STAY SAFE ON THE SLOPES
Preparation is key to avoid injury
Washington Post
It was the easiest first day of any of my 21 ski seasons in Jackson, Wyo.: two hours on intermediatelevel groomed runs at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. Still wearing a cast after surgery seven weeks earlier to repair a shattered wrist, I enjoyed taking it easy. Except the next morning revealed that I hadn’t taken it easy enough: I awoke unable to stand up straight and feeling like an ice pick was embedded in a longago herniated disc. I tried massage, acupuncture and physical therapy before resorting to an MRI and a course of steroids. It was almost five weeks before I was able to ski again, and I did so gingerly for the rest of the season.
It wasn’t until after my wrist was healed and I was able to return to my usual physical activities that I realized my mistake: Because of my broken wrist, I had started ski season without doing any of my usual strength training. “You can’t just expect to come off the couch, or even from yoga, spin classes or running, and ski,” says Crystal Wright, a former U.S. ski team member, the winner of the 2012 Freeskiing World Tour and a Jackson-based personal trainer. “At best you’ll be sore and at worst you’ll hurt yourself. Strength training will make your vacation more enjoyable.”
If you’ve got a ski vacation planned, here are suggestions regarding training and equipment to make your time on the slopes safer and more enjoyable.
Pay special attention to your core and glutes
“Core strength is involved in every part of skiing,” says Sue Kramer, the author of Be Fit to Ski: The Complete
Guide to Alpine Skiing Fitness and a Professional Ski Instructors of America examiner. Kramer recommends exercises such as planks and bridges before advancing into movements with a rotational component.
“Skiing subjects your core to a lot of rotational forces, so that’s what you want to strengthen,” she says. Rotational core exercises include moves as simple as holding a ski pole with both hands above your head, then twisting at the hip while keeping your feet in place. And then there’s what Kramer calls the “snow angel.”
“Instead of making an angel in the snow, do it on the floor, with your legs and arms just a couple of inches off the ground,” she says. “It sounds easy until you try it.
When it comes to legs, don’t focus only on your quads. Kramer says a quick change of direction on skis will get them to fire, and “without any hamstring strength to counter them, the knee can be pulled out of alignment.” Thirty-two percent of all ski injuries are to the knee, according to the most recent report from the National Ski Areas Association’s 10-Year Interval Injury Study conducted during the 2010-11 season.
Other leg muscles to work on are the gluteus maximus and the gluteus medius. You know the former as your butt. The latter, on the outside of the hip, is often overlooked, although it’s one of the most important for skiers, says Wright.
Clamshells — lying on one’s side with legs bent, and raising and lowering the top leg — are the simplest and easiest way to strengthen the gluteus medius. To work your hamstrings, butt and quads, try side and lateral lunges and split and sumo squats.
Get your heart rate up for short bursts of time
“Skiing is an interval sport,” says Bill Fabrocini, who has trained U.S. Ski Team athletes and developed two online ski-fitness video programs. “You make turns for one to three minutes, and then you recover.” Fabrocini’s clients often walk uphill on a treadmill raise to between 3 and 10 degrees for about two minutes; the goal is to work up to about eight two-minute intervals with about two minutes of rest in between. He says how you elevate your heart rate isn’t important as long as you get it up.
Work up to impact exercises
Jumping helps develop your agility, which helps you prepare for the dynamic nature of skiing. But “if you’re not used to impact and you start jumping, you can hurt yourself,” says Fabrocini. When you feel you have a base level of strength and are ready for impact, Fabrocini suggests starting with two-legged jumps (side to side and front to back) and working up to one-legged jumps.
Improve your balance with single-leg exercises
“Good balance helps protect your knees,” Kramer says. “A simple yoga tree pose” — with one sole placed high inside the opposite leg — “is a great place to start.” Once you’re comfortable with that, progress to standing on one foot for a minute (maybe even on a Bosu ball), then to one-legged squats and hops.
Take a lesson, even if you’re a good skier
“If you’re a beginner, a lesson allows you to benefit from a professional showing and telling you,” says Dave Byrd, director of risk and regulatory affairs at the National Ski Areas Association, a trade association that represents more than 300 alpine resorts. “Good skiers can think of it as a refresher and also get tips about the mountain from a professional.”
Take care of your gear and ditch the old-school long skis
Thirty years ago, the most common ski injury was a mid-shaft fracture of the tibia, but now, because of advances in boots and bindings, it’s very uncommon, according to Jasper Shealy, professor emeritus of industrial and systems engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology who has researched ski injuries for more than 40 years. If this injury happens now, he says, “it’s because of poorly adjusted or maintained equipment.” Have your bindings professionally set, and be honest about your skiing level.
Wear a helmet
Helmets have not reduced the incidence of ski-related fatalities. “You’re going to need more than a helmet if you run into a solid object like a tree,” Shealy says. But they are extremely effective at preventing head injuries. One of Shealy’s studies concluded that, as helmet usage increased between 1995 and 2015, potentially serious head injuries decreased from 4.2 percent of all ski injuries (1995) to 3 percent (2015) of all injuries.