Ski Fitness Tip #1 – Wall Sits to Avoid Pain

Hello, I’m Tara McCabe, Physiotherapist here at Body Works Sports Physiotherapy in North Vancouver. This is the second video in a series of exercises to help get you ready for ski season. Now a skier requires a lot of endurance, especially the large muscles of the legs – so a great way to start to train these muscles is with Wall Sits.

Wall Sits

  • Choose a floor surface and your footwear to make sure you’re not going to slip
  • Stand with your back up against the wall and start with your legs out about a 45% angle.
  • Once you’re there, you’re going to slowly sink down into a seated position
  • Aim to create 90% angles; your hips, your knees and your ankles
  • From the front you want to make sure that your knees are over your second toe, and if you look down to your feet you can see your big toe just on the inside of your shins.
  • From here you’re just going to hold and remember to breathe. The muscles need oxygen to get the energy to do this exercise.
  • How long you hold it is going to depend on your body, but you want to hold until it’s difficult to do. You might feel some shaking or a little bit of burning.
  • When you’re ready to finish, you’re going to use not only your thighs but also you gluts to help push you up to the starting position.
  • Then you can rest for one to three minutes and then go again. That’s what we call do another set.

Timing and Repetitions

A simple program to start might be holding for 20 seconds, resting for one minute in between. Repeating three times over three sets three times a week.

Then you can play around with different options to help increase the challenge of the exercise. You can hold for longer, decrease the time you rest between sets, increase the number of sets, and increase the times that you do the exercise during the week.

Another way you can increase the challenge is to start to work one leg more than the other. So getting into your wall sit, starting to play around with, can you lift one heel off without compensating somewhere else and once you can do that easily see if you can lift the foot off completely and balance on just the one leg.

So that’s it; you learned to Wall Sit. Find more ski training tips here!