Books Worth Reading

This book focuses on fitness as it relates to inline skating, but do not expect much on skating instruction.

If all you want is to learn how to skate, this is not the book for you. The early chapters briefly cover equipment, stretching, some muscle anatomy, & some basic instruction on how to inline skate. The pictures are sparse & not really any help to beginning skaters.

However, if you already know how to skate & want to learn how to create your own inline skating workouts, this is an excellent guide.

The core of the book focuses on how to determine your fitness level, & a very detailed series of skating workouts. Each workout gives distance/time, terrain, pace, speed & effort (based on a standardised scale). Also given is a few chapters on how to organize all those workouts into an overall skating workout.

Overall, I would recommend this book to intermediate or expert skaters looking to boost their conditioning.

A pretty good all around inline skating book. Has a good section on stretching & warm-ups & describes a fair number of stopping/speed control techniques. Other sections get into more advanced skating topics like weight transfer, striding, leg extension & so on. Lastly, the book also covers safety awareness for normal daytime skating, night skating & advanced terrain (hills). Well worth the read.

Even though this book is mostly about improving ice hockey skills, most of the drills & tips apply to rollerhockey & many apply to general inline skating as well.

This book is chock full of pictures, drills, tips & directions. It's no wonder that it's considered a must-have for hockey players. If you're serious (or even semi-serious) about roller or ice hockey you need this book!

This is an excellent guide & reference, listing most all the stretching techniques you will ever need for your skating workouts. Remember, you should always stretch out after your warm-ups, not before & also stretch after your workout while you cool down.

This book includes basic anatomy information, as well as lots of photos & diagrams on each stretching technique.

A major contributor to the book is my good friend & fellow skater, Dawn Irwin, ICP Level one & two examiner who gave her expertise to the author to help produce this book, Chris Edwards. He has won countless vert/ramp tournaments & has had skating parts in several movies. A good book for the younger skater.