Snowpro Fitness

⚠️I’ve never done single leg squats before, where do I start?⚠️

Here! this is exactly where you start from 👆

If you’ve ever tried to do a pistol squat you’ll know how hard they are and it’s not always because your legs aren’t strong. A simple progression is what you need exactly like when you started ⛷ or 🏂

So all you need to begin with is a small platform to stand on with one leg, I’m using a pallet but a plate or stall will do, even use the bottom step of your staircase.

From there do as I do in the video, keep a neutral spine, slight hip hinge and squat down to tap the floor. Once comfortable with your progress move on to a deeper squat.

The next stage you should think about going a little higher, then as you start to squat begin to swing your leg forward so that you squat deeper and tap your heel onto the ground. Don’t try to go all the way with your leg at 90 degrees to your hip straight away. Build up to this gradually.

If you have trouble balancing I find holding a 5kg or 10kg plate in front of you can provide a good counterbalance.

Don’t forget to Save & Share 💾
Tag a ⛷ or 🏂 that needs to do these.

💥Agility-Coordination-Speed💥

Whilst strength is an important part of your ⛷ & 🏂 training, it would be incomplete without addressing other aspects of your performance. In this case it’s speed and stamina we are focussing on.

The Hexagon jump is a great way to evaluate your agility, ability to change direction and foot speed. You’ll need to be able to jump and land at speed. As well as an evaluation you can use this as an exercises by mixing up how many revolutions you do and whether you go clockwise, anti-clockwise, or both. For those at an experienced level you may want to try this on one leg.

You can do this exercise/evaluation anywhere. You’ll need a tape measure and some masking tape to set it up. You’ll only need a stopwatch to record your time. It is also something that will not interfere to heavily with your on snow training and can be worked into a programme nicely.

Let me know if you have any questions👇👇
💾 Save & Share with a skier or snowboarder

Strict Bicep Curls💪

You can do this exercise with a Bar or set of Dumbbells. Go a little lighter than you normally would to start and see how much more challenging it is when you have your back against a wall.

This is going to help with muscle recruitment for the starting portion of the lift as you have no way to create momentum as you would doing a cheat curl. This puts all the work on your biceps alone and you’ll feel it for sure.

💾 Save and share and add this to your routine. The more exercises you have in your arsenal the better and more varied your training will be.

⚠️How to do a decent single arm bent over row✅

There are a few things I’d like to talk about when it comes to this exercise.

For a start, I left in the awkward “turn on the camera” and set up so you could see there is no bench I’m kneeling on and how I position my body. BOTH of my feet are in contact with the ground. When we ski and snowboard we never have a knee resting up somewhere so why do it in training. It enables us to make full use of all the supporting muscles, keeping us stable during the lift, which is crucial as the load increases.

You’ll also see that it is far easier to stabilise your hips and maintain a neutral spine while lifting. Again this mirrors the positions we get into ⛷ & 🏂. This means we can brace effectively and keep our lower backs safe.

Because this is a single arm exercise we can get our arm much further behind our backs. This allows for a greater contraction of the lats. All in all a more complete range of motion.

If you pay attention to points like this you can increase the benefits of this exercise and in turn improve your performance in and out of the weight room.

💾 Save & Share this video, if you want to know more about this exercise or any others then follow and message me.

👀 if you want me to take a look at your form and help you to make improvements then send me your videos and I’ll analyse them for you for free.

Before you start any workout or resistance training, consider the movement pattern❗️

Look at the movement I’m doing in this video. I’m taking each leg individually to their end position of a deep squat. If you or I were to struggle with this movement pattern, either through limited movement or compensations elsewhere in the body, there would be no point in loading up a bar for a back squat.

Rather than spending unnecessary time running long distances or rowing spend the time going through relevant movements you will be doing during your workout.

⛷ for you this will involve leg , T-spine and posterior chain movements🏂

Make the most of your session, plan ahead and you will have more productive workouts.

