We all know that we should get fit for skiing, maybe we’ll even manage a few of the exercises that we see in the magazines, a wall squat here and there or some single leg dips and hops. Have you ever thought about why? Why do we need to be fit for skiing? Well we’re here to give you our clinical reasons why.
Skiing will be easier.
When you’re fit and strong it all just becomes a little bit easier. With a strong core supporting your spine your arms and legs are given a solid platform to perform from. Your body will be in alignment and your joints will be working in their optimal positions. From this good starting posture the muscles that you have been training can optimally perform, using less energy and making it all a little bit easier.
You’ll have better technique.
Muscles that have been practicing ski specific exercises are more responsive to requests that the brain makes upon them. They can learn movement patterns and learn to perform certain movements in specific positions. The more you repeat these movements the more ability your muscles have to perform well in these skiing specific positions. They are better conditioned to accurately and powerfully respond to the requests that your brain makes on them.
You’ll be able to spend more time skiing.
Muscles that are conditioned to repeatedly perform ski specific movements for minutes at a time at home will be able to easily translate this fitness over to the piste or mountain. It’s important to replicate the time that you spend skiing at home, intense powerful ski specific exercises for minutes at a time over a period of an hour, replicating the time it might take for one trip between chair lifts and/or coffee stops! This is going to mean less fatigue and therefore longer days out on the hill.
You’re less likely to get injured.
This 
is the big one, no-one wants to come home from their skiing holiday on crutches! Sometimes it’s just bad luck but most of the time injury is due to fatigue and the resulting poor technique. You can do a lot to get strong and injury resistant before you go skiing but it’s going to take more than a few wall squats for a couple of weeks before you go. Exercise programmes that use ski specific movement patterns, challenge dynamic stability and push your endurance to the limits are the ones from which you will reap rewards. With SkiFit we recommend an eight week programme of 2-3 hour long sessions of ski specific exercises per week.
One day we’ll manage to persuade Tony to tell you his story of how 2 months of SkiFit before the start of the season totally transformed his skiing experience of one from a swollen, weak and uncooperative (previously injured) knee to one of a strong endless season that didn’t bother his duff knee at all!
We can’t recommend SkiFit enough, we have all seen the phenomenal results so we all do it religiously!
- Why we injure ourselves skiing and how to avoid the dangers - November 15, 2016
- 5 ways to become a stronger skier - November 1, 2016
- Improve your cycling performance by knowing the science - July 18, 2016