Best Dryland Exercises for Good Skiers

I have one i like to do while I'm hiking that I find helps me in the moguls.

I make a point as I'm hiking, especially in rocky or uneven terrain, to look pretty far ahead and not down at where my feet are going. It takes (me) a while to trust my subconscious to remember where the rocks and root stumps etc. are and avoid them without actually looking at them. It really works! and it trains my eyes to look where i am going not where I am.

I find over time that I'm actually more sure footed this way and that helps me do that in the moguls too. Looking forward in the moguls helps "slow" time down and gives me  more time to anticipate terrain rather than react to it. it takes (me) a great deal of discipline to do this though, so practicing in the summer on the trail really helps.

By the way, it's important that you not look ahead to some rock or point or mogul and then fix on it till you get there. The whole point of this exercise is continuously moving  your line of sight forward....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mom 

I have one i like to do while I'm hiking that I find helps me in the moguls.

 

I make a point as I'm hiking, especially in rocky or uneven terrain, to look pretty far ahead and not down at where my feet are going. It takes (me) a while to trust my subconscious to remember where the rocks and root stumps etc. are and avoid them without actually looking at them. It really works! and it trains my eyes to look where i am going not where I am.

 

I find over time that I'm actually more sure footed this way and that helps me do that in the moguls too. Looking forward in the moguls helps "slow" time down and gives me  more time to anticipate terrain rather than react to it. it takes (me) a great deal of discipline to do this though, so practicing in the summer on the trail really helps.

 

By the way, it's important that you not look ahead to some rock or point or mogul and then fix on it till you get there. The whole point of this exercise is continuously moving  your line of sight forward....

This is one of my favorites.  I do it while trail running on rocky rooty terrain.  Falling could net you knee-to-granite impact so the impulse to look only one step ahead is strong and difficult to override (for me).  Very good training for bump skiing.

This summer I have gotten into walking from log to log in the driftwood at the beach.  Where I am walking the dog it runs for about 1/2 mile. The dog is even getting into it.

 It has got to be good for balance and line selection.

Rod, there is a whole forum dedicated to dryland stuff and IMO it is very important to know how off the snow activities affect how we ski. Although IMO the most important part of that is not recreational activities, it is what we do all the time. How we walk, sit, stand, etc. These learned habits are something we usually take for granted. At least until we are forced to re-learn to walk, talk, etc. For some it's an unlucky traumatic event that initiates that re-learning but more commonly it's an effort to re-balance antagonist / protagonist muscle usage to improve RoM, posture and balance, or to reduce wear and tear on the joints, etc.

I believe that isn't what Nolo envisioned for this thread though. On the snow activities seem to be more the focus of this thread. How that transfers into our skiing is exactly the same process though, So how do we get a habit grooved and why we would groove it in the first place?

Here it is: Fitness, Injury and Recovery 

I think a thread (and ultimately an article) on Best Dryland Exercises for Skiing would be outstanding. I would be happy to contribute a few exercises I have learned from circuit training that will help with upper/lower left/right separation and coordination issues. I believe that people who are inclined to seek out such exercises are already experiencing a heightened sense of body awareness that will transfer nicely to skiing. The people who don't feel they need to do anything extra to ski better probably never will ski any better. 

I have one word for you. Plyometrics, baby. 

Good time for someone to start a thread like this. I'm happy to get the ball rolling but don't want to take someone eles idea.

Lindsey demonstrating some off snow preperation.

Agility & quickness are two important things that can be honed in the off season.

There was an article in one of the ski magazines a few years back describing Daron Rahlves dryland routine.  He had a little obstacle course set up in his backyard that had some really good stuff.

I can't find a link for that, but here is a link to one of his other articles:

http://www.adventuresportsweekly.com/articles/september_08/9_15a_08.html

JF

Quote:

Originally Posted by 4ster 

Lindsey demonstrating some off snow preperation.

 

 

Agility & quickness are two important things that can be honed in the off season.

 

There was an article in one of the ski magazines a few years back describing Daron Rahlves dryland routine.  He had a little obstacle course set up in his backyard that had some really good stuff...

