Vermont Ski Safety Institute’s Take on Exercise

By: In: Health and Fitness, Skiing

One of the things we hear about frequently is how exercising helps prevent injury on the snow. However, the Vermont Ski Safety Institute has an interesting statement on this:

4) Exercise – We are not aware of any proof that an exercise regimen will reduce the risk of the most common or the most serious injuries in skiing. But, in our opinion, you might help to avoid less serious (though none the less painful) muscle strains if you have prepared yourself with skiing-specific exercises. See early season copies of your favorite skiing magazine or talk to a professional trainer before you hit the slopes. You’ll also get in more skiing with less fatigue and you will be better prepared for the rare emergency requiring strength or endurance.

I suppose, if you wipe out in a certain no amount of exercise is going to save you from injury. However, I have a hard time disbelieving if you get on the slopes with well developed, strong, and enduring muscles your chances of any sort of injury is reduced.

A person who has been working out is probably going to be able to maintain and hold better snow form longer than if they did not work out. Maintaining that form is key and being in a position to fight off being backeseated by a surprise bump.

I guess I understand what they are saying, but I fear some may use that as an excuse not to exercise. Don’t you do that!

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Blahs

By: In: Health and Fitness, Off Season

 
 
 
With the hustle and bustle of the holiday season I have had to give my budding workout routine a miss. I am already feeling it and the chief symptom is a blah feeling and a general lack of ambition.

The pressure is not off 100%, but it is quite a bit eased, I will resume my routine, but I worry about showing up along with many others who are in the same situation as myself. I am quite sure I am not the only one in that situation and will show up tomorrow and have to compete for stations and unfortunately, wait for them. As I have stressed in previous posts, for added cardiovascular challenge as well as to save time I attempt to complete all stations quickly with minimal wait between stations. Unfortunately, most people at the Y do not take that approach. They laze their way through multiple sets, taking time between each set and each station.

Oh well, typically, I find plenty of room on the cardio machines and at least 30 minutes on those is the minimum we all need.

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Workout Wisdom

By: In: Health and Fitness, Skiing

 
 
 
The Crossfit workout regimen is making quite a splash in fitness circles, of late. One of my online ski buddies & FB connections made mention of this and I checked it out, and it appeals.

Skinet has picked up on cross fit:

Crossfit is an all-out, holy-crap-I-can’t-go-any-harder work out. Variety is the name of the game, with anything from plyometics (explosive movements that increase speed and power), to weightlifting, to running. It will challenge your stamina, strength, and stability, leaving you sweating in a matter of minutes. This may sound like hell, but it’s not—it’s fun

Crossfit aims to workout the entire body across all sorts of different fitness criteria.

However, not all are enamored with Crossfit: go to the link above and read the comments.

When I was in high school wrestling, we had a two day cycle, dividing my fellow wrestlers into a lightweights and heavyweights. On day A, the weight room would be setup for the light weights. I forget the timings, but the idea was on getting as many repetitions as possible in during the time allowed, and then moving quickly with minimal pause between stations. Group B would spend that time in the mat room A-B-C wrestling (whistle blows, A&B wrestle and C officiates, whistle blows, B&C get ready to wrestle and A officiates, etc). The idea was on endurance and not just cardiovascular fitness (however, we did run a lot).

That is the idea I try to bring to my workout sessions. I may be working weights, but that is no excuse to take it slow.

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On Balance

By: In: Health and Fitness, Skiing

 
 
 
One of the key factors in ski & snowboarding health is balance. Often times when we think of physical fitness for the snow we think of getting our legs muscles up to snuff and our cardiovascular fitness up.

However, who thinks of balance? I know the ski publications do, they often have many exercises aimed at improving one’s ability to keep one’s self balanced. However, in general at the gym most people don’t seem to think of balance you will see people:

  • spinning RPMs on the bikes
  • pounding miles on treadmills
  • pumping iron
  • working the ellipticals

and so on.

However, how often do we see people working exercises that challenge their balancing ability? Very rare. In fact, a person’s ability to balance is often derided, for example, the commercial implying it unmanly to perform feats of balance (unless it is someone else running down a football field). I say rubbish, I say the ability of a person to tippy-toe in field of green without a football translates nicely to a person being able to maintain their balance in a field of moguls on a 40% slope.

I am not going to discuss specifics on challenging your balance you can google that up, but I am trying to remind all of us that working on our balance should be included with our strength and cardiovascular training.

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Working Out for the Ski Season

By: In: Health and Fitness, Off Season, Skiing

 
 
 
The Wisconsin Ski Bunny and myself have just rejoined the YMCA. We were members for sometime but had essentially stopped using it years before. Now that it has been years since we have had an active exercise program we changed that. We rejoined and so far we are using the membership.

