The Warm-up: Setting Yourself up for Success

Every day that you ski you have the opportunity to change your skiing and improve. The best way to ensure your success is to set yourself up for it right from your first few runs. How do you warm up for a day of skiing? Or, perhaps better put, do you warm up at all? By warming up I'm not advocating arm circles and static leg stretches. Static stretches before warming up do nothing to help your sports performance and can in fact lead to injury. Save the stretching for the end of day when your muscles are warm and stretching prevents soreness.

The best warm up for skiing is skiing, albeit at a slower pace and a lower performance level than that which you are capable. Balance is the key skill from which all of the other skiing skills fall. If you have strong balance, it is easier to do just about anything on skis. To set up great balance at the beginning of the day, try some of the following tactics for your first few warm up runs. For best results, focus on only one thing per run.

1) Feel your feet flat on the bottom of your boot. Often when one is skiing they feel more pressure on the ball of their foot when extending and on their heel when bending. Keeping your foot flat in your boot will ensure your fore/aft balance is in line.

2) Ski "shmooshy" turns. Try NOT to edge when skiing big round turns. It is easy to edge from an out of balance position. It is impossible to ski round turns without edging unless you are well balanced. Many high end skiers feel embarassed to "de-tune" their skiing in this fashion. To them I say, this is the way Herman Maier warmed up for his many World Cup wins. If the Hermanator can ski sloppy parallel turns, who are we to think we are too good to do that?

3) Ski with your boot buckles undone or very loose. You should have no trouble controlling your skis at a slower speed with loose buckles. Too often skiers crank down their buckles in an effort to control their skis instead of relying on good balance. This is especially hard on the feet muscles at the beginning of the day when we want lots of blood to flow to the feet.

4) Hop turns. Begin each turn by straightening your legs quickly allowing your skis to leave the snow. Land on a straight leg and then quickly absorb the hop. Hopping is impossible to do when out of balance.

5) Drag both poles in the snow. This is a great way to ensure you begin your day steering with your lower body rather than rotating with your upper body.

6) Ski any turn shape other than your favourite. If it is little tight turns that you love to do, ski great big carving turns, or vice versa. Set yourself up for change by trying something foreign first thing in your day.

Take a few runs to get to the point where you can comfortably up the performance. Having the patience to do a proper warm-up will set you up for success for your whole day.