It’s the Middle of the ski season! We’re all excited about hitting the slopes again.
We go skiing because we enjoy it. It’s an ultimate body – soul experience when you can really unwind mentally and get to use your physical body in such a joyful way.If you’re keen skier/snowboarder you may have invested in some expensive equipment and other more or less essential gear. Hopefully you haven’t forget about the MOST IMPORTANT piece of equipment: your body!The fanciest and most advanced technology won’t help you if your body isn’t in good condition.
Your body goes through very intense training for several hours day in, day out when you ski. Is it ready for it?
If the answer is YES, you’ll surely have an amazing time ( with a contribution from the weather 😉
But if your body isn’t ready for it you’ll get a lot of muscular soreness (have you experienced that next morning feeling like someone has beaten you up with a stick?), back soreness, you will get out of breath quickly; sweating like crazy as soon as you start moving. You may end up with some soreness in your knees while skiing or after your holiday.
All of this doesn’t need to happen. You just have to prepare your body properly.
You need to ensure you have a good overall core-pelvis stability which will guarantee distal joint stability and allow you to use your limbs (in this case legs) more efficiently.
Majority of people concentrate on strengthening and conditioning their legs, particularly muscles in front of the thigh – Quadriceps.
Squats, lunges, step ups just to name a few. You should not forget though about balancing all this hard work with strengthening the opposing muscles in the extensor chain such as hamstrings, lower back and butt muscles to avoid imbalance at the hip/knee joint but also to aid stability.
Depending on your level of fitness and stability you can add some balancing exercises ( also with eyes closed for those days with poor visibility), plyometrics ( for those morguls and fast turns on steep slopes and jumps) and other advanced exercises depending on your needs.
Here, at The Field we specialise in sports performance training including winter sports.
If you’re getting ready for your white holiday give us a shout. We can definitely help you with the preparations.
Yet, if you are not able to spend the time at The Field, then here’s a little circuit training, which you could even do at home, to prepare for your ski trip:
Spend 1 min on each exercise ( it’s useful to have a stopwatch or Gym Boss to help keep track of exercise stations):
1. Step ups (alternate your legs every 5 reps or you can do stair running if you do it at home)
2. Romanian Deadlift
3. Squats
4. Mountain climbers
5. Get up with push press (sit on the step, hold a weight on your chest and push press as you get up)
6. Seated twists (you can add some weight depending on your strength)
7. Ski squat against the wall (Isometric hold)
If you are unfit start with just the one circuit. As your fitness improves, increase the amount of circuits you do from 1-5. Take a minute rest between circuits.
Enjoy the ski season!
Kinga Jonczyk – Exercise Specialist