Build a fitness routine that gets your body ready for ski season.
When prepping for a hard weekend of skiing, many recreational athletes push themselves through a few brutal leg workouts, take a recovery day, then hit the slopes. But that game plan is a recipe for muscle soreness — not successful skiing, says Anna Foley, a former professional ski racer and certified personal trainer.
To perform well and enjoy your time on powder, follow a skiing-focused fitness program all season long, says Foley.
5 Training Elements to Become a Better Skier
For a strong ski season, build a fitness routine that includes these key training elements.
1. Muscular Strength and Power
Building muscular strength is essential for improving your skiing performance, says Foley. The sport largely calls on your lower-body muscles — the quads, glutes, hamstrings, and hip flexors — so it’s smart to practice exercises that utilize them. Unilateral (aka single-side) exercises are a must; though your legs are working together while you ski, “you never know what the conditions are going to be like,” says Foley. “It could be a powdery day. It could be an icy day. You need to have enough strength in both legs [to control the skis].” Try pistol squats, using a TRX to scale the move down, lunges, and B-stance deadlifts.
You’ll also need to focus on strengthening your core, which helps you maintain balance and stand upright, protects your back, and transfers power between your upper to lower body, says Foley. “You don't want to put your back in any sort of compromised position. Especially if you hit bumps, you want to make sure your core is ready, your legs are ready,” she explains. “A strong core helps stabilize the entire upper body, maintaining optimal position and even reducing strain on your legs.” Consider practicing dynamic variations of planks, like plank to pike, up-down planks, and spiderman planks.
Aside from strength, skiing requires you to produce power (the ability to generate force quickly) while maintaining control, says Foley. Incorporate jump squats, jumping lunges, broad jumps, skaters, and burpees into your routine, making sure to leap explosively but land softly to protect your joints.
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2. Balance
While skiing, your feet are essentially locked into two planks. That, combined with slick snow, makes your ability to balance crucial, says Foley.
Balance training will help you stay upright as you glide down a run. Plus, it challenges your core and the muscles around your hips, which ultimately helps provide stability to injury-prone areas such as the knees, she explains.
You can easily combine balance training and resistance or power training for a two-in-one workout, says Foley. For example, you can perform your planks, single-leg deadlifts, reverse lunges, and squats with a BOSU.
3. Muscular Endurance
If you want to effortlessly ski long runs, you need plenty of muscular endurance, says Foley. Reminder: Muscular endurance is a muscle’s ability to produce force — and maintain it — for prolonged periods. You can train it by performing weighted wall sits, one of Foley’s favorite exercises. “It’s a similar position when you're skiing — your knees are bent, and you're just balancing like that,” she says. To progress, gradually increase the amount of time you perform the exercise. The longer you can hold the wall sit, the more muscular endurance you have.
You can also build endurance by holding your position at the bottom of a bodyweight squat or lunge. Or, perform any of your favorite exercises for high reps, using lighter weights and taking minimal rest. (Just don't slack on your technique.)
4. Cardio
“A lot of people who don't ski think that skiing is just letting gravity take you down a hill,” says Foley. “But you're putting your body through a lot because you're essentially resisting gravity, and you're using your muscle power to make those turns, to stop yourself, to speed yourself up. It is a lot of cardio…and your heart rate gets up.” Skiing can be particularly taxing on your cardiorespiratory system when done at a high altitude, as your resting heart rate is already higher (to deliver enough oxygen to your tissues) than at lower elevations.
That’s why Foley suggests supplementing your strength and power training routine with running, biking, or any other aerobic activity. “You're trying to mimic those same feelings you're going to experience when you're skiing,” says Foley. “It’s not necessarily the same feeling as going for a 10-mile run; think of it more as like a longer, 400-meter sprint. You're constantly moving. Your body is constantly working for about a minute, a minute and a half down a ski slope.”
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5. Mobility and Flexibility
Sometimes, you find yourself doing the splits as you're skiing. You need strength to be able to pull your legs back together so you don’t fall, but your joints and muscles also need to be mobile and flexible enough to get into that position without causing discomfort or injury, says Foley. “Especially as you advance in skiing — when you’re [getting] your body into positions when you arc turns down the hill — [flexibility and mobility work ensure] that your body is not going to hinder you from moving and turning,” she adds.
Before you head into the Club for a workout or the resort for a ski session, flow through dynamic exercises such as 90/90 hip openers, she suggests. Afterward, turn to static moves like the runner’s lunge (aka world’s greatest stretch) to target your hip flexors, she notes. “Stretching your hip flexors is super important too because you're going to be in that flexed motion all day long when you're skiing,” says Foley. “You sit on a lift, then you're in that bent stance on the hill, and then you sit on the lift again, so your hip flexors are always contracted and they're never stretched.”
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