A quick exercise you can add to your warm up on legs day🦵

For this you’ll need to use your imagination, picture yourself standing in the middle of a clock face. Then shift your weight onto your left leg, with the right leg push out to 12, then 3, 6 and finally 9 (this will be a curtsy lunge movement). It will be anti clockwise when you switch leg, 12, 9, 6 and 3.

This is an excellent warm up because it will warm up your lunge patterns and also test your single leg strength. Use this to find out where your weaknesses are or if there are any imbalances between your legs.

If you don’t train your legs individually you may find this challenging and I would advise you put some single leg exercises into your routine.

Starting the week with some mobility drills🤸

I’m working on thoracic mobility here and being able to rotate. The ability to rotate does not come from your lower back but the mid section.

This is a foundational movement for ⛷ & 🏂 and you will use this motion from your first turn to your last 360.

Remember that single exercises put together randomly doesn’t cut it, have a plan and have a routine put together so you can see progress.

Let me know if I can help you to do that, happy Monday 💪

If you’re competing and not doing these at the gym you’re wasting your efforts!

Hip Thrusts are one of the best ways to build up strength in your glutes, this will keep your pelvis steady and help with propulsion of your legs.

That means;
🔸 Bigger Air
🔹 More stable Landings
🔸 More stability at speed

No matter your discipline on ⛷ or 🏂 good glutes will up your performance.

Let me know if this helps and I’ll have more on the way 🤙

The Pros make all this look easy, but the toll it can and will take on the joints in your lower body is high.🏂

If you’re an athlete looking for longevity in your career you need to take your training seriously. You need to make sure you give your muscles the strength to stabilise your joints when taking part in high impact events. Not only that but you need to make sure you stretch and go through mobility exercises to stay in good order.

Now if you’ve only booked a ski holiday and won’t be taking part in these crazy events as you do it every year think again!
If you want to continue to enjoy your holidays you want to make sure that each one is as good as the last. Make sure you put the work in before your holiday and you will see some serious benefits when it comes to your skiing/snowboarding⛷

Here’s a couple of exercises taken from an upper body workout.

⛷ & 🏂 remember your upper body is every bit as important as your lower body. I mean how else do we push ourselves up after a fall?

My first time on an indoor slope🏂

Very different but fun in its own way.

Well worth putting in a few legs training days before going as it is quite tiring when you first start out.

Usual 10k 🚴 followed by a short Circuit 👇

Today’s workout:
- Lat Raises
- Banded Front Raises
- Floor Rows
- Russian Twists
- Dead Bug (variant in video)
Three Rounds 1 min break between rounds.

The dead bug exercise is a great core exercise and also doubles as a nice coordination exercise.

I like to think of this variation as a progression to make the dead bug more challenging and a gateway into holding a longer hollow hold position.

⛷&🏂 can you think of more exercises that can help both core and coordination?
Both are important to your sport!

Don’t stress by the remained closure of the gyms, you can use house furniture to create the equipment you need.

Modify your dip slightly by leaning forward to hit the lower portion of your chest.

Kickstarted another week with a circuit.

The workout:
- Upper Cuts
- Mountain Climbers
- Front Raises
- Star Jumps
- Up Down Planks
Three rounds minute between rounds 40s of exercise 20s of rest.

Save this one for later

Wet 10k 🚴 Dry HIIT Workout 🌧

Working a bit more on upper body today with a couple of core exercises thrown in.

The Exercises:
- Left and Right Uppercuts
- Plyometric Push Ups
- Towel Rows (video)
- Russian Twists
- Hollow Hold
3 rounds timing I use is 40s work 20s rest, if you need to adapt it to your fitness level then change the work and rest time. Just make sure you don’t rest longer than you work. And take a min between each round if needed.

Feel take the exercises in these workouts to build your own library of exercises so you can put together a workout that suits your goals.

Let me know if there are any of the exercises you need demonstrated in a video.