JF

http://tahoequarterly.com/2012/01/daron-rahlves-gets-you-pumped-for-ski-season/.

http://freeskier.com/stories/fitness-tips-how-sage-cattabriga-alosa-stays-top-his-game

Some more links. 

The interesting thing about agility and quickness training is how specific they are -- a runner can get better at a start, for instance, but that doesn't necessarily give them better reaction time as a linebacker.  What Vonn is doing obviously does have some specific crossover to skiing, and in fact if you sample a lot of ex-racers and coaches of the in-shape variety, trail running is often one of their off-snow activities.  Soccer is another good dryland activity.

Regularly in-line skating or using dry-land ski-simulation devices like harb carvers can really help to improve balance and can come close to skiing specific training.

There are so many ways to train for skiing. Mostly because there are so many different components involved in good skiing. Before going into details and offering specific exercises maybe we should separate them into some broad categories. Here's a few categories...

1. Stamina and aerobic fitness

2. Strength and Flexibility

3. Explosive power and strength at speed

4. Proprioceptive awareness and balance in motion

5. Tactical focus training

6. Technique and DIRT

So to start at the beginning,

Aerobic capacity and your anaerobic threshold change as you train. Often we see folks mis-understand that steady 70% of maximum effort is more beneficial than 90% efforts. Heart rates are the generally accepted way to measure effort. Beyond that lies the idea of teaching and training for transfer. Blading is similar to skiing but so are mountain trial riding, plyometric jumping, rope jumping, running and even walking if done at a brisk enough pace. The important part is staying in a target heart rate zone. Save the interval training for the power and strength training part of your training. Obviously, you should choose an activity that you enjoy, otherwise it gets tedious very quickly.

Strength and Flexibility can be separated into their own categories but they are very closely related. Weight lifting and resistance training alone will produce power but in a limited RoM. To offset this stretching should always precede and follow any strength training activities.

Explosive power and strength at speed sounds a bit intimidating to some but without the ability to move quickly and powerfully your skiing is limited. Plyometric training, sprinting, and even interval training force the body to work in the anaerobic realm. Ten seconds of energy are stored in the muscles and over time and a lot of training you can raise you anaerobic threshold and save that ten seconds of energy for when it's necessary.

Proprioceptic awareness and balance in motion training often includes Balance ball training, footwork drills (like hop scotch, lateral line hops, perturbation training, and even read / react drills (visual reaction drills), leap frog, hopping onto and off of picnic tables in the local park, rock hopping while train running, and just about any activity that requires us to jump would be considered this type of training.

Tactical focus training is mostly about choosing a line and sticking to that line choice. It can be Bob's now famous slow line fast. it can also be a more direct line as long as you can pull it off. The main thing to remember is to only use deliberate, disciplined and directionally relevent movements. Throw the rest of those unnecessary and often disruptive habitual moves into the trees and leave them there.

Technique and DIRT are perhaps the hardest thing to simulate off the snow. So early season skiing is when we see most of this training taking place. Even that needs to be done in stages though. Get used to being back on snow then worry about fefining your movements.

I am sure other can add a ton of ideas to this list but that is the beauty of sites like Epic,

Ski well,

JASP

In terms of aerobic threshold, recent studies have found High Intensity Interval training to be outstandingly beneficial. This seems to contradict the old steady 65 - 70% max idea as you work in short bursts at very high intensity. Even 3 x 20 seconds has been found to be majorly beneficial in improving oxygen uptake and far more so than traditional approaches. You can vary the work bouts to replicate the kind of times required for skiing and also vary the recovery periods. It's a method I've used for over 10 years, although it takes some commitment as it's not pleasant when you do it properly. I do anything from 5 to 10 sets of from 20 seconds to 2 minutes with 2 to 3 minutes recovery.

I also avoid pre event active stretching in the light of the correlation of stretching before an event to injury. The way the stretch reflex works can allow for unsafe movements when you start your work. I use mobility exercises after my warm up and save the other stretching until after training and in discreet flexibility sessions.

