Riding a kick-scooter. The ideal sport for those of advanced age
| Vendula KosíkováYou used to ride a scooter as a child, but then, as time passed, you completely forgot about this movement beneficial for body and soul? Maybe, with your hair turning silver, the right time has come to hop back on the footboard and get going. Here are five reasons why:
Skuda Gramps
The seventy-year-old Břetislav Snášel can be an inspiration to you. He regularly goes on pilgrimages covering hundreds of kilometres across Europe on his scooter. Or Mr. and Mrs. Kubin, who first hopped on a scooter at the age of 60.
1. Movement that anyone can do
Riding a scooter is easy to manage even for a small child and an older person, who no longer trusts himself on a bike due to loss of balance. There is no need to worry about that on a scooter - if necessary, you can always jump off at any time and smoothly transition to walking.
2. It stretches the entire body while saving the joints
Scootering combines the best aspects of cycling, running and walking. Same as with a bicycle, you can cover longer distances in a short time on a scooter.
Unlike a bike, however, you engage your whole body in the movement - from the tips of your feet to your calves, thighs, buttocks, stomach, back, arms, shoulders and head.
Another great advantage of riding a scooter is that you push off with only half of your body weight, which saves your joints significantly. For this reason, the scooter is suitable for overweight people, too.
3. It enhances stability
Although we usually do give much thought to maintaining balance, this skill becomes more important as we age.
Try to stand barefoot on one leg and observe what your foot is doing, how many subtle movements, actions and reactions are taking place in it.
Their interplay helps us to transfer weight and respond quickly to stimuli coming from other parts of the body and from the environment.
Unfortunately, our reactivity and ability to maintain balance weakens with age and a sedentary lifestyle, so we should strengthen it regularly, for example by riding a scooter.
By strengthening our balance skills, we can prevent unnecessary injuries or falls that have a much greater impact on our overall health later in life than in our twenties.
4. Combines all the exercises important for longevity
The ageing process is well mapped out scientifically, and according to it, from the age of 20 we lose approximately 1.3 percent of our strength every year. Our lung capacity and the aforementioned ability to react quickly, which can also be called flexibility or agility, are also declining at a predictable rate.
Scooter riding combines aerobic and balance exercises with strength and reactivity (agility) training – all the components of physical fitness that scientists consider to be the foundation of vitality in later life.
You will get breathless to a pleasant extent, stretch and strengthen your main muscle groups, activate your explosive power with every push-off, and your endurance with longer rides.
By standing on the footboard with one foot at a time, you are exercising your ability to maintain stability in unstable positions, and when you add speed and constantly changing terrain, you can count in important exercise for your brain.
5. A community of positive-minded people
According to experts, not only exercise, but social contacts and a community of like-minded people also contribute to longevity. So, it will be best if you don’t ride alone. But that should not be a problem with a scooter.
In fact, scooters have always attracted positive people who prefer to be together and enjoy moving in the fresh air rather than competing. You can join the Yedoo Family Facebook group or the scootering group Koloběžky CZ. Or entice one of your family members or friends to scootering.
How to get started with scooter riding
Why and how to step out of your comfort zone?
Beyond the comfort zone, joy, satisfaction, greater self-confidence and health usually await us after overcoming the initial uncertainty. Getting beyond the old tracks, old habits and beliefs will help us if we understand how our psyche works. See more in the Yedoo Edu section.
Every time we start something new, our minds start coming up with lots of reasons to stay within our comfort zone.
But if we know that this is its nature and learn to distinguish between real and imagined danger, we become more tolerant of the uncertainty that is a natural part of all learning. Or we will even start to enjoy it.
How to do it, step by step
- Choose your machine (we will be happy to help you with this, feel free to email us at info@yedoo.cz, or call us directly at 737 279 592).
- Familiarize yourself with the riding technique. While riding a scooter is more or less intuitive, there’s nothing like good advice from experts. See how experienced scooter riders ride on Yedoo YouTube, for example: Work of the pushing leg. How to switch legs.
- Find a quiet place with a smooth riding surface, where you feel safe. A playground, an empty parking lot, or an asphalt bike trail along the river that runs more or less flat is ideal.
- Stand with one foot on the footboard, replay the movements from the riding technique in your head and try to imitate them, on a smaller scale first, of course.
- Practice riding short distances, take a break after each section and try again with the other foot on the footboard. It will be more challenging for one leg at first, but don’t give up, it will level out over time.
- Only when you feel stable while riding, start to practice changing legs while riding.
- Then you can go on a longer ride.
- At the beginning, practice for a short time but more often, and then it is up to you, but at least twice a week for 30-40 minutes.
- We wish you joy from riding and moving in the fresh air. Yedoo!
