Taking the time to get in shape for the ski season can have a huge impact on your performance. By working to improve your health, your energy, and your confidence, you’ll be better prepared to take on the mountains when the season kicks off. Read on for some great tips on how to get your body into ski shape!

As a Ski Expert for Curated, I’ve helped hundreds of customers find the right gear for their individual needs, sharpening my ski expertise along the way. Away from my desk, I work as a personal trainer and as a certified CrossFit coach in my local community. It’s put me in close contact with hundreds of people, each with unique needs, and helping them achieve their fitness goals has been the most satisfying part of the job.

Before we start, it’s important to note that before beginning any training plan, check in with your doctor or a certified training professional to ensure you’re meeting your personal needs.

Start At The Top: Get Your Mind Into Ski Shape

Taking the time to read this article is a great first step to improving your fitness, both for skiing and overall in everyday life. However, keep in mind that fitness doesn’t happen overnight, and is instead a lifelong commitment. For the best results, it’s important to have a long term goal in mind, whether you’re simply getting ready for a ski trip you’ve booked, or the entire season in general.

Much like how you can’t learn to ski moguls or perfect carve turns after only a day or two, improving your fitness takes consistent and dedicated work in order to see results. While any work that you do is better than nothing, most fitness professionals will agree that it takes at least 4-6 weeks before you can begin to see noticeable and lasting results. Beyond that timeframe, it’s good for your body (and mind!) to change things up.

There are great benefits to changing the days you work out, the rep schemes, and even the exercises. Adaptation provides the benefits we’re looking for!

Start At The Bottom: Improve Your Foundation

Skiing is a very leg-intensive activity, as anyone who has done a mogul run from top to bottom will tell you. While any proper training program should be balanced between upper and lower body exercises, this article will focus on the lower body exercises that will most help you as a skier.

These exercises are a combination of not only strength building, but also functional and dynamic moves that will carry over to the slopes. Skiing is an ever-changing sport; no two runs, and indeed no two turns, are alike. Numerous variables are at play as you ski, and skiers have to factor everything into how they move their body on the snow.

Squats

Let’s start with the king of exercises, the squat. Any training program should begin with the largest muscle groups, and your quads, hamstrings, and glutes are the largest muscles in the body. The squat is one of the most basic movements we do as humans. Any time we sit, or get up from sitting, we’re squatting. There should be no difference between squatting with weight on your back and standing up from the toilet, aside from the load and thereby the intensity.

There are many different kinds of squats, from a loaded barbell. to holding dumbbells or kettlebells, to machines, to air squats with just your body weight. They’re all good, and everyone can benefit from all kinds of squats. A barbell back squat is the most common style, and allows you to add the most weight for the most strength gains.

Point of Performance: If you keep your chest and shoulders up while squatting, it’s perfectly normal for your knees to travel over your toes. I recommend 4 sets of 8 reps to build strength.

Modifications: If you’re struggling with getting low in a squat, set up a box or stack of plates high enough until your legs are parallel to the floor while seated on them. Stand with your back to the box with your feet shoulder-width apart, then simply have a seat (squat) and just stand up. Practice this until you feel comfortable, then begin to add weight. Eventually, you’ll be able to move through the range of motion without anything underneath you.

Deadlift

If the squat is the king of all exercises, the deadlift is the queen. It may even be more functional, there is nothing more basic in life than picking something up from the ground. Learning to safely and effectively stand up with a weight is one of the most primal movements we do as humans.

Point of Performance: When you set up for a deadlift, think of setting your hips back as you reach down for the weight, and keep your eyes forward on the horizon throughout the entire movement. Your shoulders and hips should rise at the same time, with your spine straight. If they don’t, back off the weight and practice the movement until they do. 4 sets of 8 reps will build strength in the deadlift.

Modifications: Using dumbbells or kettlebells to hold the weight to your side—rather than in front of you—can make it easier to stay balanced. Single-leg deadlifts are a great unilateral exercise to work on having better control and coordination.

Lunges

Like a horizontal squat, the lunge is a basic movement of rotating your hips along a vertical axis. Two added benefits of a lunge are (1) moving your body through space, as in a walking lunge, which incorporates more coordination than most weight bearing exercises, and transfers over wonderfully to skiing; and (2) training the legs unilaterally, which prevents a dominant side from compensating for a weaker side, which also translates to skiing.

