Introduction

• Skiing is not only incredibly fun, it’s also very physically demanding and can help you (even force you!) to focus on muscles and exercises you often neglect when engaged in other sports, for example flexibility and joint support. When you hit the slopes in Europe the chances are you have spent the Christmas period over-indulging and you’re not in your usual physically optimum condition. This is a position I’ve found myself in more than a few times, so I decided to create my own pre-ski workout regime to do something about it. The aim of this post is to share with you the best strength and conditioning exercises you can do to maximise your enjoyment on the slopes, as well as hopefully preventing injury and maybe even improving your technique.
• These final two points are important and I want to spend a little more time on them before jumping into the rest of the piece. Injury prevention is a key part of pre-skiing exercise and conditioning, especially if you are a Millennial who spent a lot of time at school and university playing sport, but have spent last few years sat behind a desk doing a significantly reduced amount of exercise. This puts you at a high risk of many injuries, including an ACL tear. Moreover, ensuring you are in peak physical condition – or at least a relatively good one – can help you finally kick on from that dreaded intermediate skier plateau and perhaps overcome the natural ‘weaker turn’ issue that almost everyone has.
• I’ll start by identifying the key areas of the body which we need to focus on when preparing for a week on the slopes, before providing a range of exercises focused on the following areas; (1) All body exercises and upper body (2) Core (3) Upper leg (4) Lower leg.
• Formulating a workout plan based around these exercises 2 – 3 times a week in the weeks running up to your holiday could turn a good holiday into an incredible one.
• If you are looking for specialised workouts for other sports I suggest you check out my Gym Workout for Swimmers here: http://jablifestyle.net/2016/06/20/gym-workout-for-swimmers/

Key Focus Areas for Skiing

• I’m sure it won’t come as a massive surprise to skiers out there that when you’re skiing you have five key areas that need to be in optimal condition to allow you to get the most out of your week on the slopes, namely:
  • Knees – The knee is the most likely part of the body to get an injury while skiing, and according to the Sports Injury Clinic accounts for approximately 45% of all ski-related injuries. It is therefore imperative you take care of your knees in the build up to hitting the slopes.
  • Ankles – Most beginner and intermediate skiers over-bend their knees instead of their ankles which shifts the weight too far back in the skis. Strengthening and improving your flexibility in the ankle joint and calf muscles will make you a better skier by allowing you to overcome the stiffness of your ski boots.
  • Quads – Probably the most obvious, especially after a full days skiing, the quads are the biggest muscles in your legs and get a serious workout from skiing. Building up their strength and getting them used to heavy exercise will really help with fatigue.
  • Hips – Pelvic instability leads to having an A-frame in your legs while skiing, this is one of the reasons intermediate skiers struggle so much in the beautiful off-piste powder. Having an A-frame means that your turns become inconsistent as the skis are tilted at different angles, so cut into the snow differing amounts. Whilst this can have a minimal effect on the packed piste snow in the fluffy powder the problem is really obvious. Having stronger hips also gives you more control to prevent the dreaded upper-body and hip over-rotation.
  • Core – If you ski with weak core strength you run the risk of allowing your hips (which are the centre of your mass) to drop back during your turns, this puts you off balance and leaves your body weight on the tails of your skis.
• Acknowledging these key areas, and understanding which are a particular strength or weakness for you personally, is key to formulating an exercise workout that works best for you.

The Exercises: All Body & Upper Body

• Doing exercises which work all your leg muscles and your core in one are great time savers, so this is where we’ll start. Unsurprisingly the majority of the below are squat based exercises, however I have tailored them to really focus on replicating movements you’ll be doing on the piste, plus a couple of all round upper body exercises to help with any poling!
  • Back Squat – Not enough can be said about the effectiveness of back squats, while the primary focus is the quads and glutes, they really are an all body exercise. This is also the most important exercise people know about but aren’t doing.  Squatting is an example of when free weights are best if you want to target your core as well. For skiing you want to focus on low weight and high rep, you want as much ‘burn’ as possible in the gym so your legs are acclimatised and ready for the slopes.
  • One Leg Squat – An excellent variation on the ‘traditional’ back squat and it doesn’t involve any weights. The key is to focus on keeping your balance, extending your arms in front of you really helps. Don’t worry if you struggle to complete any to start with. Not only is the one leg squat an incredible workout for your muscles it really helps strengthen the knee joint.
  • Isolation Jump Squats – Again a very easy exercise to execute anywhere because all you need is your body weight. Isolation jump squats are excellent for preparing you for the undulation of the slopes, as the movement directly mimics how the legs react when going over rapidly changing terrain such as dips or moguls. If you are finding using your body weight too easy then try adding a weighted bar across your shoulders and do Loaded Squat Jumps.
  • Tricep Dips – It’s not all about the legs and core, tricep dips – either on a machine or on parallel bars – is a God send not only for getting back up on your skis after a fall, but also for giving you extra strength when you need to really stick a pole in for a hard direction change or when having to work your way uphill.
  • Pulls Ups – You’ll get excellent return on your effort here, pull ups not only work the obvious lats (major back muscle) and arms but also your core and traps (shoulders). This’ll help not only with the poling and helping up others but also carrying all your gear around the mountain.

