It's
the time of year when people can't wait to strap on their
skis or snowboards and hit the slopes. Unfortunately, too
many people have an early end to their winter holiday as a
result of injury. What's worse is that the injury may be serious
enough to prevent sporting activities for some time afterwards.
With this in mind, the maxim is that prevention is
better than cure.
The
type of injury varies with the winter sport.
Such
injuries are bad news and can spoil a lot more than your brief
holiday. So, to get maximum enjoyment out of your activity,
without the tears, you should follow some simple health &
safety rules before you launch yourself headlong (or headfirst!)
down the slopes.
Fitness
levels need to be high and training methods are similar whether
you are snowboarding, downhill skiing or cross-country skiing.
You should combine aerobic/cardiovascular work with resistance
training on individual muscle groups. This will depend upon
your current fitness level, but even if you are quite fit
you should still do some specific conditioning to prepare
your body for what you are going to demand of it.
For cardiovascular work, running, cycling and swimming are
very beneficial. If you have access to them, the rowing machine
and the cross-trainer are also excellent pieces of equipment
to use. You will need to do a minimum of twenty minutes
CV work at each session, with 3-4 sessions per week.
This should rise to forty five minutes to one hour per session
after a few weeks of training.
Resistance
training should make use of weights and be total body training,
covering the arms (biceps & triceps), shoulders (deltoids),
chest (pecs & serratus anterior), back (lats & trapezius),
core strength (abs & obliques) and legs (quads, glutes and
calves). All of these muscle groups are used during your activity.
There
are also some excellent exercises that can be done at home
that only require your body weight. Single-leg balancing and
single-leg squats are ideal for strengthening the leg muscles
and for stabilising the knee joint. Partial squats with holds
is another demanding exercise, made even harder when you introduce
one-leg hops on the spot! You will need to progress to this
gradually, and carefully. You will see dramatic improvements
in your leg strength and force production as well as greater
stability in your knee joints.
For
the upper body, press-ups are still one of the best all-round
strengthening exercises and these can be combined with tricep
dips using a chair, stool or low table. Although few people
enjoy doing them, abdominal muscle exercises are essential
and can easily be done at home while you're lying on the floor
watching television.
If
you are unfortunate enough to suffer an injury, the following
should help:
