Alpine skiing: recommended preparation to prevent injuries

Because ski equipment is so easy to use, we forget the essential: learning to prepare physically during the winter season. Basic physical preparation requires no special equipment. Only the consistency of training sessions and the repetition of exercises, adapted to each individual, guarantee effective preparation.

Is skiing a sport? Yes, of course. Faced with this obvious fact, how many skiers — most often city-dwelling and sedentary — prepare physically before their trip? Fatigue, lack of training and the desire to "make the most of it" are all causes of accidents. Skiing is a leisure sport that keeps growing. Yet it carries risks if the following parameters are ignored:

• Suitable physical preparation.
• Choosing equipment appropriate to your skiing level.
• Lifestyle rules and knowing your physical capacities.
• A fair assessment of the surrounding factors.

Finally, with the evolution of equipment and of skiers' levels, accidents differ from those of 20 years ago. The traditional broken leg has given way to knee sprains and injuries to the shoulder and hand; less spectacular, these traumas nevertheless leave more after-effects.

Prevention is therefore the skier's best insurance.

Human factors:

• Physical preparation:

if sport were part of our daily life, this paragraph would be shorter.

• Cardio-respiratory preparation:

a few examples taken from daily life:

• walking: an easy exercise, yet often replaced by car journeys, public transport or the lift.
• jogging, cycling and swimming improve cardio-respiratory capacity.
• Muscle preparation: there are three types of muscle contraction:
• static: holding the position during a descent.
• Dynamic: the muscle shortens, allowing for example the push-off movement.
• Eccentric dynamic: the muscle brakes the movement by resisting its own stretch — for example, landing a jump after a mogul.
• Muscle work is both static and dynamic.

The skier can be compared to a spring: static in the base position, absorbing the moguls in the dynamic phase, following the famous "flexion-extension" formula, then returning to the static position.

Alpine skiing involves different stances: each requires precise muscle work.

The most heavily used muscles are trained through an appropriate progression with alternating phases:

• warm-up
• stretching
• strengthening
• muscle and balance work.

The exercises and their dosage are adapted by each individual according to their own needs and abilities.

Choose a logical sequence that can be done at home without sophisticated weight-training equipment.

The warm-up, lasting around 10 to 15 minutes, must not be neglected. This is the phase in which the body finds a cardio-respiratory rhythm that allows muscular effort. It can start outdoors with light jogging, or indoors with skipping, side jumps, arm raises, etc.

Strength training can be done without special equipment, so that nothing limits the practice.