There’s been talk about how to work trainer road workouts into ski season. But I was wondering if anyone had any good ideas about how to use TR to peak / improve ski season? Skiing is about a 50/50 mix of anaerobic & aerobic power. There’s obviously also a muscular strength & strength endurance which needs to addressed in the gym. My instincts would look like short power build ? Or should I add an enduro / DH event to my plan builder and let plan builder figure it out ? Side question any one know if how to add an event to plan builder once ur calendar is already laid out ? Cheers Jim
I’m not sure how much cross over between the two. (Downhill) Skiing is a hugely eccentric sport, whereas cycling is pretty much all concentric. Try leg blasters which will build eccentric endurance - though I don’t think it’ll fit super well with a high volume cycling plan!
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Quick background - I used to ski race, one season I skied 105 days in one winter! Now I ski for fun in the winter 25-30 days over a 6 month season, and ride bikes all year long.
I agree with @colin_n about the eccentric strength. Skiing requires eccentric strength, and a ski turn involves much more lateral forces than pedaling a bike. Since the anaerobic strength requirements in skiing are very different from pedaling a bike, the improvements from training that system on the bike won’t translate as well to skiing. And not doing eccentric strength work prior to your first day of skiing is just asking for a serious case of the DOMS after your first ski day.
Where i think cycling does benefit DH skiing performance is riding bikes regularly helps maintain a base aerobic fitness level. If you have more of that aerobic base, then skiing longer days and recovering from them will be easier, assuming of course you have also worked on that eccentric leg strength.
If you really want to focus on improving your skiing fitness, I would first start with a strength conditioning routine that focuses on eccentric leg strength and core strength. The link below is a good starting place - it adds additional exercises to the leg blasters mentioned previously. And then if you need more aerobic work that you want to do on the trainer, I would probably look towards sweet spot base, and fit the bike workouts around the more ski specific strength and conditioning exercises. I wouldn’t use a build or specialty plan if your primary goal is improved DH ski performance - those plans are designed to improve specific cycling fitness.
Happy skiing this winter!
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I would add single-leg hops, both ventral and lateral.
I use 30-min openers on the bike as a warmup, then do a 30-min session of pretty much those exercises in the link you posted (plus the single-leg hops).