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Bodytalk
Question: What exercises can I do to condition my body for skiing? Warming up
for ski season
with exercisesAnswer: Training for a particular sports activity is often referred to as specificity training. A specificity training program for downhill or cross-country skiing needs to include components of flexibility, agility, balance and strength.
The following exercises are designed to ready the body for skiing.
To build the isometric strength needed to hold the tuck position in skiing, perform wall-sitting exercises. Here's how they're done.
Place your back straight against a wall, with your legs forming a right angle. It's important to just let your arms hang down beside you in this exercise; this prevents you from using your arms to help support your body. Hold this position for as long as you can, rest for a minute or two, then repeat the process two or three more times. This exercise will strengthen your legs, low back, and hips. These are areas of the body that must be conditioned because of the great demand placed on them in skiing.
This exercise is performed in an exaggerated version of the tuck position. Since this is exactly how you hold your body when skiing or snow boarding, it makes it doubly effective.
Standard lunges and squats are the best exercises for building all around lower body strength. When performing squats, don't allow your knees to bend beyond a right angle. If you do, the cartilage in your knees will over-stretch, causing eventual knee problems.
Perform lunges onto an elevated step or low bench. This allows full contraction of the hamstring muscles, while protecting the knees from over-stretching. Continued over-stretching of the knee joints is the leading cause of petafemoral (knee) dysfunction.
Building torso strength is critical because of the twisting and turning that skiers do. Torso strength is also needed to stabilize the body during these twists and turns. Abdominal curls and crunches, reverse curls, and back extensions are the most effective exercises to strengthen the abdominal and lower back muscles.
Back extensions over an exercise ball are the safest and most user friendly way to perform this important exercise.
Ballistic leg power is crucial for the side to side movements that downhill skiing calls for. Plyometric hopping will develop power in your legs, and since this hopping movement closely matches the leg action in downhill skiing, your legs will be more than ready for the challenge.
Strong muscles in your upper body are also desirable. The chest, shoulders, arms and back help you turn, keep you from tumbling, and in cross-country skiing, help push you forward. The bench press, with a bar, is the best all around chest movement for building pectoral strength.
The bar military press, or shoulder press, surpasses other movements for building deltoid strength. The lat pull down is the most effective for building back strength. When it comes to the arms the standard biceps curl, with dumbbells, is the optimal exercise for developing biceps strength.
As far as triceps are concerned, the kickback exercise, with dumbbells, targets this muscle better than any other. All of these exercises should be done every other day.
Allow a full 48 hours of recovery time before performing them again. Overtraining muscles not only doesn't make them stronger, it may lead to injury.
Flexibility exercises are important for keeping you limber, so that in case you do fall the likelihood of injury is reduced.
Health Events
Stephenie Karony is a certified health
and fitness instructor, a personal trainer and the author of
"Body Shaping with Free Weights." Send questions to her at
P.O. Box 262, Wailuku Hi. Her column appears on Wednesdays.