Back strengthening

Suffering from back pain when skiing is not only frustrating and debilitating – it can also be quite scary. You don’t know what is happening to you… if you better stop… or if you should try to ignore it. Maybe you decide to pop a pill, only to discover that it doesn’t make a difference. You worry if it is going to always be like this. Or get worse even. Well-meaning people tell you to forget about skiing. Scary yes.

But before you give up, you want to see if there is something you can do to make this better.

I have seen this to be the truth more often than not. I have experienced this both on my own body but also with people I have trained over the years. We all run around with muscular imbalances but when they become severe enough, they pull on both soft tissue and bones, creating stress and pains that we can only effectively release by strengthening the weakened muscles and de-contracting over-tense ones.

There are certain patterns that come up over and over, starting with weak glutes and core muscles. Patterns that cause low back pain that can be as excruciating as herniated discs -and that will often get worse when skiing. Unless you do something about it.

In that case, training those muscles in skiing related situations will help you prevent back pain skiing. There is a lot of confusion as to how this is best done and you might end up doing more harm than good.

Knowing this – and having suffered from various back patternes myself – I decided to build a lot of specific glutes and core training into my program, Get Fit To Hit The Slopes. This is the program I recommend to people who tend to get back pain skiing.