Exam season arrives every year and it takes skaters by surprise every year. One week you are training five times, the next week you have four papers, a revision timetable and a parent who would quite like you to stay off the road until it is over. So how do you keep training for inline speed skating during exam season without either failing your exams or losing the speed you spent all season building? The answer is not a heroic compromise where you do both at full volume. It is a deliberately small plan that protects the things which fade fastest and lets go of the rest.
This guide sets out that plan. It is written for skaters in India, where exam season collides with the hottest part of the year and with the months when racing picks up again afterwards, and it assumes you have somewhere between two and four hours a week rather than ten.
What actually happens when you stop training for a month
The useful thing to understand is that your skating is not one quality that fades at one rate. It is several, and they behave very differently when the training stops.
Technique is the most durable. The pattern of a good push, the feel of an edge, the timing of a crossover sit in your nervous system and they do not disappear in four weeks. Skaters who come back after a month usually find the movement is still there even though the fitness to repeat it is not.
Strength and top speed are surprisingly stubborn too, provided they get a little stimulus. A small amount of hard, short work keeps them close to where they were. Take that away completely and they drift down slowly.
Aerobic fitness is the one that goes. The capacity to hold a hard pace for twenty minutes without falling apart is built by volume, and it is the first thing to leave when the volume stops. This is why skaters returning after exams report that their legs still work for one lap and then feel like somebody else's legs for the rest of the session.
That ranking is the whole basis of a sensible exam plan. If you only have a few hours, spend them on short hard efforts that hold speed and strength, keep touching the skates so the technique stays warm, and accept that some aerobic fitness will go and that it comes back quickest of the three.
Three qualities, three different rates of decline. An exam plan protects the cheap ones and lets the expensive one go.
The principle: keep the frequency, cut the volume
If you take one idea from this page, take this one. When time collapses, protect how often you train rather than how long you train for.
Two thirty minute sessions in a week do far more for you than one ninety minute session, even though the ninety minute session has more total skating in it. Frequency is what keeps the movement familiar, keeps the legs used to being asked, and keeps skating a normal part of your week rather than an event you have to psych yourself up for. A single long session also costs you more on the day, which during exams means a worse evening of revision, which is exactly the trade you are trying to avoid.
This is a different plan from our guide to training on three days a week, which is built for a skater who genuinely has three good sessions available all year. An exam block is temporary, the goal is maintenance rather than progress, and the measure of success is that you come out the other side able to start training again rather than having to start over.
A four week exam block, laid out
Here is the shape that works for most skaters. Adjust the days to your own paper dates.
- Two skate sessions a week, thirty minutes each, one with short sprints and one with easy technique work. Put them on days with no paper the following morning.
- One strength session a week, fifteen minutes, at home, no equipment needed.
- Ten minutes of mobility most days, which is really for your back and hips after hours at a desk rather than for your skating.
- In the week of your heaviest papers, drop to one skate and the mobility. One session is not a failure. It is the plan working.
That is roughly ninety minutes of training a week. It feels like nothing compared with a normal season week and it is enough to hold most of what matters.
A week that fits around papers rather than competing with them. Two short skates, one strength session, mobility most days.
The thirty minute session that protects your speed
Warm up properly for ten minutes, because a short session is not an excuse to go hard on cold legs. Then do six to eight sprints of around ten seconds, from a rolling start, with a full easy lap or a couple of minutes between each one. Finish with five minutes of easy skating.
That is a small amount of hard work and it is exactly the kind your speed and your legs respond to. Keep every sprint genuinely fast. The point is not to be tired at the end, it is to have reminded your body what fast feels like.
The twenty minute session for the worst weeks
Warm up for eight minutes, do four sprints of ten seconds with long recoveries, skate easy for four minutes, go home. If that is all you manage in a week, you have still kept your hand in and you will not be starting from scratch afterwards.
Fifteen minutes of strength, at home
You do not need a gym and you do not need equipment. Squats, split squats, single leg balance work, glute bridges, calf raises and a plank, two or three rounds, done well rather than fast. Our guide to strength work for inline speed skating has the detail on each movement. In exam season the aim is simply to keep the tissue used to loading, so stop a long way short of soreness that interferes with sitting an exam.
Sleep comes before training, not after it
If something has to be cut on a given day, cut the session rather than the sleep. Sleep is doing two jobs during exams, one of which is consolidating what you studied and the other of which is the only recovery you are getting. A skater who trades an hour of sleep for a late evening session gets a worse night, a worse revision day and very little training benefit.
The practical version of this rule is to put your sessions early. A session before the heat of the day in an Indian summer is more pleasant anyway, and finishing training before study starts means the study does not get pushed into the night.
