The skater exercise is a lateral jumping movement that mimics the side-to-side motion of speed skating. You hop from one foot to the other while swinging your arms for momentum, landing on a single leg each time. It builds lateral power, balance, and coordination while doubling as a high-intensity cardio move that can slot into nearly any workout.
How to Do the Skater Exercise
The basic movement has only two steps, repeated back and forth:
- Jump right: Lean slightly forward, jump to your right side, land on your right foot, and sweep your left foot behind you. Your left arm swings in front of your body naturally, like a counterbalance.
- Jump left: Push off your right foot, jump to the left, land on your left foot, and sweep your right foot behind you. Your right arm swings forward this time.
Keep alternating until the set is complete. Each jump should cover as much lateral distance as you can control. The arm swing isn’t decorative; it generates momentum and helps you stabilize on the landing leg.
Throughout the movement, keep your back flat and your shoulders pulled back rather than rounding forward. Your core stays braced the entire time. Think of it less like hopping and more like pushing off powerfully to the side, the way a skater pushes against ice to glide.
Muscles and Joints It Trains
Most exercises move you forward and backward. Skaters are one of the few bodyweight moves that train you in the lateral plane, which is why physical therapists use them in return-to-sport programs. The landing portion builds dynamic stability at the ankle, knee, and hip all at once, because each of those joints has to absorb force and stabilize on a single leg in real time.
Your glutes, especially the gluteus medius on the outer hip, do the heavy lifting during the push-off and landing. The quads and hamstrings control knee bend on impact, and your calves manage ankle stability. Your core and lower back work throughout to keep your torso steady while your lower body moves laterally. Over time, this translates to better balance, quicker direction changes, and stronger single-leg stability in sports and daily life.
How Hard It Actually Works You
Skaters are a vigorous exercise. Roller skating and ice skating register at about 7.0 METs (a standard measure of exercise intensity), which puts them firmly in the “high intensity” category, above brisk walking (3.5 to 4.0 METs) and on par with jogging. The skater exercise performed at speed likely falls in a similar range, since you’re producing explosive lateral force with every rep.
For a 150-pound person, that intensity translates to roughly 7 to 10 calories per minute during continuous work. That makes skaters an efficient choice for HIIT circuits or cardio finishers. A common format is 30 to 45 seconds of skaters followed by 15 to 30 seconds of rest, repeated for several rounds.
Common Form Mistakes
The most important thing to watch is knee alignment on each landing. Your knee should track over your second toe, not collapse inward. When the knee drifts toward the midline of your body (sometimes called “knee valgus”), it places shearing stress on the knee joint, the groin, and the ankle. Repeated landings with this misalignment can eventually lead to tendonitis in the knee or ankle, groin strains, or even stress fractures in the shin or foot.
A second common error is landing with a stiff, straight leg instead of a soft bend at the knee and hip. That soft bend is what absorbs impact. Without it, the force travels straight into your joints. Think about sitting slightly into each landing, like a mini single-leg squat, rather than just touching down.
If you notice your knee caving in, it usually points to weakness in the outer hip muscles. Mini-squats and single-leg mini-lunges, focusing on keeping the knee aligned with the second toe, can strengthen the right muscles and build the alignment pattern before you add speed.
Beginner and Advanced Variations
If the standard skater feels too fast or unstable, start by reducing the distance of each jump and tapping your back foot on the ground instead of letting it hover. This gives you a wider base and more time to find your balance on each side. You can also slow the tempo entirely, stepping laterally instead of jumping, until the movement pattern feels natural.
Once the basic version is comfortable, there are several ways to increase the challenge:
- Weighted skaters: Hold a pair of light dumbbells while performing the movement. The extra load forces your stabilizing muscles to work harder on every landing.
- Skaters with lateral lunges: Add a lateral lunge between each hop. You jump right, sink into a side lunge on the right leg, then push off into the left jump. This slows the pace but dramatically increases the demand on your quads and glutes.
- Toe-touch skaters: On each landing, reach your opposite hand down to touch the foot you’re standing on. This deepens the hip hinge, improves flexibility, and requires more single-leg balance at the bottom of each rep.
Who Should Modify or Avoid It
Because skaters involve single-leg landings with lateral force, they place significant demand on the ankles, knees, and hips. If you’re recovering from a sprain, ligament injury, or any lower-body joint issue, the unpredictable nature of the landing (and the risk of losing balance) can aggravate the problem. In rehabilitation settings, lateral hopping movements like skaters are typically reserved for the final phase of recovery, after strength and stability have been rebuilt with slower, more controlled exercises.
People with chronic knee pain or a history of ankle instability can often do a modified version, stepping rather than jumping and keeping the range of motion small, but it’s worth confirming that the basic single-leg balance is solid first. If you can’t hold a steady single-leg stand for 15 to 20 seconds without wobbling, build that foundation before adding lateral hops.