullen is a legendary skateboarder. His style was unique and innovative and changed skateboard culture.
His practice routine was also quite strict. He would force himself to practice alone to avoid distractions. He would skate at least 2 hours a day on weekdays and 10 hours over the weekend. This is a bit extreme for the average skater.
Honestly, how much you should practice skateboarding depends on your goals. Rodney Mullen’s goal was to create new tricks, compete competitively, and create one-of-a-kind skate content.
For most people skating is just a hobby or a creative outlet.
Some people want to learn tricks and to improve their skating quickly. Others just want to have fun and cruise. A lot of people just want to get outside and be active.
We decided to use our personal experience combined with a Q&A we performed on a forum to create the general guidelines on how often you should practice skateboarding. We got the following results:
- For Fun or Exercise: 2-5 hours a week
- For Improving Your Skateboarding: 6-10 hours a week
- For Competing or Quickly Improving Your Skateboarding: 10+ hours a week
These time estimates are right on the money, but don’t feel bad if your schedule is a little unique.
Sometimes we are busy commuting and working during the week, have to spend time with family, and can only commit a few hours on Sunday to skate. Yet we still want to improve. This happens. It’s life. We just have to try and work around these restrictions the best we can.
You should also note that these time estimates are for normal skate sessions. This includes warming up for 20-30 minutes, practicing or doing tricks you already know for 30 minutes or so, and then maybe spending the next 30-45 minutes learning a new trick. With an extra 15-20 minutes of breaks, then that’s a normal 2-hour skate session.
If you spend 6 hours a week skating, but you take breaks every 5 minutes and only cruise, then you won’t see much improvement.
How you spend your practice time really does matter. If you consistently spend 6-10 hours skating a week and try to practice new tricks, you will improve. You will likely become quite good after a few years.
So that’s our recommendation. We also think that any time spent skating is good.
A close friend of mine is older and has a bad back. He really can’t risk an injury so he doesn’t do any tricks, but just cruises maybe 2 hours a week. That’s great.
It brings him happiness and fits his needs and schedule well.
Keep your own schedule, needs, and goals in mind when deciding how often you are going to practice skating.
If you want when the best time to visit the skatepark is, then you can check out our guide here.
How Many Hours a Day Should You Skateboard?
You should spend between 1.5-3 hours skating in a single skate session. If you have more time in the day, you could have up to 2 skate sessions in a single day. If you skate more than this, you will become tired and your performance will suffer.
You don’t want to spend too little time in a skate session because you will be rushed and unable to practice everything you want to. If you skate for more than 3 hours, then you will become tired and less able to focus. You will start to get sloppy. At this point, you should take a rest and go do something else.
How Many Days a Week Should You Skate?
This is totally up to you and your goals. Skating should be a fun, enjoyable journey and there’s no reason to burn yourself out on it.
I would recommend the following timetable:
- For Fun or Exercise: once or twice a week in 1-2 hour sessions
- For Improving Your Skateboarding: 3-4 times a week in 1.5-2.5 hour sessions
- For Competing or Quickly Improving Your Skateboarding: 5-6 times a week in 1.5-2.5 hours sessions
How Often Do Pro Skaters Skate?
Pro skaters are going to skate much more often than the average person. These are professionals who need to compete at an extremely high level. They have the money and time to dedicate much more time to skating than the average person.
To get an idea of how often they skate, let’s look at a few specific examples.
- Rodney Mullen: 20+ hours a week (in his prime)
- Nyjah Hudson: 10-20 hours a week (estimated from this interview and depending on lingering knee injury)
- Tony Hawk: 20+ hours a week (estimated from a 2018 interview where he says he still skates every day)
- Bam Margera: 25+ hours a week (estimated for his prime from this interview)
All of these guys are well-known professionals, and they all are spending time in the range of 10+ hours a week. Most of them are spending 20 hours or more a week practicing skateboarding. However, these are the best of the best and the average person won’t be considering competing at their level.
Still, it is interesting to see exactly how often the professional skateboarders are practicing their craft.
If you want to know about how to get started learning to skate as an adult, check out our guide with a reality check here.
Conclusion
How often you should skate depends on your own goals and schedule. If you can only put in 2-5 hours a week, then put in 2-5 hours a week. Skateboarding is not a contest and no one is a better person for skating more often.
If you want to improve your skateboarding, then you should try to skate 6-10 hours a week. We suggest doing this over 3-4 days during the week in 1.5-2.5 hour skate sessions. Don’t skate for too long or you will become tired and start skating sloppily.
If you want to skate competitively then you can skate up to 20+ hours a week. However, at this point, it becomes hard on the body and you need to consider physical limitations. Also, most of us will never reach a competitive level of skating.
That’s all. So if it’s a nice day, get out there and have a nice skate sesh. Also, don’t forget to look out for more content from Board and Wheels.
