Exercise for Skiing

The exercise illustrated to the left is often cited as the way to prepare for a skiing holiday. You adopt a sitting position (minus the seat) against a wall and hold it until your thighs cannot take any more. And this achieves? Well, not a lot really. It will make your quads burn a bit and possibly give some small strength boost. However the quadriceps are not the only muscles used in skiing, nor even the most important.

Skiing requires aerobic fitness, flexibility and physical strength. Improving these can help improve your skiing. Concentrating on one muscle will not.

If you want to be able to ski all day then regular aerobic exercise such as running, cycling or swimming is the best plan. Doing one of these three times a week is probably all the training most people need to get the most out of their skiing holiday.

If you want to do more to help your skiing you need to plan a program including both strength and flexibility straining. The strength training should concentrate on core strength and stability as well as all the leg muscles. Squats are ideal for this and should form a significant part of any weights programme for skiing. A programme of stretching should accompany the weight training, but static stretches should not be done before a weights session. The programme can also include plyometrics, interval training etc.

You can obviously take your training as far as you like - it depends what you want to get out of your skiing. World Cup racers train full time whilst one week a year skiers just need a basic level aerobic fitness.

How to be healthy...

A certain major breakfast cereal manufacturer has just started an advertising campaign promoting the three steps to a healthier lifestyle. 1. Eat their cereal, 2. Eat more fruit and 3. Drink more water. I'm sure anyone living in the UK knows what I'm talking about and I can't help thinking they've missed out something pretty vital there. If you want to get/stay healthy - DO SOME EXERCISE.

An improved diet might well let you lose weight, and it is certainly a step in the right direction, but if you sit in an office all day and on the sofa all evening you will never really be fit and healthy. Food is often blamed (and rightly) for health problems, but the last few decades have also seen a decline in the amount of exercise that people, and particularly children, take. Walking to school or work, playing outside and manual jobs have all become less common and the result is a society growing outwards.

An active holiday of any kind can be great way to kick start a fitter lifestyle. You can exercise to prepare for the trip, exercise while you are there, e.g. by skiing every day, and when you come home full of energy it is easier to keep up the momentum and keep exercising. Skiing is one example, but there are hundreds of ways to be active - the important thing is to get into the habbit of being active regularly, even if only for twenty minutes or half an hour.