Author: Ski NASTC

This is one of the many reasons why Portillo is so great and what makes it so special.  On any given night you can meet a number of interesting people and have the opportunity to sit down and have a meaningful conversation with them.  I had the opportunity to meet and have a chat with an ex-boxer.  One of the things that I took away from that conversation that is worth mentioning here is that, part of the physical preparation that athletes do, is to protect themselves from injury.  As a boxer he worked out not only to throw powerful punches but also to sustain the hits taken to his body.  This doesn’t hold true for every sport but it certainly holds true for skiing.  Remember when Lindsey Vonn then Kildow took that horrific fall inTorino during the Olympics, and heroically returned the next day to race?  One of the reasons she was able to do this was that her body was physically able to take the impact.  If she were weaker than she was then she might have sustained worse injuries and not been able to race the next the day. 

I’m going to piggy back on Chris’s last blog entry about the need and necessity of fitness in your ski regime.  I think the message is starting to get across that riding your bike or doing your average gym routine is not enough to ski our best or to be injury free and ski from season to season. 

We think of skiing as very much a leg dominated sport, however that is not entirely the case.  Your core plays a big role in skiing as it is the platform where your extremities move from.  Since the body is interconnected weaknesses in different areas of the body can affect overall performance, weakness through the shoulders and the lat can affect your pillar strength and stability.  So going to the gym, riding the bike for 45min, then doing a bunch of squats and leg presses and maybe toss in some bicep and tricep exercises is not enough.  Training for skiing is about training your whole body.  You can go to various degrees of intensity from weekend warrior fit to elite athlete fit, the choice is yours and is dependent on what your goals are. 

My training and preparation for the season has changed as my goals for myself have changed.  My training regime now requires very specific exercises and a committment to good nutrition (without a healthy diet, what I do in the gym becomes futile).  Over the last few years I have been progressively pushing myself harder physically and mentally, the biggest challenge I find is maintaining balance and knowing when to rest the mind and the body.  Yes training requires time and energy, sometimes it easy to shove it aside because you have a report to finish, or a birthday party to go to, or stuff.  This is where goals come in handy.  When you have something that you are working towards then it makes it easier, to hold your ground and commit to your training regime.  Goal can be anything from getting your PSIA Level 3 certification, to summitting a peak, to being injury free and pain free for a season, to ski top to bottom runs, or ski off-piste more – you get the idea.  Whatever your goal is and how much you want it will be your motivating factor.  Along the way, you will discover other rewards like gaining more self-confidence and of course feeling amazing!

Yes, its still beautiful and hot in Tahoe but we are officially gearing up for the 2011-2012 winter season! Look for the NASTC brochure in your mailbox soon and keep checking back for website updates and information. Check back soon for Nick Herrin’s and Chris Fellows’s PORTILLO slide show! Epic snow! Give us a call if you need some early season tune-up or if you’re wondering how best to get in shape for the ski season! We can help create a personalized fitness program specific to your ski improvement goals.

As director of the North American Ski Training Center and father of 3 active kids, I don’t have large chunks of time to spend in the gym.  However my skiing performance and fitness is important to me. By staying healthy and fit through out the season, I can provide my clients with solid skiing instruction and demonstrations and I can keep the wheels from coming off the cart mid-season due to overuse injuries, bad alignment, or illness due to lack of recovery time. Thanks in advance for reading.

The following tips keep me moving athletically through out the ski season, and help prevent injury.

