Slope Training

Get ready for skiing and riding with this pre-season workout. 

 

Fall is in the air, which means winter is just around the bend. Now is the time to get your muscles ready for plenty of snowy fun on the slopes in the months ahead. So to help you get started with your pre-season training, we enlisted the help of Bobby Murphy, Keystone’s director of skier services, for his suggestions on some of the best exercises you can do to prepare for ski season. Murphy is a member of PSIA’s National Alpine Team, a technical reviewer for The Professional Skier and a featured expert ski instructor in Ski Magazine.

Murphy likes to do these exercises on a soccer field, where he uses the various lines as guides. You can also do them inside on a basketball court, or make up your own lines, perhaps on top of a mountain. Do this workout two times a week until the slopes are open. Then you know what to do.

WARM UP: Jog slowly around the field for 5 minutes.

LUNGES: These will work your quads, hamstrings and glutes, and also help with balance. Start in one corner of the field and go into lunges. Keep your front leg at a 90-degree angle and try to get the back bent knee close to ground, touching or grazing the grass. Then switch. Go from the endline in one corner to midfield. Then sprint to the end of the field. Walk the endline to recover. Do the same drill back the other way.

UPPER BODY & CORE: Throw in a set of core and upper body. Do 20-25 sit-ups, 20-25 oblique lateral crunches, then flip over and do 15-20 push-ups.

SIDEWAY SQUATS: Start at the endline. Slide one foot out, squat, match feet together, then squat. Go to midfield with right foot sliding first. Then sprint to end. Walk endline to recover. Then do left foot forward sideway squats to midline and sprint to endline.

UPPER BODY & CORE: Time for more core with plank pose. Rest on your elbows with toes in push-up position. Try to hold 30-45 seconds; build up to 45-60 seconds. If there’s a bench, do 15-20 tricep press push-ups.

DIAGONAL SPRINTS: These help build your lateral muscles for skiing and will also get your heart rate cranking. From a corner, run diagonally at a 45-degree angle toward the middle line of the field and make a cut (push off) on your outside foot, then run diagonally to the sideline and touch with your foot. Go back toward the middle, cut, then back to the sideline making your way to midfield. From there, sprint to the end of the field. Repeat back.
Tip: It’s basically like you’re doing a slalom zig-zagging down the field.

UPPER BODY & CORE: Do side plank with your right elbow down, resting on the outside of your right foot. Hold for 30-45 seconds, then switch to other side. Do 15-20 push-ups.

TWO-FOOTED JUMPS: Focus on being a jackrabbit landing and exploding up into the next jump. Take it slow your first few times doing this exercise, which helps trains your muscles to react in bumps and chopped up snow. Starting in a corner, jump up and over the sideline to the midline. Think about exploding forward and lateral, just like moving down the mountain on skis. At midline, sprint to the end. Walk to the other corner, then repeat back.
Tip: When you’re doing lateral jumps and are tired, it’s easy to turn your body. Try not to do this. Look down the field and use the line as a guidance to keep your hips perpendicular to that line.

UPPER BODY & CORE: Do some Supermans. Lie on your stomach then lift both arms and legs off the ground. If this is too much on your lower back, lift opposite leg and arm and switch. Do 15 reps. Do another set of 15-20 push-ups or tricep push-ups on a bench.

SQUAT JUMPS: Start at the endline and do squat jumps with both knees high in the air. Try and make it to midline, then sprint to end of the field. Walk for a bit then repeat back.
Tip: This is a tough drill where your heart is going to max out. As you do this, you want to gain distance. The longer your jumps, the fewer you’ll have to make to midline. Think of moving down field like you would skiing.

SUICIDE DRILL: Pick four spots. Run, touch down, then come back. Keep repeating until you’re to midfield. Then turn around and repeat back to where you started.
Tip: When you touch the ground, face one direction. This forces you to use both legs to cut with.

COOL DOWN AND STRETCH.

Chris Anthony is a former Alaskan Extreme Skiing Champion and veteran of eight World Extreme Skiing Championships and 19 Warren Miller films. He also heads up ski camps through “Chris Anthony Adventures” in Alaska, Italy, Colorado and Chile. He is a big proponent of incorporating plyometrics into pre-season training and offers up a few more exercises to add to your fall training regime.

Plyometric exercises are a high-intensity training technique used to develop athletic power (strength and speed). Plyometric training involves explosive muscular contractions that invoke the stretch reflex (stretching the muscle before it contracts so that it contracts with greater force). The most common plyometric exercises include hops, jumps and bounding movements.

DROP JUMPING. This exercise involves dropping (not jumping) to the ground from a raised platform no more than 8-10 inches high, and then immediately jumping up. The drop down gives the pre-stretch to the leg muscles and the vigorous drive upwards gives the secondary concentric contraction. The exercise is more effective the shorter the time the feet are in contact with the ground.

BOUNDING AND HURDLING. This is a form of plyometric training where you run with over-sized strides and try and spend extra time in the air. Increase the intensity by hopping on one leg. Bounding upstairs will work on both the vertical and horizontal aspects of running. Multiple jumps over a series of obstacles like hurdles are valuable, too. Set up an obstacle course for yourself and run stairs in your local park. 

The most important aspect of a safe and effective plyometric program is developing a safe landing technique. Land softly on your toes and roll to the heels. By using the whole foot for landing, this will help dissipate the impact forces on the joints. The other key to proper landing is to avoid any twisting or sideways motion at the knee.

Anthony will be working with Pura Vida Fitness and Spa in Cherry Creek for their “An Urban Assault on the Slopes” program in October and November. Call 303-999-2933 or email heatherb@puravidaclub.com for details.

Photos by Jack Affleck/Keystone Resort