Also please share the workouts👍

Monday morning means another great week ahead and back to the daily circuits ✅

It also means it’s time to check measurements for myself ⚖️💪

Today’s Exercises:
- Single Arm Clean and Press
- Heel Flicks
- Lateral Bounds
- Jumping Jacks
- Leg Raises (video)
Remember 3 rounds and up to a minute between each round not each exercise.

The last exercise looks like it’s a bit out of place, but it’s good to try and get at least one core exercise in the workout.

⛷&🏂 if you are looking to start competing you should be using this off season to prepare for the coming winter. If you want to compete with the beat you have to start now. Don’t wait till the snow falls.

10k 🚴 done followed by another morning circuit ✅

The exercise in the video explained below the workout👇

Today’s Exercises:
- Stationary March
- Air Jabs
- Russian Twists
- Marching Plank
- Curtsy Lunges
As ever 3 rounds 40s working 20s rest with 1 min between rounds.

Now the video shown is demonstrating an exercise you can do to work on your Tibialis Anterior (shin muscle). By performing the exercise as I’m showing here, getting into a bridge pos then raising your toes, you are also isometrically contracting your posterior muscles.

This is great for 🏂 as it will help you with good heel side edging. For ⛷ it’s useful when you are in deep powder, though it’s not the primary muscle used for the necessary body pos, it doesn’t hurt to have good endurance in this muscle to save your shins aching so much once your back on piste.

This muscle is usually ignored in any training let alone ski training...
Did you know about it?
Let me know if these videos are helpful to you and if there’s anything you’d like to see or have demonstrated 🤙

Morning Circuit Complete✅

Here’s the exercise list for today:
- Lateral Bounds (video)
- Star Jumps
- Squats
- Russian Twists
- Mountain Climbers

This one feels very fast paced and will make you feel like you’ve earned each rest period.

⛷ & 🏂 lateral bounds are a great exercise, not only is it a single leg explosive exercise that will work all the muscles from your hips to your toes, but it is great for building up strength around the ankle. This will help prevent sprains and breaks when landing from jumps or drops.

Let me know if you’ve got any questions or comments below, can be related to either snowsport techniques or the workouts👇👇

Back on the morning circuits 🚴

Here’s a very lower body focussed workout for your ⛷ legs:
- Squats
- Bulgarian Split Squats (in video)
- Banded Side Steps
- Calf Raises
- Hamstring curls from a quadruped position
Don’t worry if you don’t have a band for the sidesteps do, you can do them without in a semi squatted position.

The BSQ that I’m showing in this video is a great single leg exercise that can build a lot of strength should you choose to add weights and use sets and reps as opposed to timed circuits.

Let me know if there are any exercises you’d like me to cover to help improve your ⛷ & 🏂

As always feel free to ask questions or leave a comment👍

Last HIIT of the week ✅

Same set up as previously, 3 rounds 5 exercises 40s work 20s rest.

The Workout:
- Jumping Jacks
- Push Ups
- Supine Rows
- V-Sit Crunches
- Explosive Half Squat Calf Raises (Shown in video)

The last exercise is a great way to build up the power in your lower legs. It will also provide great support to your knees for your ⛷ & 🏂.

Snowboarders take extra note having strong calves is going to really help with your toe edging, being able to hold yourself over the edge for longer will improve many aspects of your riding.

If you like these sample workouts please let me know and help others by sharing them with friends and family.

Morning Routine Done ✅

5 Exercises 3 rounds 40s work 20s rest.

Today’s Workout Exercises:
- Heel Flicks
- Can Openers
- Squats
- Russian Twists
- Dead Bugs
Remember to take a 30-60s rest between rounds.

The clip here is showing a movement called a cat camel, a great way to mobilise the spine. This can be very relieving after a day skiing or snowboarding. Take your time with this exercise to get the most out of it🐢

If you like the workouts save and share them with a friend and let me know if there are any exercises you’d like to see demonstrated.