Personal Fitness Important
Before Hitting Slopes

You've fitted your ski boots with custom footbeds, ironed fresh wax into your ski bases, and rigged your minivan with chunky new snow tires. So everything's tuned for a wintertime romp in the snow, right? Well, how are your hamstrings?

Winter sports enthusiasts heading to the mountains to ski, snowboard, or snowshoe this winter need to keep in mind that there's more to getting ready than clothing and equipment, according to SnowSports Industries America (SIA). In the snow, fitness is as important as everything else. But not everyone is getting the message.

"I think it's fair to say that most recreational skiers aren't as fit as they need to be when they hit the slopes," says Helen Olsson, health and fitness editor at Skiing Magazine. "If you're going to run a 10K, you get ready for it. But you don't see a lot of alpine skiers preparing ahead of time."

Sore legs, aching back, buttocks unfit for sitting. These are the rewards of three days of hard skiing to those who haven't properly prepared their bodies. To avoid such unpleasantness, don those training shoes and start exercising well before the snow begins to fall.

But where to begin? Stretching, of course, is important for lengthening and limbering muscles in your legs, trunk, arms, and neck. It's a good idea to stretch every day, before and after strenuous workouts. But according to Ron Kip, director of athlete preparation for the U.S. Ski Team, to really get yourself prepared you need to do some aggressive resistance training as well. For alpine skiers and snowboarders, that means concentrating on strength-building workouts for the major muscle groups of the lower body: the quads and gluteus maximus.

"We also work a lot on the hamstrings," says Kip. "We shoot for a hamstring-to-quad strength ratio of 60 to 65 percent, for injury prevention and to stabilize the knee joint. It's very difficult for our guys, because their quads are so strong."

But that doesn't mean that the recreational skier's relative thigh weakness gets him off the hook when it comes to quad/hamstring balance. "About the only way to improve that ratio is in the weight room," says Kip.

While you're at the gym, find a bench or a mattress and do some crunches, leg lifts, and other exercises that work your abdomen and lower back. Skiing and snowboarding require a stabilized upper body that constantly faces down the fall line, often working against the lateral forces swinging your boards across the hill. "Somebody who doesn't have a strong midsection is going to have a hard time looking down the hill," says Kip.

It's also important to keep an eye out for the less obvious dimensions of your conditioning program, like right-to-left muscle symmetry if you're a snowboarder who constantly uses your rear foot to steer and, whether you ski or ride, the strength of small muscles like the tibialias anterior (the muscle that pulls your toes up). According to

Kip, this muscle "is especially important for women who wear high heels a lot" and therefore don't use it much while walking around on the street.

If you're a cross country skier, snowshoer, or even a snowboarder who likes to hike to the top of the halfpipe rather than use the lift, your strength conditioning should be tempered with healthy doses of endurance training. Though the muscle groups used in these aerobic sports are mostly the same as those used by alpine skiers, "the difference is in how you train the muscle," says Kip.

"Whereas the training regimen of our alpine skiers looks like a football player's, our Nordic skiers' workouts look more like what a runner would do." The result being, "much bigger upper bodies than in the past."

In fact, Kip recommends running, swimming, or cycling whether on the road or on a stationary bike, as a way to emphasize the aerobic efficiency of your muscles. In the weight room, cross country skiers and snowshoers seeking greater muscle endurance should do more repetitions with less weight than what an alpine skier might use. And don't forget the additional muscle groups that are central to these self-propulsive sports: the calves if you're a snowshoer or classic nordic skier, and the triceps and lats if you skate ski or use your poles a lot.