Ski Muscle of the Week #11: The Wrist Flexors and Extensors.

Do we ski with our wrists?  You bet—well trained wrist muscles will keep your body steady by improving your ability to control your ski poles.   This is also a case of addressing our muscular asymmetry—one wrist probably functions better than the other.   I know my right wrist is stronger than my left.   The exercise is simple enough and the payoff will be in steadier hands, more stable arms, and a more efficient pole plant.

Here it is:

One hundred pole plants:   Grip a pen in each hand so that both ends of the pen are visible from your fist.  Wrap your thumb around your fist.  Hold each fist vertically so that the pen points toward the ceiling and floor.  Tuck your elbows at your sides, and be sure your arms are parallel to the floor.  Slowly, bend one wrist down so that the pen points at the wall ahead of you. Recover the pen so that it points down at the floor, then bend your wrist up so that the pen points toward the wall behind you.  Do this 100 times for each wrist.  You can bump up this exercise by alternating wrists.   When you are ready, you can do this with actual ski poles.  Your wrist should bend without twisting.

And I'll have another post about wrists and arms soon.

Ski Muscle of the Week #10: The Semispinalis, Multifidus, and Rotatores

More spaghetti muscles in this group, but they are shorter than those muscles described in Week #9.  Did you have a turkey for the holidays?   Did you cook the turkey neck?   I usually boil it to make the gravy base, then take the meat off for the cats.  If you use the neck meat, then you know that these muscles are very short and thin.   Not surprising--they anchor the vertebrae to the hips or head, and also anchor the vertebrae to each other in small groups, a few vertebrae at a time.

They also flex and extend the trunk in small segments, plus rotate the trunk and neck at the spine.   (Next time you have a raw turkey neck in your hands take a closer look.)   So they help us stand tall when we ski.  But most importantly, they help us rotate our trunk and neck at the spine. They help us turn our head to the left or right to look for traffic on a busy slope without turning our shoulders—or we can activate these muscles to help us keep our shoulders facing down the slope while our feet turn under us.  Therefore, they are essential to that counter-rotation that is the mark of advanced skiers.

How to get them in shape:

Same exercises as mentioned in Ski Muscle of theWeek #9, with one very important addition:

Prone side bends: Lay on your back on the floor.  Move both legs about ten degrees to the right. Press your shoulders in the same direction, so that your body tries to form a crescent to the right, and hold for a few seconds.  Release and repeat on the left.

Ski Muscle of the Week #9: The Iliocostalis, Longissimus, and Spinalis

How can a bundle of cooked spaghetti help stabilize your core?  Well, these three muscles line both sides of your spinal column to help stabilize it.  They are fairly long and thin, and as a group, attach to your pelvis, rib cage, head, and vertebrae, so I think spaghetti is a great analogy for these muscles.

We all know that abdominal muscles help stabilize our core, which is why they are the focus of many workout routines.  But the fact is that these spinal muscles, which are on the opposite side of our body from the abdominals, do exactly the same thing.  The neat difference between these muscles and real spaghetti is that spaghetti can't be exercised into shape, but these muscles can be.

The payoff is a stronger core that creates a healthier spine, because these exercised muscles provide a fixed base for our arms, legs, and head.  When they are strong, they will help counter the movements of these body parts by lessening unwanted movement and subsequent strain.

So let's do it:

Dorsal raises. Lay on your stomach with your arms bent and hands gently alongside your head. Lift your chest and stomach off the floor, keeping your hips and legs still. Hold for 2-3 seconds then slowly lower your upper body back to the floor. Movement comes from your lower back.

Back extension. Similar to above but done on a large exercise ball. Lay with your stomach and chest in contact with the ball, with the toes on the floor. Raise your chest off the ball. Slowly lower back down.

Opposite arm/leg lift. Start in a tabletop position. Align knees under hips, and hands under shoulders. Lift right arm and left leg so that they are parallel to the floor. Hold for a few seconds, then lower. Repeat on opposite side.

Cat and cow. Start in a tabletop position as described above. Cat: As you exhale, round your spine toward the ceiling, making sure to keep your shoulders and knees in position. Release your head toward the floor, but don't force your chin to Ski Muscle of the Week #9: The Iliocostalis, Longissimus, and Spinalisyour chest. Cow: As you inhale, allow your belly to sink to the floor. Keep your head raised.

An Easier Way to Make a Wedge

Challenge to ski instructors:  Now that most of us are back on the snow for the 2011-2012 season, let’s bump up our game so that the new crop of never-ever skiers will have a successful time in their learn-to-ski lesson.

Let’s change the way we teach a wedge turn.  The conventional wedge uses our outside leg to initiate the turn:  our left leg/ski turns right, so we turn right; our right leg/ski turns left to make a left turn.  Most of the time this works well for our students.  After all, it is skiing’s most basic rotary movement.  Except for one minor point . . .

If the learning hill is too steep, or the student is going too fast, or their muscle strength isn’t up to par, the student opens that wedge so wide it may as well be the wing span of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.  An exaggeration maybe, but we all know that this huge wedge is awkward, exhausting, and completely ineffective.  Plus it also jams up the uphill leg so that our never-ever skier is contorted like a pretzel.

An easier way to make a wedge. Use the inside leg to initiate the turn.  Your student turns the left leg/ski to turn left, and the right leg/ski to turn right.  And no trying to remember opposite sides of the body here either.  Plus the skier’s body aligns itself more naturally to the snow so the “other” leg follows much more easily than in our conventional wedge.