Our workouts are not major affairs, we need to treat our time as precious. I spend about 30 minutes in the cardio-vascular machine land. With 10 minutes on three of them, rowing, bike, and elliptical. Rowing is a great exercise that gets the upper body involved! All three are knee friendly none of them putting undue stress or banging on those ski-critical joints. I finish with one machine and then on the next machine with minimal time for recovery.

After that, it is to the weight machines. The Y we go to has a number of machines but less than a full set. I concentrate on the machines that workout my legs and core. This means 7-8 stations, again I setup and attempt to do as many reps in one minute as I can, when I am done with the station, I move rapidly to the next station and repeat.

The goal is not so much strength as it is endurance and perhaps more explosive strength. I find skiing is more about muscles being able to expend force at a moderate level for long periods of time, with occasional bouts of explosive power demands (e.g. yanking back an errant ski). I don’t ski bumps nor do I go airborne (i.e. jumps & tricks, flying off a headwall is a different matter). In addition, I keep the heart rate up for the entire visit helping out with my overall cardiovascular endurance.

Now, you go and do likewise!

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The Klout Uncertainity Principle

By: In: Information Technology, Off Season

I am set up on and periodically check my Klout score. While I think the score is reasonable I found something odd about it.

I first became aware of and started following my Klout score sometime last winter. Even then, I found an odd pattern to the rise and fall of my Klout score.

What pattern is that? Seemingly the less I pay attention to my Klout score, the higher it runs. In fact, the less interaction I carry on the higher my Klout score is. When I started waking this ski site up again from its summer content and doldrums I noticed I had a surprisingly high Klout score, but after I started to monitor my Klout score I noticed it started to fall. I know some of you jokers out there will point the implication of that, but I ignore that! Yes, even though my Klout is higher the less I publish, I will continue to publish and interact! Ha-ha-HA!

However, when I hardly put out any material here, when I hardly tweet or interact with Twitter, when I completely ignore Klout, and keep my FB to strictly personal matters my Klout score rises. When I start to pay attention to Klout and other Social Media and outlets my Klout Score goes down. I wonder if this is like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle — I will call the Observed Klout Principle:

The more you pay attention to your Klout Score the Lower it Goes!

The lesson, don’t pay attention to your Klout score and go on as normal!

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Android for the Skier — MyTracks

By: In: Information Technology, Skiing

Nope, not a review of the Recon Android powered goggles (BTW Recon, I would be quite happy to serve as a guinea pig and review your products get in touch via the contact form!) but actually of Android phone applications available for the skier.

I have tried a number of them and keep coming back to two of them. One of them is not a ski-exclusive application, but the other is.

So let’s get to it…
(more…)

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Wisconsin Ski Map Update

By: In: Information Technology, Off Season, Site Related

Since the map is a fairly popular item here at The Wisconsin Skier I wanted to post you on the progress I am making on it.

I have created the database for the application and I just completed compiling the data I need for the first release which will be basic resort location information. So in the next day or so I will upload that data to my database and start working on the process to load up the data I need to put pins on a map! Once that is done, I have to put the pins on the map and version one will be deemed complete and I will deploy it!

The map will includes ski resorts in Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and of course Wisconsin!

I plan to add resort specific data to the application and add layers to the map so if you are at a ski resort you can, for instance, select the “restaurant” layer and any restaurants I have put on the map will appear, but that functionality is going to be included in a future release.

Thanks for your patience!

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Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato Season Opener

By: In: Gardening, Off Season

I had my first BLT of the 2011 BLT season. Yes, I view the eating of BLTs as a seasonal thing. Why is that you may ask?

Brandywine Tomato Slices fresh from our garden

Brandywine Tomato Slices Fresh from ourGarden

What you do not see is two slices of bacon busted up into four pieces, they are covered by tomato slices and the lettuce.

You see, I only eat BLTs with tomatoes fresh from the garden. From now until October The Wisconsin Snow Bunny and myself will only be eating garden fresh tomatoes.
(more…)

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Snap It Up!

By: In: Information Technology, Off Season, Site Related

Many of you may have noticed The Wisconsin Skier was off line, in fact it was suspended by its web hosting company. Trust me, The Wisconsin Skier is NOT a deadbeat.

The problem was due to database performance. You see, The Wisconsin Skier resides on a single server with other websites and due to a certain plugin it uses, The Wisconsin Skier was using excessive amounts of database processing time. Well, I found a plugin to profile its database usage and that lead me to getting rid of a plugin that used lots of database processing. In any event, that plugin was redundant and it is now gone. I hope The Wisconsin Skier is returned to good-neighbor status!

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