Skiing Exercises

Performing aerobic exercises to improve your fitness will reduce your risk of injury, as you will be able to maintain and focus upon your skiing technique. Look at designing yourself a simple circuit, whereby you will do a 30 - 45 seconds light jog / run, followed by 8 -15 of each exercise in a controlled manner.

On your first time around perform just the leg circuit, then the upper body and finally the abdominal exercises. Make sure that you do the lap jog / run after each leg / upper body or abdominal circuit.
 

LEG CIRCUIT
Two footed squat thrusts - aim for a 12 inch jump.	Walking lunge forward - changing lead leg.	Alternate leg squat thrusts - count reps on 1 leg only.

UPPER BODY CIRCUIT
Wide arm press-up. Take elbows out to your sides.	Normal press ups, aim to keep a straight line through your back.	Close Hand - Aim to keep your thumbs touching each other.

ABDOMINAL CIRCUIT
Normal sit ups, keep your chin off your chest.	Alternate elbows to knees - count reps on one side only.	Alternate hand to foot - count reps one side.

Start by performing the exercises with adequate rest between each different exercise until you get fitter. Once you can do the exercises and repetitions comfortably, work on increasing the number of different circuit exercises you can perform, or change the exercises for ones that are slightly harder - if you don't then your fitness will not improve - look within our member's area for over 1,000 different exercises plus a multitude of training programs.

Dependent upon your fitness level, you may only wish to perform the first 1 - 2 exercises, and add a new one as your fitness level increases / or at the beginning of a new week.

For those of you that are fitter, you should be able to run for 1 minute on each exercise for 2 sets.

• Working with a partner and to music will certainly help motivate you.
• Remember that you do not have to do all the exercises listed above.
• For competent skiers, and for those persons of a good fitness level, the plyometrics circuit will certainly improve your leg strength, resulting in greater skiing capabilities.

Along with the above circuit or weight training sessions, you should aim to do some form of aerobic training ideally 3 times a week.

The fitter you become, the more time you can spend skiing, and less chance you have of having a serious accident. With skiing being a sport in which you have sessions of moderate to high rate levels for periods ranging from 1-5 minutes plus, followed by periods of rest, i.e. traveling back up the slope, the best exercise to perform would be interval work.

The best aerobic equipment, would be skiing machines or steppers, however any aerobic equipment will benefit you.

Now we focussed on your fitness regime, the next page introduces interval training which will really help your staying power on the slopes!