Winter is coming! Are you ready for it?

How to face a new skiing season, in shape and without risks!
Just a few tips and tricks, of little effort to assure your fun!

It’s finally here! The new skiing season is ready to fire and it’s best never to come unprepared to your first descent with your friends. To maximize the fun and reduce the risk of any muscular annoyance, it’s convenient to adopt some measures: a few minutes of daily physical activity. Not to mention that arriving in shape to your snow date will allow you to fully enjoy the fun and have your body ready for any technical suggestion given by the ski instructors and apply them effectively.

Actually, skilifts are already opened in various locations, for example in Cervinia, where you can start skiing in October in Plateau Rosà. For any ski or snowboard enthusiast, some good advice would be to take advantage of some good weather during the week-end and “get back in the game”.

Exercising before skiing nowadays, explains Roberta Manzetti, reevaluates our motor skills, in particular at a cardiovascular and muscle tonification level. The importance of exercise is given also by the fact that it betters our joint mobility (with stretching) and sensitizes our coordination.

For those with a lot of time, it’s particularly advisable to do 3-4 gym sessions per week, starting a month prior to vacation and spending half of the training doing cardiovascular exercises (30-40 minutes) followed by stretching (15 minutes more or less), and spending the other half of training dedicating it to muscle tonification in general, followed by stretching and adding some coordination skill exercises. The most important areas will obviously be the lower limbs, arms but pay special attention to back muscles, do not undermine these.

For those with little time to spare, we ask to do two gym sessions per week for at least five weeks, in this case you will try to train all the areas mentioned earlier in each session. One training day could be 30 minutes of muscle toning, followed by 20 minutes of cardiovascular activity, and at least 15 minutes of stretching. For this type of training, it’s also required to train first and foremost the legs, and pay particular attention to arms, dorsals and lumbars.

For those who are more demanding and precise, we advise to get your equipment checked by experts: get a full evaluation of your equipment, and get your safety equipment greased. These steps are fundamental to begin your winter season. In fact, equipment which is not in good condition might compromise your technique, reduce the fun, but most importantly it could jeopardize your safety.

It never hurts to get your technical sportswear checked either, pay particular attention to clothing which covers the extremities, glasses and ski mask. During the first few skiing trips, it can be especially useful bringing an energy supplement, to keep your energy high and not running out.

We also recommend to have the support of a ski instructor at least for the first few days getting back on your skies. The help and aid of a professional will surely guarantee you to fully enjoy the snowy hills, even in a purely “fun” point of view, and their precious technical suggestions will reduce fatigue and risk of accidents.

Technical consultation: Dr. Roberta Manzetti, couch at the Ski School of the Matterhorn