It was pretty much the only form of exercise that I got for quite a few years. It was pretty good too. Since I live in a warm place I got to skate with my shirt off lots.
Think about it, great exercise program that is way fun and lets you take your shirt off in public. Great.
I’ll tell you what I enjoyed about it too. I could go and exercise (skate) anytime that I wanted to. That was really the big thing for me. It was so easy. I probably spent more time at the skate park than anywhere else.
It was pretty cool to be able to go skate and still have tons of fun even after all of my skating buddies moved away and joined the army or whatever it was that they did. I just kept skating by myself.
One thing that did though was it made me more of a recreational skateboarder and not such a progressive skater. I didn’t really get better as fast or open up any new big areas in my skateboarding. If you are skating with friends then you kind of take turns skating and then watching everyone else go while you encourage them and cheer them on. After I spent tons of time skating by myself I realized that other people at the skatepark spent lots of time socializing and watching other people skate while I was pretty much going non-stop and only resting when I physically had to. I think I started to lose some speed after a while but I was glad that I didn’t have to have other people coaching me just to have fun skateboarding.
As a form of exercise it was mostly a mix of cardiovascular conditioning, HIIT, and agility and speed training. Probably balancing too.