FitSkiing - Your Guide For Peak Skiing Fitness by Andrew Hooge is the only book you need to take get yourself from your end of summer fitness level to being fit and ready to enjoy opening day of ski season.
Andrew Hooge is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist with the National Strength and Conditioning Association. He holds a B.S. Degree in Sport and Exercise Science and has advanced graduate training in Public Health from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He is also a lifelong skier who has trained world-class competition skiers. When you get into this book and the exercise routines, believe me, author and Conditioning Specialist Hooge will quickly become "Coach" Hooge to you - teaching and motivating you to skiing fitness.
The FitSkiing Program
FitSkiing is a 12 week program that is a comprehensive guide to improving strength, endurance and balance - the key ingredients to enjoying long, fun days on the slope. Although the program is structured on a 12 week time frame to bring the person to a conditioning peak, it is easy enough, based on an individual's baseline fitness, to compress the program to fit the coming season.
In other words, don't decide you won't have enough time to get in shape - if you follow the FitSkiing routine you will be in better condition the first day of skiing than you are the day you start the program.
The program incorporates almost 70 ski-specific exercises and the execution of each exercise is demonstrated in photos, detailed in step-by step directions, shows what muscle group is benefiting and, in many cases, explains why the exercise is beneficial to a particular aspect of skiing.
For example, the photo excerpt from the book, the "Fit Ball Ski Crunch" ski-specific explanation reads: "One of the most ski-specific exercises you can perform, the fit ball ski crunch provides a motion similar to skiing. Your abdominal muscles go through a motion that is common when skiing bumps or steep terrain...[and] will help you push along cat tracks or through the lift line." This is the same for all the exercises - you learn proper technique and how it will help you on the slopes.
FitSkiing For Everyone
The program is adaptable to everyone because it is designed to:
- Determine your level of fitness - based on your fitness history
- Set Goals - one of the best explanations to breaking downs goals to make them achievable
- Figure out a schedule and equipment budget that works for you
- Provide an understandable nutrition plan to fuel your exercise program
- Strengthen core and leg muscles to better protect against common skiing injuries
- Make for an interesting, not boring, routine that becomes fun to do
The Basic Program
An overview of the Basic Program, where most of us would probably start, is broken into 3 Phases of exercises and aerobics. Phase 1 - Improve Strength and Overall Condition (4 weeks). Phase 2 - Improve Muscular and Aerobic Endurance (4 weeks). Phase 3 - Improve Power Endurance, Speed and Balance. The schedules can be compressed if ski season looms but, the program can also be carried through as a genuine year round fitness maintenance routine.
This is the most universally adaptable ski-specific program I have come across. It incorporates quite a few exercises using a Bosu Ball (see photo), which I feel is the best all around ski specific, fitness and balance tool on the market. All skiers, competitive and recreational, men, women, and children can make beneficial use of the routines in this book. Andrew Hooge also has companion web site, fitskiing.com which offers exercise videos and interactive coaching up to a personal one-on-one basis.
Last Word
When you find a program that recommends specific exercises to strengthen Obliques and Rectus Abdominus muscles because those muscles are important in helping to regain balance after catching an edge, you know you have found a winner. Get with the program - check out FitSkiing - Your Guide For Peak Skiing Fitness.
