Why Skiers Need Variance In Rep Ranges
Skiing places unique demands on our body which aren’t commonly found in other sports. Particularly the demand of velocity relative to the continually changing pitch of the hill. And this doesn’t even take into account the wide range of conditions you can experience in a single day.
Unlike football, soccer, or basketball, the environment for skiing is progressively chaining due to weather, other skier’s tracks, heat, and friction. The court is always the court. What changes is the athletes level of fatigue, preparedness, and of course, opposing team members. But the court stays the court. The football field stays flat and fixed in length and width. The basketball hoop always stays the same height.
For this reason, training for snow sports requires unique adjustments to the program. You must consider all these changes when planning your training and ultimately designing or adhering to a protocol. Fortunately, this has all been taken into account when The Ski System programs were designed.
Let’s take a look at why us skiers need variety in our rep ranges, and program structure. Variety that may be present in other sport programs, but must be present in ours.
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The next 3 rep schemes must be present in any and all weeks of training whether you’re on a 2x/week program or 3x/week program. I’ll explain the benefit of each below:
Strength:
- Rep Range: 4-7 reps
- Intensity: 8/9 out of 10
When someone mentions Strength, usually people picture a massive person in spandex lifting an ungodly amount of weight while Metallica blares in the background. Although this person is strong, and indeed are demonstrating that strength, technically that rep range and structure would fall under Power training. This is why that type of lifting is called “Power Lifting”. When we talk about power in skiing we mean tapping into the body’s capabilities of lifting the most weight the skier is capable of for a rep range of 4-7 reps. This rep range requires more recovery between each set, approximately 3+ minutes, and will cause more acute damage to the muscle fibers per training session. It’s imperative that the individual recovers properly between training sessions to avoid injury in the future and allow time for the muscles to recovery and repair.
But why does this matter for skiers? Don’t you just need to run long distances and keep your legs under you? No.
Skiers need strength because strength is what will allow you to recovery from tough positions. Strength will help your muscles, joints, ligaments navigate chatter and changes in conditions on the hill. A strong body will better redistribute force through the skeletal system because the bones are better equipped with their supporting muscle systems. Strong skiers will be more capable of landing, dropping off objects, and recovering from weird landings. Building strength (improving ones maximum strength relative to previous ability) triggers a response wherein our bones lay down additional layers which improve the bones’ ability to resist fractures, breaks, and trauma. Stronger person = stronger bones = reduced risk of injury in a fall.
Power:
- Rep Range: 1-3 reps
- Intensity: 6/7 out of 10 but performed quickly
Power exercises, often thought of as olympic lifts like the snatch, clean, jerk, and medicine ball slams all involve a key element; the weight is being moved as quickly as possible. This means that the athlete or individual training is demonstrating how quickly they can utilize their strength to perform an explosive action between 1 and 3 times per set. The rep range is purposefully low, because physiologically, an athlete cannot truly produce max power for more consecutive reps without the velocity component diminishing significantly with each additional rep.
But why do skiers need to be capable of moving progressively heavier weight quickly?
Because skiing is the physical expression of moving weight (your body) quickly (edge turnover) over varying pitches (the ski mountain). Your ability to produce an action such as a carve, at speed, with maximal effort (good luck executing a good carve with 25% effort), depends entirely on your individual ability to utilize your strength to execute a powerful maneuver. Power training additionally supports our ability to get out of the way of an object such as another skier, absorb and redistribute force (force attenuation), and change direction on command. The less powerful you are, the slower and less aggressive your turns will be, and the more likely you are to collide with someone in your way even when you’re trying to avoid them. If you have trouble gripping the snow and holding a solid edge, you most likely lack in power relative to your body weight. This of course is assuming that skill level is not a barrier to entry. If your skiing ability alone isn’t sufficient enough, then no amount of power development will improve this ability.
It’s worth noting that power is typically trained facing forward. Although this is imperative for skiers, it’s also mandatory that you transfer some of this power into lateral positions specifically because of the side-to-side laterally explosive nature of skiing. An example of this would be a Rotational Landmine Clean + Jerk. (Link video) which, when done properly, expresses full body capability and power utilization across all three planes of motion; frontal, sagittal, and transverse.
Endurance:
- Rep Range: 12+ reps
- Intensity: 7/8 out of 10
Endurance reps place a unique demand on the muscles contractile ability. With 12+ reps, the individual must overcome the build up of lactic acid as the muscle progressively loses the ability to produce an identical contraction without breakdown in form due to fatigue. Consider a ski run from the top to the bottom of the mountain? What makes the skier take breaks? They’re tired yes, but why?
The skier gets tired usually for two reasons. One, their cardiovascular conditioning isn’t up to par and they cannot regulate enough oxygen to keep muscles performing contractions which leads to taking breaks to “catch their breath”. So isn’t running the solution? No. Running will make you better at running. And covering long distances will most definitely improve your cardiovascular health. However, if your muscles lack endurance in their contractile ability (ability to repeat the same contraction repeatedly without fatigue), then cardiovascular endurance won’t be enough to prevent the need to stop and recover. It’s woth noting that these endurance exercises must mimic structural elements of ski movements such as hip and knee flexion/extension past 45 degrees as well as trunk stabilization, and rotational resistance.
So what do we do? We train muscular endurance in our strength program. By training muscular endurance, we will improve our ability to repeat the same movement over and over while keeping lactic acid at bay. We will be able to produce identical actions without a breakdown in form because our muscles have the endurance to make it 12+ reps under progressively more weight over the course of the program. This improvement, coupled with power and strength training, will lead to significant improvements in skier ability, skiing enjoyment, and injury risk reduction while on snow.
How?
Because your body will be able to make repeatedly (endurance) athletic (power) movements through difficult and changing terrain (strength). You will better buffer fatigue with a body that is durable and capable of the actions you want to do when you want to do them.