Ski Fitness – Part 6: Lateral Motion Training

All right!

In a previous video, I talked about lateral bounding as part of our balance. Right now, we’re going to take that to the next level with lateral motion training. We will add a bit more of a strength or leg strength component to it. Because of course, in skiing, as you know, legs are really important. We have to have good strength, good control, and also good endurance. 

So I’ll talk about the lateral bounding aspect or the lateral weight shift, which I guess is a more appropriate term for it in this video.

And in a future video, I’m going to talk about squatting. All right! The first thing for the lateral motion shift, take a wide stance and we want our toes pointed forward. What we’re going to do is shift the weight to one side so our hip our knee and our ankle are in line. Okay, we come out on one side, come back up to the middle, shift the other side. Think of it as a side squat or a lateral lunge. The lower we get down the more leg strength and core control it’s going to take. 

We still want to go back to our posture, our bracing, our breathing, which always comes into play in any of them.

But see how low we can get and come back up come right down. Maintaining those toes pointed forward. If we want to challenge a bit more we can step and take our other foot off the ground do more of a side lunge or side to back lunge. 

Now, if we want to get even more challenging, we can not touch the foot to the ground. The trick is to keep the knee and toe and hip in line.

What we often see is people doing this and the knee dives in or they roll out on the outside of the foot. Foot stays flat toe pointed forward and this is where with skiing we really think of the edging. That inner part of our supporting foot we’re trying to edge it like we were edging through the ski and the ski boot. It helps their ankle control. The big toe is connected to the ground, and we’re really putting some good force through there. 

So, we’re activating the muscles up the leg correctly.

This is really good training for when you’re in your ski boot and you have to use that foot to create a force to the end.

So step, get down low, work good control even if it’s just up to this range of motion first, and then if you want it down lower that’s where you challenge it.

If you do it on the side and this starts to happen, set your posture, reset your position, your bracing.

You’ll notice this really helps with leg strength and you’ll notice a huge improvement in your skiing when you get out of the slopes.

Try it out! Let me know what do you think.

Make sure to check out our on-demand Functional Movement Foundations workshop! It’s your ticket to a fun, fit, and strong ski season. And it’s 50% off with this promo code: SkiFit50

 

Leave a Comment