Now all you need to do is . . .  Coach them to contract the appropriate thigh muscle to provide some added turning power.  Right leg, right turn—contract the right thigh; left leg, left turn—contract the left thigh.

Then watch them ski!

Ski Muscle of the Week #8: The Rectus abdominis

This is the world-famous “six-pack” muscle.  If it’s in shape, you can wow an audience with it should you be daring enough remove your shirt—as well as manage your Center of Mass (COM) while skiing.  If not, your trunk goes all over the place—and so do you.  These “abs” help you move your hips and lower trunk relative to your upper trunk.  In skiing, proper use of the “six-pack” keeps your stance erect.  I’m sure you’ve watched skiers skiing with their nose pointed at their ski boots.  Without any serious abdominal muscle contractions, their upper trunk flops over their hips.  But worse than that, that lack of abdominal engagement requires them to use their upper body to help them turn—yuck!  They could also stand to contract their glutes (Ski Muscle of the Week # 6).

So let’s give ‘em a workout:

Captain's chair.  You need to elevate yourself off the floor for this one so that our legs can dangle freely.  Most gyms have equipment for this exercise.  With your feet hanging off the floor, lift both legs from the hips. 

Bicycle crunch exercise.  Lie on the floor with your hands held gently behind your head.  Lift your knees about 45 degrees.  With a bicycle motion, alternate touching your opposite knee and elbow.

Ab crunch on an exercise ball.  Rest your lower back on an exercise ball or other flexible exercise equipment that will cradle your back.  Place hands behind your head, and slowly raise your upper torso to about 45 degrees.

Ski Muscle of the Week #7: The Hip Adductors

We all know about upper and lower body separation as the key to advanced skiing. Those terms, however, lock us into thinking about a body divided into two parts. So bear with me for a moment as I divide our skiing body into three parts: legs, abdomen, and hips. After all, our center of mass (COM) is located in our hips, or pelvic girdle. With this model, we have an upper control (abdomen) and a lower control (legs) to keep our COM steady as we move down the slope. Our hips and COM are now independent from both our legs and our abdomen--skiing is now more than just keeping our shoulders facing one way and our feet another. Those hips become a dual actor: an anchor for our shoulders AND the pivot for our legs.

Are we ready for exercises? The hip adductors (adductor brevis, a. longus, a.magnus, pectineus, and gracilis), are located along the posterior and inner sides of the femur and move the leg closer, or in toward the body. Remember the old style of skiing where we kept our legs and feet touching each other? We really worked our adductors to squeeze our legs together to accomplish that dated technique.

With our modern stance, we strive to keep our legs a hips' width apart, but we still need our adductors to keep our legs from opening up too widely. That very wide, “desperate to stop” braking wedge that we made as a beginner doesn't make much use of our adductors, because those are the muscles we would use to close that wide wedge into a more balanced and comfortable stance. 

So here's the workout:

Hip adduction. Start with an athletic stance. Lift one leg to the side. Work up to 3 sets of 10 reps.

Side hip adduction. Lie on one side and lift the upper leg. Be sure to point your toe.  Your adductors work as you recover the leg.  After you exercise the upper leg, cross that leg over the lower leg and lift the lower leg.

Plie. A great exercise from ballet. Simply, a squat while keeping an erect spine and functional tension on all the leg muscles. Toes are pointed out.

Lunge.

Wall squat.

Leg raise. While lying our your back with your knees comfortably bent, lift your legs toward your chest. Please perform this slowly and be mindful of hyperextending your back.

Ski Muscle of the Week #6: The Gluteus Muscles

The Gluteus Maximus, along with its little sisters, the Gluteus medius and minimus, are my favorite skiing muscles because a simple squeeze of these “butt muscles” can cure a lot of skiing ills. Do you ski bent over like a gorilla? Do your arms freeze to your chest while you ski down an easy beginner slope? Are you constantly poking the snow with your poles to turn or stop? A simple squeeze of these large muscles and you automatically recenter yourself and rediscover the ability to ski with your legs.

Here's why: The Gluteus Maximus is one of largest and strongest muscles in our body. Together with its sisters, they help us maintain an erect trunk and steady our femur over our tibia. Because they are on the opposite, high side from those overused quadriceps (see Ski Muscles of the Week #3 and #4), strong glutes help distribute the forces experienced in skiing to the top of your femur, rather than just the front. At the end of a long ski day, judicious use of your glutes will mean thighs that are less strained, arms that are relaxed and ready to help you balance, and upper and lower legs that become stacked and, therefore, ready to act in unison. In short, that simple butt squeeze improves your stance and that makes you a more confident skier.

Best thing about this muscle: Stand and squeeze your butt muscles right now. You will instantly feel your hips thrust forward and move over the top of both femurs—this simple action helps keep you out of the back seat, because squating or leaning backward now becomes very awkward—try it and see for yourself!

Exercises for the glutes:

Bridge.

Deadlift.

Reverse lunge.

Sumo squat.

Hip extension.   Lie face-down with your legs straight, toes on the floor. Bend your legs at the knee. Squeeze your right glute. Lift your right thigh off the floor. Lower and repeat with your other leg. Work up to three sets of ten repetitions.

Snow should be falling in mass quantities any time now! See you next week . . .