Pre-season skiing demands legs that can absorb load through ankle, knee, and hip - repeatedly, for hours, in the cold. This class builds that capacity in the gym so day one of the season feels like day twenty. Skiers, snowboarders, and the families who ride alongside them.
Skiing wrecks the body the same way every season - fatigue, eccentric load, and uneven terrain catching up to whatever you didn't prep for. Ski Prep targets the three places it shows up most.
Slow-tempo squats, step-downs, and split squats. The eccentric phase is what your legs do on every turn down moguls or steeps. Train the capacity in the gym so your knees aren't the limiting factor by 2 PM.
Skiing is functionally a single-leg sport - you're loading one leg at a time through every turn. Bulgarian splits, step-ups, single-leg RDLs, and balance work train the asymmetric strength the sport demands.
Anti-rotation core work and lateral hip strength so your pelvis holds position when terrain throws you. Side-country and tree skiing demand a trunk that doesn't fold under unexpected load.
Ski Prep is for anyone whose winter involves real days on snow - not just resort cruising. Backcountry tourers, sidecountry skiers, mogul masochists, hard-charging families. The work scales to the person; the framework is the same.
Especially valuable if you've torn an ACL or had a knee scope in the past. Returning skiers carry a tissue-tolerance deficit that pre-season conditioning can directly address. (See also ACL Bridge if you're earlier in that recovery.)
This is the fall-and-winter face of the Mountain Athlete class. Same class, same time slot (Tues / Thurs at 1 PM) - the programming shifts with the season: progressive build through fall, dialed-back maintenance work midwinter when ski volume is heaviest. Rolling entry.
Roughly 60 minutes. A warm-up + mobility flow, the main strength and durability work for that block, and a short cool-down.
The specifics shift week over week and phase over phase - progressive load in the fall build, lighter and more mobility-focused midwinter when you're already chewing through ski days. Same clinical reasoning that runs the 1-on-1 work, scaled to small group.
