Skating every day is usually something for teenagers and kids who have loads of free time. For most adults or even college students, skating every day isn’t really realistic even if they wanted to.
Personally, I’m an adult skater who actually can’t skate every due to work, friends, and family. It’s just not possible. However, there are times when I try to skate every day because I always progress the fastest when I skate more often.
So if you can, should you skate every day?
Let’s look into it.
Should You Skateboard Every Day?
Skating every day is sort of a pipe dream for most people. Often only kids have the free time to make this happen or skaters who are chasing becoming sponsored. Most people simply don’t have the free time in the day to do so.
However, time spent skating directly translates to progress.
If you are healthy enough to do so and want to improve your skating very quickly, you could try skating every day. Most professionals like Nyjah Hudson and Andrew Reynolds have gone through a period where they skated every single day. Just don’t push yourself too hard and make sure that skateboarding is still enjoyable to you while skating every day.
Taking a break is often needed to keep feeling fresh as doing the same thing every day is physically and mentally taxing. I personally wouldn’t recommend skating every day for too long. Maybe try it for 2 weeks and see how much you improve. If you enjoy living that sort of lifestyle then keep at it.
I think skating every day is for really ambitious people or someone with a specific goal in mind. You can still skate only 3-5 times a week and improve rather quickly. So don’t feel too much pressure. Skating isn’t a competition anyway. Trying to improve quickly is a great goal, but don’t burn yourself out on a hobby.
How Often Should I Practice Skating?
Some people want to learn tricks and to improve their skating quickly. Others just want to have fun with friends and cruise around. A lot of people just want to get outside and be active. How you want to skate and what your goals are is important to understand how often you should practice.
I 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. I 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.
Keep in mind that I have improved my skating while only skating about 3.5 to 5 hours a week before. This only worked because I was really focusing on a single trick during this time.
This section is an excerpt from a longer more in-depth post about how often you should skate depending on how quickly you want to improve. You can view the full article here.
Will I Progress Faster If I Skate Every Day?
Skating every day will naturally help you improve faster. For almost everything in this life, the more frequently you practice the better you will become.
If you skateboard every day, you will improve faster. Most professionals like Nyjah Hudson and Andrew Reynolds at least went through a stage where they skated every day. Skateboarding every day is the fastest way to improve but is not realistic for most people. Often life and other commitments make skating every day impossible.
Honestly, if I had the ability to really focus on trying to improve my skating, I would skate every day for maybe 2-weeks or a month. It would be a fun experiment to try and see how quickly I could improve in that time. Otherwise, I think I would probably settle into skating 3-5 times a week. I love skating, but there is so much more in this life that I also like to do.
Would you skate every day if you could?
How Long Should I Skate During Each Session?
As a beginner, it can be hard to get a feel for how long you skate during each session. Is there a normal amount of time someone skates?
For each skate session, you should skate at least long enough to justify going to your skate spot in the first place, but not so long that you are too tired to land any tricks. Usually, this means skating for at least an hour and no more than three hours in a single session. Some people get tired more quickly than others.
Personally, my skating tanks after more than 2 hours skating. I think I get tired pretty easily though. I can take a rest and come back, but usually, I just call it a day. Some people will stop for lunch and hang out just talking to their buddies for a rest. This is a great way to spend a day and get a good long session in.
Just skate as long as you can without getting too tired to do tricks with good form. Try and at least skate for an hour. Less than that is definitely too short.
If you are curious about how you should practice to get the most improvement in the shortest time, check out my guide on how to practice skating effectively.
Examples of People Skating Every Day
There are luckily a ton of people out there who have been documenting their skating progress on YouTube. Personally, I like watching the adults try and make it happen. Most can only do it for short periods of time. They also usually have pretty decent progress during that time as well.
Ben Jaeger-Thomas
This guy is quite funny to me and I love his enthusiasm. He’s in good shape for being over forty years old and he’s a beginner skater as you can see in the video. If he can manage to skate this often without destroying his life or marriage then maybe there’s more hope for the rest of us.
He also has a ton of videos along his journey for you to check out. So go for it.
Aaron Kyro (Braille)
This is a little video of Aaron explaining why and how to practice every day to progress the absolute fastest possible way. You probably already know Braille and Aaron by now and they put out some really great content. You don’t actually see Aaron skating in this video, but considering his job is skateboarding I imagine he manages to skate every day.
Joel Folkesson
This guy tried to skate every day just for one week. He doesn’t last very long and talks about how he just wasn’t having fun skating by the end of the week. Maybe he just isn’t so passionate, but I think it brings up a big con to skating every day. It can be a drag to do the same thing every day.
Just keep in mind that you want skating to be fun and not a chore, so for some people skating every day is not the best option. Especially if they are only skating for fun.
If you want to learn how to start riding switch and improve in the fastest way, check out my guide here.
Conclusion
So that’s really it.
Skating every day will help you improve the fastest, but doing so isn’t realistic for most people. You should try to skate 6+ hours a week to truly improve your skating in a noticeable way. Also, try and skate for between an hour and three hours for each session. If you can skate longer than three hours, then more power to you.
Hopefully, this article helped convince you that skating every day is something to try out. Or maybe it made you feel better about not being able to due to life and its responsibilities.
Either way, thanks for reading, and look out for more articles from Board and Wheels.