Getting back to what I understood was the prupose of this thread which was to identify exercises that have some direct bearing on some aspect of skiing rather than another general fitness dicussion, I have recently and almost by accident found using an upturned BOSU ball to be very effective. If you extend one leg and flex the other it not only creates a very good balance exercise but also is surprisingly effective in looking at how your legs are working in a kind of long leg/ short leg action. With a mirror in front I discovered some mechanical flaws in the way my worn out old right knee was moving. I was able to make some corrections and get a good feel for what was going on. I took it to the indoor snow this morning and had much better feed back for what was going on.

Adie, the idea was more to classify activities in six catagories. Mostly to avoid the usual I do this and it is the best for everyone else on the planet kind of posts. Bosu balance and perterbation training is a good example of balance training, it does very little for your stamina though. Weight machines do a lot for your muscle strength but free weights require us to balance the weight instead of just push / pull on a handle. Skating works some DIRT but does very little in the flexibility realm. So a comprehensive fitness program is required if you want to reach your highest performance levels in any sport. Even if your fitness goals are not to be in shape for the Olympics, overall finess levels are more often than not the single biggest factor when it comes to potential performance levels. That is why the USOTC develops specific fitness activities as well as general fitness foundation regimines for our Olympic athletes.

BTW, I too love my BOSU and Swiss Ball.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rod9301 

[Post moved to start a new thread/]

 

How about dryland exercises that help your skiing technique? Not necessarily to get stronger, but to get better?

JASP I certainly wasn't suggesting for one minute that a comprehensive programme wasn't essential. I train 5 times per week which at 55 isn't bad and work on a pretty structured programme. By the way I would add agility as a discreet part of the outline you present. What I was addressing was the above quote which maybe I misunderstood but which I thought was the intended focus of the new thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adie 

...High Intensity Interval training to be outstandingly beneficial. This seems to contradict the old steady 65 - 70% max idea as you work in short bursts at very high intensity...

There's a reason race teams like the Austrians and the U.S. spend so much time doing low-intensity aerobic base work.  There's also significant academic research behind it, and it's not out-moded.  Any regular workout routine is good though. 

In terms of skating, since the ski-simulation specialized skates were mentioned by TO, if you can stand the boredom I think they really do a great job simulating a lot of the lateral balance issues specific to skiing, while giving a good continuous workout as well.  Longboard skateboarding can be good in a similar vein, even though on it's face it's very different.  Someone using either I would encourage to try either regular MTB or even skatepark/bikepark  inline or MTB sessions to regularly confront some of the other balance transfer issues that skiing and riding present, while also working similar energy systems.  Even Nordic roller skis can be good in this regard.

I don't think I ever mentioned being outmoded or that it wasn't effective. The goals of World Cup racers are quite different to those of even the most dedicated of the rest of us plus they have somewhat more time to dedicate to it.

There is also an often false asumption that what is done by the some of these teams is necessaily the best. It may be and I can't comment on the US or Austrian teams specifically but I have experience working with other sports in the UK and have found that fottball (soccer as you call it) for example, is extremely conservative and resistant to change in all aspects of it's preparation; training, medicine, nutrition. It is years behind many other more forward thinking sports and yet is the richest and highest profile of all our sports.

I think if you look at the training of, for example the Norwegians, they work in quite a different way.

I was actually throwing in an idea of a proven succesful approach that not only works but is more time efficient for busy people. I hope I'm not meeting conservatism and intransigence here which I have sometimes found stifles many good ideas in threads! There are many equally valid solutions to most problems.

Incidentally the term 'old' in the post you highlighted refers to its historical status and is not a value judgement.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CTKook 

 

There's a reason race teams like the Austrians and the U.S. spend so much time doing low-intensity aerobic base work.  There's also significant academic research behind it, and it's not out-moded.  Any regular workout routine is good though. 

 

 

Absolutely correct!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adie 

I don't think I ever mentioned being outmoded or that it wasn't effective. The goals of World Cup racers are quite different to those of even the most dedicated of the rest of us plus they have somewhat more time to dedicate to it.

