12 Tips from our Ski Fitness evening with Graham Bell

Five time Olympian Graham Bell revealed some of his top tips for ski fitness at Profeet on Wednesday night.

• Use a mix of training to prepare different muscles and avoid or isolate injuries. Triathlon is a great option for this.
• If your knees are giving you trouble, then go for a swim. If there’s a problem with your shoulder, you can go for a run. There’s no excuse for not training at all!
• Cardio work is valuable as well, but it’s all about ‘little and often’ rather than a marathon session every once in a while
• You should mix up long, slow endurance work – running or cycling – with high intensity sessions such as sprinting. Overall you will build endurance, burn fat and improve aerobic capacity
• Many people train too hard – and are consequently not in the right zone for building endurance.
• You don’t have to use all the machines in the gym, find one or two you like and stick to them!
• ‘Slow’ means being able to have a conversation whilst training.
• ‘Long’ depends on the sport but for example running might be from 45 minutes or more and cycling 90 minutes or more.

• You need to think about interval-based training to replicate how you ski – on the mountain you have long rest periods on the chairlift, followed by high intensity skiing
• Work through a program that combines Warm up, Static exercises and Dynamic Stretching.
• Be creative with your workouts to avoid boredom.
• When out in resort, use the stairs in the chalet, ski poles, anything to hand to keep things interesting!