Sitting all day is its own problem
Revision is hours of sitting, and sitting shortens hip flexors, stiffens the lower back and switches off the glutes. That matters for a skater, because the low position depends on exactly those tissues being available.
Ten minutes most days is enough. Hip flexor stretches, a few deep squats held and stood out of, leg swings, thoracic rotations and some glute bridges. Do it in a break between study blocks rather than scheduling it as training, and it will actually happen. If your back starts complaining in revision season, our guide to lower back pain in skating covers the usual causes.
If you have to stop completely
Some exam blocks leave no room at all, and that is fine for a few weeks. What is not fine is coming back to skates that have quietly gone backwards while you were revising.
Before the gap, clean and oil your bearings so they are not sitting in grit and moisture for a month. A bottle of Speedslick Pro bearing oil is 500 rupees and the whole job takes twenty minutes. Wipe the frames, check the axles, rotate the wheels while you are there, and store the skates somewhere dry and out of direct sun rather than in a hot car boot or a damp cupboard. Our guide to storing inline speed skates covers rust, flat spots and odour in detail.
When you come back, spin each wheel before the first session. A bearing that has rusted while you were sitting exams will tell you immediately, and it is better to find out at home than on the first corner. If a set is past saving, the Power Bearings range runs from entry level steel upwards, and a worn set of wheels is worth replacing before you restart rather than halfway through the rebuild, which is when the JUNK wheels collection gets looked at in a hurry.
Coming back after the last paper
The temptation after the final exam is to go and do the session you have been dreaming about for a month. Do not. The single most common way skaters lose a fortnight is by treating the first week back as a celebration.
Build across two weeks. In the first week do three easy to moderate sessions and nothing maximal, letting your feet get used to the boots again, because skin that has not been in a speed boot for a month blisters easily. In the second week bring back one hard session and keep the rest steady. By the third week you are training normally.
Ramp back up rather than jumping back in. Your technique is still there, your legs need a little convincing.
What not to do
- Do not try to hold your normal training load. Something will give, and it is usually the exams, your sleep or your knees.
- Do not train late at night to make up a missed session. The sleep is worth more than the session during exams.
- Do not use skating as the thing you drop first every time. Two short sessions a week are the cheapest insurance you will ever buy against a painful comeback.
- Do not test yourself in exam season. A time trial on tired legs tells you nothing except that you are tired, and it is demoralising for no reason.
- Do not change anything on the skates during the gap. Save new wheels, a new frame or a setup change for the comeback, so that when something feels odd you know it is you and not the gear.
Frequently asked questions
How much will I lose if I only skate twice a week during exams?
Less than you fear. Technique holds, and short hard efforts keep speed and strength close to where they were. You will lose some aerobic fitness, which is the quality that rebuilds fastest once you are training again. Two short sessions a week is maintenance, not decline.
Is it better to do one long session or two short ones?
Two short ones, almost always. Frequency keeps the movement familiar and the legs used to loading, and a short session leaves you able to study that evening. One long session takes a bigger bite out of the day you can least afford.
Should I stop skating completely during board exams?
That is a family decision as much as a training one, and a few weeks off will not undo your season. If you do stop completely, keep ten minutes of daily mobility, look after the skates before you put them away, and plan a two week ramp back rather than one big session.
Can I train hard the day before a paper?
It is better not to. A hard session leaves you tired in the evening when you want to revise and in the morning when you want to think. Put your sessions on days without a paper the following morning and you get the training without the cost.
What about skating in the heat during exam season?
Go early. Dawn sessions are cooler, the roads are quieter and you are finished before the day starts. Take water, keep the effort short, and remember that hot tarmac makes every wheel behave softer than its rating suggests.
How do I keep motivated when I am only doing thirty minutes?
Change the measure of success. During exams the win is that the session happened at all, not that it was fast or long. Writing down two lines after each one, what you did and how it felt, makes a thin month look like what it actually is, which is a month you kept going.
Will my skates be alright sitting unused for a month?
They will if you put them away properly. Clean and oil the bearings, dry everything, rotate the wheels and store them somewhere cool and dry. Bearings left wet and wheels left loaded in one position are the two things that cost skaters a session or two on the comeback.
The short version
Protect frequency, not volume. Two thirty minute sessions and fifteen minutes of strength a week will hold most of your skating through an exam block, and ten minutes of daily mobility will undo some of the damage that revision does to your hips and back. Put sessions early, never trade sleep for training, and if you have to stop completely, spend twenty minutes looking after the bearings first. Then ramp back over two weeks rather than one evening. Your technique will still be there waiting, and if you need a hand getting the skates race ready again afterwards, our guide to getting back after a long break picks up exactly where this one ends. A pair of skate gloves is also worth having in the bag for those first rusty sessions back.