1. Exercise fads come and go, make a commitment to keep fit and make exercise a part of your daily routine. 
2. Posture good or bad can effect your athleticism, pay attention to your sitting, standing, walking and exercising posture.  Poor posture will result in poor performance, good posture will help you perform like an athlete.
3. Focus on a strong core for stability and flexible hips for skiing mobility.  Limited range of movement and weak core muscles can over stress connective tissue.  This will limit your performance and body durability.
4. In the winter cold weather tells your body to pack on fat for survival  Don’t let it go too far.  Eat fresh vegetables and fruits and don’t over do the carbo heavy foods. Diabetes runs in my family and I saw the damaging effects of the disease.  Since a young age I have tried to eat healthy and exercise regularly. 
5. The biggest technological breakthroughs in sports in the next decade will include advancements in human performance through food.  This will come in the form of body enhancement foods or super foods.  Like the tobacco industry 15 years ago the food industry will be under the microscope over the next 20 years and will be expected to clean up its act.  Athletes are ahead of the game and are adjusting their diets to exclude starches, sugars, industrial additives, pesticides and dyes.  Athletes diets are rich in nutrients and proteins, like raw locally grown fruits and vegetables, nut, whole grains, yogurt and smaller portions of meat.
6. Change up your work out intensity.  Mix up your high intensity days with low intensity days and don’t skimp on the sleep for total body recovery.
7. Ski athletes focus on total body work outs. The best weight training program for ski athletes is NOT the muscle specific routines of bodybuilders, but instead sessions that work out the whole body.
8. Keep you aerobic engine active through out the winter.  You aerobic levels will slowly dwindle if you forget to get a run in, XC ski or backcountry climb regularly.  Your aerobic fitness is the furnace that fires your athletic abilities, with out it you are running on fumes.
9. When crunched for time, up the intensity of your work out, skip rope fast for ten minutes or do 100 split squats for a personal best time, high intensity work outs will force the issue and teach your body to adjust to high power out put.  Skiing is high power out put.
10. Energize your self with the youth!  Work out with people younger than you.  My kids force me out of my comfort zone.  Daddy try this trick on the tramp, Dad race me to that pole and shimmy to the top, lets see who wins.  Younger partners will make you rise to a higher level of performance. 

For more details on ski performance and ski specific fitness check out Total Skiing – you can order the book here on skiNASTC.com.  Thank you for reading!

The mountain scenery is finally changing here in the high Andes.  We are officially snowed in!! It’s awesome!  Over a foot of snow fell last night and it is still snowing.  The road will remain closed for today and those guests that are “lucky” enough to still be here will get to enjoy the powder tomorrow when the storm breaks.  Portillo becomes a very different mountain when the snow level rises.  Lines that you once thought were unskiable suddenly become very enticing.  The traverse lines over the rocks become filled in making the best cones/descents on the mountain much more accesible.  It has been a very busy last few weeks with the hotel swarmed with Brazilian guests, this is also makes for very lively nights in the bar and nightclub – the Brazilians love to have a good time, all the time.  We had a week of really warm temperatures which allowed for languorous lunches up at Tio Bob’s.  It is easy to pass the afternoon staring at the lake and gazing up the valley enjoying the sun and good friends.  Every year that I come to Portillo, I learn to appreciate more and more the link that Portillo plays in connecting the historical roots of skiing to today’s skiing world. 

The first week here in Portillo was awesome.  It’s good to be back in this breathtaking venue in the Andes.  It doesn’t take long to disconnect from the world and submit to the gentle pace and routine of Portillo.  The snow is pretty thin, there is very limited off-piste skiing but the snow quality is good.  In fact it is excellent training snow.  Every morning we were greeted with crisp Andean air, warming into a sunny and balmy afternoon.  The corduroy lasted for hours, but in Portillo the runs really never get skied out – so it’s not like we can really complain. 

The week was marked by two major events.  One of the new ski instructors sliced his butt cheek open.  Yes, you read correctly – sliced his butt cheek open.  What we suspect happened is that the ski pre-released and when he fell he landed on the edge of the ski.  The probability of something like this happening, is relatively low and since this took place on a groomed run without a pebble in sight, it is the only conclusion we could draw.  No worries, the instructor is doing fine after 25 stitches and is back teaching again.  The other event was the first ski school party of the year – dedicated to the rookies of which there are 15 of this year.  We celebrated the start of the season with an Asado in La Posada that was followed by the newbies being introduced to Chilly-Willys.  As the night progressed more “fun and games” emerged like limbo, “put the bottle cap in the can” – this one is kinda hard to explain and might have been invented on the spot.

Despite a full week I was able to get in some focused ski time, and now we are all hoping that the forecast for snow later this week comes true.