 

There is also an often false asumption that what is done by the some of these teams is necessaily the best. It may be and I can't comment on the US or Austrian teams specifically but I have experience working with other sports in the UK and have found that fottball (soccer as you call it) for example, is extremely conservative and resistant to change in all aspects of it's preparation; training, medicine, nutrition. It is years behind many other more forward thinking sports and yet is the richest and highest profile of all our sports.

 

I think if you look at the training of, for example the Norwegians, they work in quite a different way.

 

I was actually throwing in an idea of a proven succesful approach that not only works but is more time efficient for busy people. I hope I'm not meeting conservatism and intransigence here which I have sometimes found stifles many good ideas in threads! There are many equally valid solutions to most problems.

There is, not surprisingly given the stakes involved, an extensive literature on exercise physiology as it relates to the most effective way of training elite endurance athletes. CTKook is spot-on in his observation that they spend substantial time exercising at intensities below the lactate threshold. Interestingly, recent papers suggest very strongly that weekend warriors make the most rapid gains by doing the same thing. If you search in the archives over the past 8 months or so you will find a thread in which this is discussed in some detail, including many relevant references to the literature. Far from "conservatism and intransigence", these opinions are based on the most current research available, as well as the real world experience of coaches whose livelihood depends on the results they achieve.

Actually Adie, let's explore intervals for a minute. They start with a warm up at somewhere around 60-70% heart rates. Usually this equates to something like 120bpm. In between the 80% + anaerobic efforts there is a recovery segment where the heart rates must drop back below the anaerobic theshold. I feel it is important to also mention that this is not the same as sprint work where the effort during the anaerobic segment is all out effort and ends when you cannot match the last sprint time. To do this type of training effectively and safely BTW, you must have a aerobic base established.

As far as adding agility training to that list, I personally view it as a combination of explosive and speed work (3), propriocetic balance in motion (4), and DIRT training. That being said I have no problem adding agility to that list if it adds clarity to the discussion.

The conservatism/ intransigence comment was not aimed at the validity of the training methods you describe and it is frustrating when people do not adequately read posts. It is aimed at general observations and experiences of some approaches I have noticed on Epic in the past. As I say there are many valid approaches to training that are effective and this is one. You may have missed the research I am speaking of and I don't have details of its authors to hand, suffice to say it warranted an hour long TV programme over here and backs up similar eveidence over a long period of time.

Like I say I can't speak of the teams described but our soccer teams to have coaches whose livelihoods depend on their results. This doesn't mean they are always at the cutting edge. That's all I am saying.

Adie, can you find out the name of the documentary? I am not skeptical as much as wanting to provide our readers with the opportunity to review that research for themselves. That IMO is how Epic can best serve them. As far as training, and what works best, everyone has different needs and goals. That doesn't mean they should dismiss the regimines used by world class athletes though. Somewhere in those workouts they might find something that will help them eliminate a weakness in their own regimines.

Anyways, this discussion has shifted a bit too far away from actual activities. I didn't intend to shift the discussion so much into theory. The six ,or seven classifications were offered as a framework to suggest each activity has a primary focus and how every activity is limited in it's relationship to the overall fitness needs of skiers at all levels. Simply stated the limited scope of a single dry land training activity suggest a combination of many different activities is superior to doing just one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by justanotherskipro 

...

As far as adding agility training to that list, I personally view it as a combination of explosive and speed work (3), propriocetic balance in motion (4), and DIRT training. ...

The thought occurs that these are all kinda like different taste elements, and then activities are kinda like soups versus grilling versus whatever other food categories you might have.

For an activity menu, you've got rolling dryland (bike/mtb/inline/dirtbike/skate), team sports (soccer, basketball, tennis), meadow skipping (trail running/hiking/etc.), water (SUP, "regular" surfing, kayak, etc.), and then linear gym/track training programs (running cones, etc.) and non-linear ones like some types of yoga.  You can probably get pretty good prep pulling from any of these categories. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by justanotherskipro 

 As far as training, and what works best, everyone has different needs and goals. That doesn't mean they should dismiss the regimines used by world class athletes though. Somewhere in those workouts they might find something that will help them eliminate a weakness in their own regimines.