The Exercises: Core

• Good core strength is too often under estimated. It’s often seen as an optimal extra or something to provide visible benefits (aka six pack). This couldn’t more wrong, the benefits of a strong core to a skier are massive. Not only will it help keep your weight well distributed it’ll also prevent you over-rotating your upper body, and most basic of all it’s the muscles that connect your legs to your upper body, there is no point having a strong top and bottom if you are weak in the middle.
• There is a lot of evidence to show that performing simple sit-ups has little to no positive benefit, therefore to create a strong core you’ll need to incorporate the following dynamic exercises.
  • Traditional Plank – Arguably the most engaging of the core muscle exercises, the plank has you engaging all of your core muscles at once. Try holding the plank for 1 minute, then rest and repeat. If this is too easy try the superman plank where you bring each of your legs in turn up towards your elbows before returning.
  • Russian Twists – Excellent not only for building core strength but also enhancing core mobility.
  • Ab Cycles – A dynamic exercise which focuses on all your core muscles. The key to performing these optimally is to ensure you stretch back out fully – without letting your legs or head touch the floor – between each cycle. Slow and steady is the way to get best results from cycles.
  • Side Dips – These combine the plank and Russian twist well. The key is to engage the side of your core harder to provide you with strong muscle rotation and mobility.
  • Leg Push Downs – Fantastic for working your lower core muscles, ensuring the connectivity between the legs and top half is optimised. The important thing is to not use your arms, focus on doing all the work with your abs.
  • Tree Pose – Building and maintaining a strong core isn’t just about building a solid six pack. The Tree Pose is an excellent way of building core strength as well as building better balance and stability. I suggest holding the position for 30 to 60 seconds and then switch legs. If you are finding this too easy try standing on a soft pillow or closing your eyes.

The Exercises: Upper Leg

• Squats will give your whole leg a good work out but don’t forget to add some upper leg specific exercises to your pre-skiing workout regime.
  • Single Leg Lateral Jumps – These are absolutely perfect for working the inside and outside thigh, but also improve lateral strength in the knee and overall upper leg agility. Aim to keep good control and balance, landing and taking off with the same foot. Your feet should be hip width apart, and your knees should be a constant distance apart.
  • The High Knee Step Over –  A good high intensity exercise that improves aerobic fitness as well as your hip flexors. Your hip flexors control the lifting of your knees therefore the stronger and more prepared they are the less likely you are to get tired and revert to a poor skiing stance.
  • Walking Lunge with Rotation – This is a fantastic exercise that works your biggest upper leg muscles but also helps with your balance and stability. Lunges are considerable glute burners but also work the smaller supporting muscle that help guide and control the power of your quads and glutes.

The Exercises: Lower Leg

• Just because your lower leg muscles are tightly strapped into your ski boots doesn’t mean you can forget about them, indeed the very fact they are strapped in tight makes having the strength to overcome that stiffness and have control and movement even more important.
  • Agility Dots – These are an excellent exercise to help build strength and endurance in your lower leg and also help by adding stability to the knee joint, reducing the risk of injury. This also requires very little to complete, in fact simply set up 4x dots, a small jump size apart, then jump parallel and also diagonally between them. If you are struggling to visualise this I suggest checking out 5min 35seconds into this video.
  • Standing Calf Raises – This can be done in many different ways, either on a calf raise machine, leg press machine or simply with dumbbells on a box. I prefer the last of these as it can be done anywhere. The key with calf raises is to up your reps from 10 – 12 reps up to 20 reps, this is because they are the ultimate slow twitch fibre muscles so you need high reps to see the results.
  • Jumping Calf Raises – As the name suggests these are very similar to the previous calf raises, the main difference is that jumping calf raises are more dynamic and better for matching the real impact of being on the slopes. Whilst standing calf raises are great at building muscle strength, jumping calf raises help provide a more aerobic workout and endurance, so they complement each other well.

Tailor to Your Own Body/Skiing Ability

• Incorporating the above exercises into a regular set of workouts in the weeks running up to your ski holiday will really help you maximise your time on the slopes and also reduce the risk of injury.
• More than this undertaking these exercises can also help you improve your skiing style and push you through that frustrating plateau, that many of us hit when only skiing one or two weeks a year. The key to maximise this is to ensure that you tailor the above exercises to your own body and your own bad habits.
• For example, one of the most common bad habits intermediate skiers have is not having their weight balanced over the centre of their skis. Most people sit down too much, putting excessive strain through the quads muscles and knees and taking the weight into the back of the skis, causing loss of control. If you know you are subject to this you can tailor your workouts to focus on increasing your calf, core and glute strength. Focusing on these areas will help the body naturally alter it’s position to sit further forward on the skis.
• Skiing, especially in low visibility, requires you have to a strong level of proprioception. In simple terms proprioception is about having a good level of positional sense, understanding the position of your body and the effort required to move it into a new position. This might sound like something you either have naturally or don’t, but there are actually a couple of simple things you can do to improve this. Firstly, stand on one leg with your eyes closed for two minutes a couple of times a day. Once you start doing this with ease start adding small movements in whist you do this, e.g. leaning slightly one way then the other or flexing your standing knee.

Conclusion

• Skiing is one of my favourite hobbies, but it isn’t cheap, so I want to ensure I maximise my short time on the slopes each year. By creating a personalised and specific workout, based around the 5 key areas identified at the start (Knees, Ankles, Quads, Hips and Core) in the weeks leading up to your holiday you can not only ensure you are aerobically fit for the slopes, you can help reduce the risk of injury and even improve your skiing technique before you’ve caught the first chair lift.