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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Ski Conditioning

By: In: Health and Fitness, Skiing

Skiing & health

On Physical Conditioning

Right now I am watching the downhill portion of the Men’s super-combined ski event. The reason I do not flag this as an Olympics related post is because I want to focus more on the idea of the physical conditioning required for downhill skiing.

Watch those Olympic skiers and watch them when they come to a stop, they are a huffing and a puffing!
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The Click & Pop In My Shoulder

By: In: Health and Fitness, Skiing

A couple of weeks ago writing of ski crashes I wrote:

I do a little self check first and if all checks out I pop up quickly so the ski patrol is not scrambling or people do not worry about myself. I pick up my gear, reassemble it all, click back, and fall back in line for my the next chair ride.

(more…)


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Fueling the Ski Engine

By: In: Health and Fitness, Skiing

One of the things that is important for a good day of skiing is a good breakfast.

Too often, we all skip breakfast in a dash out the door. Sometimes when skiing we stay up too late and that leads to staying in bed too late and rushing off to the slopes the next morning.
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Kwik Strap

By: In: Equipment, Health and Fitness


The Kwik Strap — A Great Idea

Let me issue the following statement before I proceed: I know the inventor and patent holder of the The Kwik Strap.

That said, I will now talk about the Kwik Strap.

Those of us who ski small hills have short ski times, even the slow runs on my home hill are over very quickly and then I’m repeating the process of unstrapping the poles from my hands, in the lift line, riding up, getting off the lift, and then restrapping my poles to my hands.
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Skiing to Maintain Our Health.

By: In: Health and Fitness

Skiing to Maintain Our Health!

Most often when we talk about downhill skiing and health we talk about injuries. However, skiers know downhill skiing is an active sport; this may surprise some, after all most of the energy harnessed in downhill skiing is gravitational. The non-skier may assume skiing takes the same amount of exercise as falling into one’s easy chair.

Well since you are reading this article, I assume you know that is FALSE! Downhill skiing is a physically active sport. While it is true, most of a skier’s speed comes from gravity to harness gravity enjoyably and safely requires physical exertion. Staying up requires athletic balance, avoiding obstacles, skiing bumps, running gates require split second timing, planning a route down the hill requires planning, and if a skier has to move over flat or uphill terrain they must provide the required energy. Skiing requires more exertion than plopping down in front of the TV with a sixpack of one’s favorite beverage.
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