Benefits of Winter Skiing/Riding Training: Prepare for your best summer now!

Staying fit in winter can have a huge benefit when it’s comes to your pre season next spring. If you are a tournament skier or wakeboarder and not training off water, especially in winter, you are can immediately start preparing for a Personal Best next spring!!!

Off water training 2-3 times per week can drastically help:

1. Gets rid of those imbalances developed by skiing/riding all summer. Fixing these can help improve your natural movements, as well as lower the risk of injury

2. Help maintain the strength you’ve built up over the summer. This will help you not only maintain that important body position next spring, but enable you to recover the position at your harder passes/tricks.

3. Improves endurance and recovery time. This will enable you to get more passes in on those earlier sets in spring.

4. Keeps your focused on that end goal.

The earlier you can get into a routine the better. You can achieve this by either the aid of weights or with body weight exercises, these are the ones that have been most beneficial to us in the past;

Weighted Exercises:

Dead Lifts- helps put the body under tension, and helps your upper body prepare getting into position.

Bent Over Row - Builds the back muscles most used while on the water.

Dumbbell Chest Press - helps balance the back muscles, and using dumbbells help build those balancing muscles in the shoulders.

Dumbbell Shoulder Press - helps build grip, as this comes from the shoulders, while using DB helps stabilise the shoulders while under stress

Squats- great to build the lower back and legs, that help support us through almost every movement on the water.

If you don’t have access to a gym, or want a quick easier way to improve endurance and stability try this body weight circuit:

1. Over hand close grip pull ups

2. Squats

3. Push ups, hands close as possible!

4. Bulgarian Split Squat

5. Burpees

6. Leg Raises superset with Doral Raise

On water (when the weather permits);

1. Back to back passes focusing on those basic body positions and movements. 2. Limit time in the water, not only to stay warm but help build endurance.

3. Warm up before hand: using the body weight exercises above can help build endurance while getting warmth to the muscle, this will help avoid injury. 4. Be strict with yourself & your technique, making sure your not forming bad habits.

Lastly, we always recommend seeing a professional before undertaking any weight lifting or physical exercise, we highly recommend Jack Eyers for online support and programs. Jack is a Slalom & Wakeboarder himself and has been working with us for over 5 years, along with that he is currently training for the Tokyo Paralympic. He has a huge amount of knowledge when preparing for the competition season “During the winter off season I focus on hypertrophy, then during the season we focus on strength, speed & power”... Check out his Instagram @jackeyersGB