When I’m on snow I spend my mornings on steeper terrain skiing on race skis, going pretty hard. Once my legs and back start to tire out (sometimes one goes before the other) I’ll head in for lunch and relax a bit. I then go back out after lunch but rarely ski black terrain, and almost always on more mellow skis and boots (e.g. 140 flex vs. 160; all-mountain skis or consumer race skis e.g. Fischer WC RC). I only dabble in coaching these days when it is convenient for me (vs. being bound to it), and usually that would happen in the afternoon.
In between ski days I’m at the gym. On short weeks (one after a 3-day weekend) I’ll do two days… On 5-day weeks I will do 3 gym days. I have a 4-day cycle for the gym, where every other day is a squat day (one full legs, one squats mixed with upper back) with the other two days being dead lifts / shoulders and chest. I keep this routine through the entire fall and winter… during the summer I spend 10-20 hours per week road cycling so the gym time is cut back. Usually my goal is to regain my strength (post-cycling) by November each year and maintain it through April of the following year.
I’m 5’7”, 150lbs. As-of when most of this video was taken I was squatting 250lbs, deadlifting 315lbs, benching 175lbs and overhead pressing 115lbs… plus a bunch of core work (I also regularly stretch for flexibility and mobility). I’m a bit above those numbers now, but not meaningfully. I’ve found that the stronger I become, the better I ski, AND experience less fatigue and less risk for bad crashes due to skier-error (plus when a crash does happen, I’m more durable).
That said, I still get very tired. After two or three days on snow, my legs and back are shot – especially if those days are spent making race turns (vs. powder/crud skiing which due to lack of G-force doesn’t beat up my body as much). By the end of a season I’m happy for it to be over as it does take a big toll on my body to do this week-in and week-out. Nothing I’ve ever done abuses my body like arcing high-performance turns on hard snow… I think it is the G-force, but it just feels like my body is being pulled inside-out.
Interestingly, I had a chat with a well-known demo skier Saturday who expressed the same feelings of fatigue… and this is a pro who skis 200+ days a year. He basically said, for performance skiing (if you’re skiing every day like he does) there is only a window of 2-4 runs per day that he can really ski hard… the rest of the time needs to be more relaxed or his body wears out. This is the same reason WC racers are only taking 4-8 runs per day when training hard… the body needs to recover. It is a brutal sport.
