All right!
We’ve done bracing, breathing alignment activation, some leg strength, some rotation, balance, all these things are really important for skiing. Once you have those fundamentals, now it’s time to up the game a little bit more and this is where agility for skiers comes in. Speed, quickness, and skiing that’s very very important especially as you start advancing your skills.
We always have to react to things but the faster we go the faster our reaction times have to be and the more dialed in our body has to be to make sure we stay safe. So I’m going to show you three agility drills today, that’ll be excellent for working on your reaction time, your quickness, and your speed for skiing.
First, we’re gonna do just two-foot hops.
So, I’ve got a little band on the ground here. You can just put a towel down or pick a spot on the floor and just like a line on your tile and hop over that. Two feet right here, set your core, set your bracing, we’re gonna come down to about a quarter squat and all we’re going to do is just hop from one side to the other. Now our goal is to do this as fast as we can. So somewhere in the, call it five eight-second range, we’re going to get as many hops as we can, both feet taking off at the same time, both feet landing at the same time.
All right, two quick two-foot hops can keep the position.
I see a lot of people do this and their upper body comes over and they take so much time on the ground. We want to think if we can hold our body in that position and just move our feet quickly. If you want to challenge it a bit more, do that on one leg. The same thing again, five to eight seconds on one leg, everything else stays in the same position. It’s hot. Can we hold the position again? Of course, practice it on both legs.
The next one we’re going to do is what I call quick foot or footswitches.
So we’re going to straddle the line, and actually, I’ll take it out completely because we’re not going to use the line too much on this. What I’m going to do is stand with my feet about hip-width apart across. My arms turn to one side so I’ve turned to about a 45-degree angle on that to my right leg. And from here what I’m going to do is just reverse my feet, so now I’ve turned 45-degree angle on the left leg. Okay, I’ve just switched or pivoted my hips.
You can check out the app from FRESH! Wellness Group. It’s available on Apple (iOS) or Android.
So think of this as you’re in the drop doing a shoot.
You’re at the top of the shoot, your chest is facing downhill and you do like hop, turn into the next turn and you might drop down to the next mogul or something like that. The idea is we can do that quickly and smoothly while still maintaining our balance, our control.
So, then once we get the technique we want to do it fast, then we can move forward. Maintaining the posture, practicing that reactivity, and that quickness will be setting ourselves up for success.
But again, this is more advanced. Make sure you have the foundational aspects of posture, bracing, breathing, balance before we dive into more complex training of agility for skiers.
Try it out. Let me know your thoughts. Post a comment. Love to hear from you.
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
