Winter Conditioning By Jeffrey Libengood

Snow is here and it’s time to hit the slopes. Whether you ski or board, the ill prepared (and unfortunate accident victims), are more susceptible to the most common injury on the slopes, the knee.

For those of you interested in specifics… the most frequently injured area of the knee injured in skiing is the Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) because as the knee is flexed, and the ACL is stressed, a simultaneous action occurs in surrounding ligamentous structures. The medial and lateral co-ligaments (MCL, LCL) slacken and the force of the ACL increases due to its responsibility to restrict/prevent the thigh bone from sliding forward over the shin bone (which is what happens in a closed chain movement). The primary position of skiing is in a knees flexed, closed chain position. Sure we can’t avoid all accidents but many injuries can be prevented with proper preparation. The Jeff’s Fitness winter conditioning advice will help improve your conditioning thereby lessening your risk of injury. You have to train the tissues the way you will require them to work. You wouldn’t take a knife to a gunfight!

A 2-3 minute ballistic, run down the slopes in a dynamic, semi squat and a sagittal and/or lateral suspensioning position:

It’s important to prevent bad skiing form by compensating in search of a position to prevent the burn or hide from weaknesses. This unnecessarily overloads other areas increasing your risk of injury. A good plan should have two main goals:

Several areas require attention:

1) You require conditioned legs! 
These are your bread and butter so you’d better have them in shape to handle the type of skiing or boarding you want to do and the length you want to perform. Great exercises are all squat variations, lunge variations, step-ups, lateral hurdle hops, wind sprinting, running steps, glute/ham/gastroc raises, Plyometrics and stretch band walking.
  

2) You require a conditioned core.  
You’ve heard the song, ‘the hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone…’ It’s true. Through a myriad of support systems, your shoulder is connected to your ankle, meaning that your core is linked to or involved with all stabilization. Proper core recruitment attenuates forces away from the spine through the musculature system. If not, those forces end up in your spine and joints!

Your core is defined as your entire trunk / torso region, inclusive of the head , minus the extremities. Awesome core exercises overhead barbell/dumbbell squatting, lunging and Olympic lifting, wood-chop patterns, standing band abdominal flexions, overhead medicine ball tosses, medicine ball oblique tosses, Turkish get-ups, Romanian deadlifts, medicine ball explosion back extension tosses, stretch-band hyperextensions.

Get your core up to par to meet the demands you will place on your body.
  

3) You require stable joints.  
Improving performance via improved conditioning means subjecting your body in the gym to routines that mimic your sport environment. The key? Mimic movement and duration requirements after correcting deficiencies! A knee extension and leg press exercise do not, I repeat…DO NOT mimic your skiing or snowboarding requirements. Both exercises are open chain. Skiing is primarily ‘closed chain’. Joints, muscle mechanics, forces and actions for open and closed chain movements are somewhat different. Machines are not three-dimensional which allows postural and stabilizer muscles and the nervous system to catch some zzzz’s while you ‘train’. The slopes demand the opposite.

I like using balance balls, wobble boards and ballistic reaction/bracing stabilization drills.
   

4) You require improving basic strength.  
People always talk about balance and the many balance apparatus lately but if you don’t have strength in its purest form, you are fighting a losing battle. I believe it takes a variety of protocols to achieve varied conditioning standards. However, it takes strength training to achieve strength! Therefore, your program should always have a basic strength phase (preparatory or pre-season). It should include phases for adjusting percentages for in-season, post season and recovery. To train for strength lower the reps and increase the volume of sets. Six to ten sets of 2-5 reps with a 3-5 minute rest between will do the trick.
  

5) You require improved stamina.  
You need to develop the energy system that you will mostly use when you ski. For most this is the short-term energy system…up to 2-3 minutes of continuous knee bending, dynamic movement, stairs, extended sets, drills, conditioning, wind sprints, versaclimber, tire/sled dragging, etc.
  

6) It’s time to create some power.
Now that you have acquired some strength, joint stability and stamina, it’s time to create some power. Power is simply moving mass quickly to create greater force. Plyometrics, often referred to as ‘Stretch-shortening cycle training’ and tempo manipulation of standard closed chain exercises is what the doctor ordered. Don Chu has a good book on Plyometric Training.

Also, Olympic lifting, or weightlifting, tire flips and speed-strength training with bands or chains (reactive and contrast method).

Sports improvement (aside from skill training), in any sport, requires enhancing and strengthening movement patterns of that sport. Since skiing heavily involves squatting, bending and rotation, it would greatly behoove you to incorporate movement pattern enhancing exercises.

There are thousands of exercises available to increase strength and stability but some more of my favorites standbys never to be replaced are: squat patterns (front, back, split, jumping, overhead, medicine ball twister squats and Swiss ball (if you feel compelled)), lunges (multi-directional, walking lunges with a twist, Swiss ball lunges, overhead lunges), bench step-ups, box-step crossovers and reverse hyperextensions. The Fitter ski simulator apparatus is also good. Deadlifts are also a very valuable exercise. Standing Tellekinetic hamstring curls are great. But the greatest of all hamstring exercises is the glute/ham/gastroc raise. The hamstring crosses two joints and the best way to work the hams is with both joints that they cross working. That’s what the glute/ham/gastroc raise does. Medicine ball lateral hops and lateral hops with a forward progression, drop jumps and medicine ball back extension tosses are great for power. Additionally, low cable rope pulls with a rotation (1 or 2 arm) will really work you well.

A well structured, 8-10 week program with not more than 4-6 exercises and 20 total sets per workout 3 times per week that mimic performance, involving as much musculotendinous and nervous system as possible at once...demanding a lot of postural, stabilizer and equalizer musculature activity, emphasizing strength, power, rotation, squatting, bending and lasting 30-180 seconds in duration, and manipulation of tempos will get you in great shape and ensure improved performance. The rest is downhill!

Jeffrey Libengood runs the popular Jeff's Fitness center in Shibuya, Tokyo. 

To find out more about Jeff's Fitness Center in Shibuya, visit their English website here.