Exercises For Skiing And Snowboarding – Leg Press

Michael Butters introduces our series of videos on skiing and snowboarding and demonstrates the Leg Press.

Full Video Transcript

Hi, guys. This is Michael from St Leonards Physio. So, this month, me and Chris are just running through some exercise videos in preparation for this upcoming snow season. Commonly, we see people come into the practice that have injuries from being out in the snow. A lot of these times, it’s come from just deconditioning or lack of strength, lack of endurance in our muscles. So, we’ve just come up with a series of five exercises with some really simple progressions that you can do at home, in the gym, that you can apply into your training to get you best prepared for the snow, so you don’t have to come and see us with a big injury. The exercises we’re giving are fairly generic, so if you do have any sort of symptoms, any pain, any niggles, tightness, come and see one of us physios and we’ll try and design a specific exercise program.

Hi, guys. It’s Michael from St Leonards Physio. This month, we’re just focusing on some videos, trying to get our legs stronger for skiing and snowboarding. We commonly see people that get injuries around their hips, their knees, and their ankles after being in the snow, and a lot of times, it’s because they’re purely deconditioned. So, we’re just going to look at a simple exercise here today called the leg press, and give you a couple of alternatives and progressions that you can do. We might decide, if we can sit nicely, simple rounds of about 3 lots of 15.

So first one, just come on down. Bring your feet on there about shoulder-width apart. Push the bar up. Make sure you’ve got your hips, your knees and your ankles are in alignment. Roll the safety bar down to the side, and you’re gonna try and slowly bring it down, just until your knees are about 90 degrees, and then pushing off. Try to make sure you keep your hips, your knees, your ankles in alignment, and maintaining that nice sort of steady, smooth movement, making sure we don’t lock our knees into this position here. Just a couple more. Pushing off. Nice and smooth and controlled. We can look at varying up your speed and your timing as you need to.

The next progression we’re gonna look at is just using one leg. So, much more challenging for our hip, knee, ankle mechanics, and great for balance. Just rolling the bars out to the side again. Similar principles, just kind of coming down, pushing up, in control. Nice and smooth. Push up. In control. Make sure you do the same amount on your right leg as your left.

Next one we’re going to look at is actually a leg press and catch, and this is great if you’re trying to replicate some jumping or some landing, when you’re skiing or snowboarding. So basically, just pushing off here, coming down, controlling the weight down. Big push off and nice, soft catch. And just pushing up there.

So guys, yeah, we got some progressions there. So, we’re basically going from two foot, onto one foot, onto the leg press catch. If you’ve had any sort of arthritic problems, instability problems with your knees, then I’d probably just stick with the two legs to start off with. If you have trouble, though, come see one of us physios and we’ll run you through what’s appropriate for you. Okay, guys, thanks. We’ll see you down in the snow.