Specific Strength for Ski Touring

These are some training sessions that I am thinking about and performing to prepare for ski touring this winter. Even as a full time cross country skier, ski touring has very specific demands that I do not experience in my daily training. Subsequently, there are some types of training that one can utilize to simulate these unique demands in the off season, in order to increase capacity and endurance both on the uphill and the downhill during the winter.

Some thoughts:

Specific strength for skimo and backcountry skiing can have a big impact in improving your overall touring endurance and speed, ascending and descending muscular durability, and injury prevention, especially early season. This specific strength training is focused on creating a strength and endurance adaptation to the muscles key to ski touring, that may not get this type of stimulation through your typical running, biking, swimming, and off season endurance training. This includes primarily the glutes, quads, hamstrings, calfs, and core. 

1. Uphill hiking/running with poles

This is probably the offseason training with the most translation to ski touring. The goal is to run/hike with poles and climb as much elevation as you can. Focus is to  utilize the entire body starting from the core and connecting out to the legs and upper body, to create power and propulsion through both your poles and legs as you would in skimo. The simplest way to think about this is to pretend you are skinning. Yes it may feel funny, and will probably look funny, but you will be thanking yourself when you are able to crush your tours starting day one of the ski season. If you have access to a local ski area, climbing to the top as directly as possible will prove effective in strengthening your uphill capacity and muscular endurance when it comes time for winter. If you don't have access to a mountain, thats not a problem. You can achieve significant vertical by performing laps at whatever type of hill, stairs, etc is available to you. This will also give you the added benefit of exposure to the contrasting muscle load as you transition from uphill to downhill, which is a stimulus that is very prevalent in skimo. 

Once you have built up some hours, you can increase the stimulus by carrying weight. I'd start with no more than 10 lbs and then work your way up. This will overload these muscles, giving you an even greater strength and endurance adaptation. 

Frequency:

2-3 times a week for 1hr each

add weight once performed minimum two weeks without weight. 

2. Steep downhill running/hiking

Skiing downhill effectively requires significant core and lower body strength and endurance. one way to simulate this is with steep downhill running or hiking. Lucky for you, if you are performing the specific uphill training recommendation then you have no choice but to go downhill! Again, the challenge is to take the most direct and steepest route you are comfortable with, as this will load the lower body muscles most effectively. Carrying weight will increase the stimulus.

Frequency:

2-3 times a week (paired with the uphill training)

3. Core training

Here is a quick routine consisting of five exercises targeting the entire core from the hips, abdominals, and shoulders. I like to think about core training improving my ability to leverage my center of mass and also my ability to transfer this power from my center of mass out towards my limbs and into the ground to produce force. This will translate to increasing your capacity and efficiency in all modes of human locomotion including skimo.

This type of routine should total 15-20 minutes and can be performed as often as you want. There is no limit to core training. Everything can be scaled to your ability.  Wherever you are that is great, the benefit is the progression.

Here are the five exercises broken down:

Plank Pull Throughs: 1 min es

focus on keeping hips level (avoid shifting) as pull weight from one side to the other. Weight should be fairly light. Th movement isn't about the pulling of the weight but the stabiliztion required in the core and hips to shift off of one arm and pull the weight through. Can be substituted with simply lifting one arm up, or holding a forearm plank for 60 sec.

Palloff Press: 1 min es, can do single leg as well

Keep the torso stacked above the hips as press arms outwards. Can hold for 10-15sec then reset, or do continuous pressing. Play aroud with single leg variations as well focusing on maintaining that stacked and lengthened position from the torso through the pelvis and into the hips.

Stick V -Ups: x10, 1 rep is when stick returns to overhead

Can scale with performing v-ups or simply a v-up hold for 60 sec.

Single Leg Lowers: x15 es

Trying to engage the transversus abdominis, which is a muscle underneath the abdominals important for pelvic stabilization. I find it helps to actually think about letting my abdominals go while maintaining a neutral pelvis when pulling up, as this forces that contraction of the transversus abdominis that lies underneath. Feels like the muscles you use to keep your self from peeing your pants.

Kettle Bell Rotations: x45 sec es

Keep stacked position from ribcage, pelvis, hip, as rotate kettle bell around you. kettle bell should be light (I'm using 15lbs in the video). Can progress to single leg.

Here is a visual of the routine (in order):