Point of Performance: Focus on keeping your chest up and your weight evenly distributed between your feet. I prefer walking lunges because they are more functional than stationary ones. Perform 4 sets of lunging for 100 feet.

Modifications: Try a simple split squat with your legs split apart, and squat down until one knee touches the floor, then drive up. If this is too hard, you can support yourself with a box or a chair.

Planks

It’s impossible to separate your legs from your core, as most of the muscles in your leg attach to your hip girdle in some way. In fact, strengthening your core until you can hold yourself prone has many benefits, as almost every movement in sports (including skiing) starts at the core. The traditional plank (holding yourself above the floor using your toes and your elbows/hands) works wonders, and should be a staple in everybody’s training. Side planks are also a fantastic addition, and put a little more emphasis on the obliques and parts of the hip that most weight training neglects.

Point of Performance: Focus on drawing your belly button and abs up and into your stomach while holding the plank. Perform 4 sets, holding for one minute each.

Modification: The plank is an accessible movement that most people should be able to accomplish, albeit for different time frames based on fitness level. Start small by pushing yourself up from the floor even if it’s only for a few seconds. Over time, you’ll find that you can increase the amount of time that your hips and knees are off the floor.

Box/Broad Jumps

Jumping is an excellent way to increase your coordination and balance, as well as your cardiovascular endurance at the same time. There are two kinds of jumps that I recommend.

Box jumps are where you bound from the floor up to an elevated position, usually a plyometric box, but it could also be a stack of weight plates or a bench. Broad jumps are when you jump forward and try to cover as much distance as you can.

Point of Performance: When jumping, you want to focus on keeping your weight evenly distributed on both feet throughout the entire exercise, and absorbing the impact with your knees. Perform 4 sets of 10-20 reps for tremendous cardiovascular benefits.

Modifications: For box jumps, an easy modification is to jump to a lower height. For broad jumps, simply jumping over a line on the floor can have great benefits.

Get Your Cardio Right: Increase Your Ski Readiness

While strength is an important component of ski fitness, cardiovascular health is equally as important. We’ve all been there: stopped on the side of a trail halfway down a run, leaning over on our poles, sucking wind. So what cardio workout should you do to avoid that?

The best answer is: Whatever you want to do, whether it’s running, biking, HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training), swimming, hiking, group exercise, or anything else that raises your heart rate! It’s only going to be effective if you stick with it, so pick something that you like, or at least something that you dislike the least.

Putting Everything Together: Consistency

Now that you know what to do, how do you put everything together into a cohesive and effective workout routine? The first thing you need to figure out is how often you can commit to training each week. The best training program is the one that you are going to stick to, and if it doesn’t fit in your personal schedule, then it’s going to be ineffective and useless. Here are the most common training splits:

Whole Body

As the name says, you’re going to work your entire body every time you train. This will involve the most exercises, so you may want to limit the number of sets per exercise to 2-3 max in order to fit it into a reasonable amount of time. You will also want to let your body recover after each session. I would not recommend doing a whole body workout more than 2-3 times per week, depending on your fitness level.

Example Week:

Upper Body/Lower Body

Splitting up your workouts can allow you to train more often, while still letting your muscles recover from sessions. It also allows you to accomplish more exercises, or to up the intensity of each session, because you’re only targeting half the muscle groups and therefore have more time for recovery afterwards. I would recommend doing each split twice a week, so this would total 4 days in the gym a week—two upper body days and two lower body days, in alternating fashion.

Example Week:

Push/Pull

This is a more advanced split. On one day, you do the exercises that involve pushing weight (squat, bench press, shoulder press, etc), and on the other day, you do the exercises where you pull weight (deadlift, pullups, rows, etc). The idea is the same as splitting upper and lower body: By separating complementary movements, you can train more often while allowing for proper recovery. Some people also split lower body movements into their own day, so the split becomes Push/Pull/Legs. This allows for greater emphasis on each muscle group, but means that each split should be done only once per week.

Example Week:

The Finale: Go Skiing!

After a few months of consistency, your legs and your lungs will be stronger than ever. However, the best way to get in shape for skiing is to ski more! So, get out there and enjoy yourself, because after all, that’s what it’s all about.

If you have any more questions, or are on the hunt for personalized ski recommendations that will suit your unique needs, chat with me or another Curated Winter Sports Expert for free, personalized advice. Now, get out and enjoy your newfound fitness on the slopes!