On Balance

 
 
 
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.