 

Certainly don't disagree with this.

The programme was in the Horizon season on BBC 2 back in April and called 'The Truth About Training.' The other evidence was around the same time but like I say I don't have the authors names. I read it at the time but surprisingly can't find where I might have saved it.

One comment related to the recent discussion.  I have had the opportunity over the past 15 years to be able to work out at a training facility used by the Canadian National XC, Biathalon and DH teams, and observe and emulate what they do to some extent.   Although I'm no where near the level of any of these athletes, I have found the approach taken by the high level  athletes to be very beneficial for my older body.  Different level, different goals, different time commitment, but  similar exercises and strategy.   Of course, there are substantial differences in focus between what the xc/biathalon people do as compared to the DHers, but there are also some similarities as well.  In short, the DHers do more explosive power work relative to what the XCers do, but they all do exercises across all of the general areas discussed by justanotherskipro.

I've done some variations on this..

Quote:

Originally Posted by CTKook .

 

...For an activity menu, you've got rolling dryland (bike/mtb/inline/dirtbike/skate), team sports (soccer, basketball, tennis), meadow skipping (trail running/hiking/etc.), water (SUP, "regular" surfing, kayak, etc.), and then linear gym/track training programs (running cones, etc.) and non-linear ones like some types of yoga.  You can probably get pretty good prep pulling from any of these categories. 

Since the o.p. also was asking in the context of actually improving skiing technique, I'd also further rank these categories in terms of technique help.

MTB, surfing, and some approaches to inline probably have the most direct technique crossover.  The specialty inline "ski carvers" are probably best for simulating skiing's lateral balance issues.  All of these have variations on carving and drifting.  All also have some potential for movement confusion -- for instance, your hips do roughly the opposite in MTB as they do in a ski turn, though both use a version of angulation.  Depending on whether surfers surf front foot, back foot, or both, their balance has more or less similarity to skiing and riding.  But, a good surfer who's never seen snow generally can cross over fairly quickly. 

Gym routines are at the bottom -- if you can ski already, and are simply working specific physical attributes, great, but technique-wise the crossover isn't there.  A "bosu master" who's never seen snow is just some guy who's never seen snow.  Meadow skipping, soccer and tennis are sort of in-between.  My bias is that trail running, if you emphasize running on varied surfaces like streambeds, is close to as useful as rolling/sliding activities.  Soccer is in there close behind.  Hiking is good prep for the general physical demands of skiing, particular steep hiking on rugged terrain, but down closer to gym work for crossover unless you turn the downhill portion into trail running.

I think 4ster wrote this a while back, but it is very true and relevant here:

"Anything that makes you a better athlete will make you a better skier."

I've tried a variation on that Jonny Moseley dryland training routine by doing steps two down at a time at a football stadium. Counter and sink low into the landing on each step, then pop up, extend. and counter the other way. Kinda like doing the twist in the air, with a lot of flexion and extension. That and running back up to the top of the stairs makes for a pretty good conditioning exercise as well.

And this guy knows a thing or two worth checking out: Ted Ligety Knows No Off-Season

That Moseley video is always impressive.

Last winter I had an 8 week lay-off with a torn rotator cuff & a fractured humeral head.  During that time, I spent a lot of time on the Skiers Edge machine.  When done correctly this machine covers most of the things that have been mentioned in this thread.  Stance, balance, explosive power, aerobic & anaerobic conditioning etc.  As with everything, it is a plus to have a coach or trainer to help you along.

Lucky for me, I have my friend Victor who is a sponsored member of the Skiers Edge Masters team & a former Masters Slalom World Champion.  Here is a short clip from last winter:

If you are confined or restricted in anyway, simulators like this can be a benefit.  Of course, I will say the same thing that I tell all the kids when it comes to off season dryland...

"JUST GO OUTSIDE & PLAY!"