Where is this place? We must be getting close. Eyes anxiously scan the steep canyon walls for any sign of a ski lift. It’s barely dawn and six of us are driving up the snow covered back road snaking out of the old mining town of Silverton, CO. Our posse of pilots today includes Bill and Carl from Jet Blue airlines, Kim and myself from US Airways, Bob from Delta, and finally Buck, our token civilian. With ages ranging from 30 to 62 and hometowns from Cleveland to Durango, we are all greenhorns hoping to bag a skier’s big game trophy on this day. Only minutes away now and it’s hard to believe that after too many years of “bar talk” and a litany of embarrassing planning snafus we’re finally going to man-up and do this.
Unless you’re planning to just cruise groomers all day, you may find that your skiing consists mostly of high output bursts punctuated with short rest intervals. To this end, interval training of any kind may have greater crossover benefits than straight strength or endurance sessions. Treadmill sprints, spinning classes, and jump rope work are some good options.
Along these same lines, any weight training should now involve some low weight / high rep sets. When you’re doing those squats, fifty reps with 80lb simulates that bump run much better than ten reps with 200lb. To further simulate skiing motions, use a wider stance (treating both legs as the outside turn leg) and do not allow your knees to lock out at the top affording a brief rest.
Focus on including explosive movements into your routine. Box jump variations (lateral or “Poor Man’s Skiers Edge”) are great ways to accomplish this. True “plyometric” jumps where you jump down off the box, land, and immediately rebound into an upward jump may have the strongest benefits for skiing.
This is non-intuitive, but the next time you are skiing hard such as aggressive GS turns, notice how much time you actually spend statically in the crouched position. As lactic acid builds, the thighs begin to burn and as you lose muscle power you naturally begin to straighten up. So while explosive training is good, static or “isometric” training is equally important. Target the quads by briefly holding the bottom position of a squat on each rep or do isometric wall squats by placing your back against a wall and lower yourself until your thighs are parallel to the floor and your shins are parallel to the wall. Your knees should be bent at 90 degrees. Hold the position for 10-30 seconds and repeat.
Finally, if you have that traditional lifting routine you can’t give up, just spice it up. Between each set do 50 jump ropes instead of resting. You should have over a 1000 by the end of a good workout!
CLICK HERE to see a scientifically thought out approach to a skier specific workout
When it comes to cardio, running is certainly one of the most popular forms of training. While a long leisurely run is therapeutic, it may not help you as much for skiing as some interval sprints. For a great treadmill regimen, set the ramp angle at 1%, set the speed at a fast run (I like about 9 mph / 6.5 min. mile). Run for 35 sec, then jump off onto the sides for a 25 sec rest. Repeat this for 15 minutes. Try it, and then tweak any of the parameters to what works best for you.
DSJ has suggested some good preseason conditioning exercises to include the obvious like spinning, box jumping, and jump roping, but also some lesser known like walking backwards on a treadmill at full ramp angle. Again, we’d like to add something that may help us in the age 40 and over crowd.
Flexibility is actually a hotly debated topic. Some studies have indicated that it may actually lead to more injuries in action sports. Regardless, while being able to do the splits may not do a darn thing to help your skiing, having a full healthy range of motion certainly will.
We all know we get stiffer as we get older and that makes aggressive angulation ever more difficult. We mainly get angulation from our knees and hips. With healthy knee joints, articulation shouldn’t be too compromised as we age, but the hips, and more importantly the lower spine are another story altogether. This area of the body naturally tends to lose flexibility as we age. Any stretching regime for this area should yield noticeable benefits.
A good exercise is standing with a light to medium barbell across the shoulders behind the neck (or dumbells hanging at your sides) and then bending smoothly and deeply to either side. Involve the hip and lower spine weighting the outside leg. This is also a great stretch to include at the top of your first run of the day.
While none of this is likely to make any of us look like this young lady, the closer we can get, the better.
And why does all this really matter? The only reason she can carve such an aggressive turn with her skis at nearly a 90 degree angle is because of her ability to attain an exaggerated banana or “C” shape. If she dropped her upper body in line with her legs, she would collapse to the snow. If she raised her hips to be in line with her upper body she would dramatically decrease the angle of her skis on the snow. It’s all about “center of gravity”, and hers is actually somewhere close to her left hand.
So there yo have it. You don’t necessarily need to be a Gumby, but a banana might be nice. Stay loose my friends!
A note for you senior skiers (sorry, that means all of us 40+). Exercise recovery time increases noticeably as we age. The editorial staff here at DSJ has found that our own recovery time is now greater than 24 hours after a day of extreme exertion. Where this really becomes a problem is when we’re faced with numerous days of straight skiing early in the season and not yet in mid-season condition. Each day we lose a little more ground and tend to become increasingly sore, achy, and weak.
You certainly can’t cheat Mother Nature, but you can be a little sneaky! We’ve found two things help a lot. A good protein shake with glutamine at the end of each ski day and, here’s the kicker, a creatine drink in the morning. Yes, creatine has been around forever, and although known more as a strength and power increasing supplement (which can’t bad for your skiing BTW) it has also been proven to aid in muscle recovery. So much so, that many pro athletes use it to promote faster healing after a muscle injury. It is actually a concentrated form of what’s found in red meat protein.
Creatine has been shown to be safe when used in moderation, but you do have to start using it a couple weeks in advance to reap the full benefits. The latest conventional wisdom is that you shouldn’t bother with fancy mixes, but just straight creatine monohydrate powder which is tasteless and cheap. No pre-loading required, just 5 grams per day, which is the tiny scoop that comes with it. Mix it with anything, even just straight water since it’s tasteless. I wouldn’t suggest using it continually, but it could make a very noticeable early season difference and help keep you at peak levels after that.
Well, nothing actually. Other than changing shape over the years as skis have become shorter, they’re still alive and well and flourishing at most ski resorts, thank you very much.
So why is it that the modern skiing establishment would lead you think that moguls don’t matter anymore? And by this, I mean the notable lack of attention from magazines, movies, ski marketers, and designers. Well, I think moguls do matter and not only are these guys missing the boat here, but it’s doing us all a disservice in the process.
Moguls still matter because, without grooming, they happen to be on about every ski run with enough pitch and skiers to form them. Given enough time, this creates moguls on most all expert runs. At my home resort, even the tree runs start to get bumped out after a few days without fresh snow.
SKI Magazine’s 2014 Buyer’s Guide only mentions the word “bump” or “mogul” in less than half of their front-side ski reviews. And I take issue with combining Quickness and Bumps as a single category. While stiffness and high side-cut can create a lightning bolt on groomers, it can also make for a hooky buckin’ bronco in the bumps. At best, true mogul performance is treated as an afterthought.