Exercises For Skiing And Snowboarding – Body Weight Squats

Chris Andreano demonstrates body weight squats, the third video in our skiing and snowboarding series.

Full Video Transcript

Hey, guys. This is Chris from St Leonards Physio here, and this is a video that’s following on from our recent posts with regards to skiing exercises. And we’re really trying to give you guys some useful tools to prevent injury, get your legs a bit stronger to cope with the demands of skiing and snowboarding, as well.

The first thing in this post, in this video revolves around squatting, and we’re gonna talk about a body weight squat to begin with. Now, when you do a body weight squat, you’re really mostly focusing on your form and you’re trying to get a bit of endurance in your muscles, get the sort of pattern of movement correct. Now, the best place to start is a sort of a stable stance, slightly wider than your hips. Okay, make yourself nice and stable, and just stick your bottom out and sort of sit yourself down. And you wanna get into a sort of 90 degree knee angle. Okay. Gently just up and down, like so. So from the side, we got a nice tall stance to begin with, hip fold to begin with and sit yourself down, stand back up again.

In terms of sets and reps, with an exercise that involves body weight, we can sort of work up towards 15 to 20 repetitions. You know, that’s dependent on your comfort as well. But obviously, there’s no extra load with that sort of body weight exercise, so three sets, 15 to 20 reps to begin with. All right, guys.

Now, a bit of a progression. What we like to do is change the surface, so make things a bit more unstable, which is gonna challenge your muscles and your neuromuscular system a little bit more. So, again, same stance on a foam pad here. This is a balance pad. Similar thing, so you’re just gonna start at a nice tall posture, sit yourself down, bottom out behind you, get down to that sort of 90 degree knee depth. Okay. Stand smoothly back up again. All right, guys?

All right. As you can see, I’m on a bosu ball here. This is a half of a fitball, and all gyms have them. And it’s quite unstable, as you can see. Now, this is what we’re gonna do some of our squats on, when you’re ready to progression from I’ve just shown you on the foam pad. Okay? So, it’s gonna be quite challenging to begin with. Again, similar sort of structure, similar feet position, and you’re just gonna sit yourself down and smoothly back up. Okay? There’s a bit of a wobble to it. You’re gonna have to have some control in your hips and your ankles, but the structure of the squat is the same. Okay, guys? So, there’s just a few there. Just gently come off that.

Now, with regard to the surfaces at home, you can use a soft cushion that you’ll have in your lounge room. You can sort of replace the foam pad with a cushion, assuming you don’t have one of those, and if you wanna do these at home rather than at the gym. The other thing you can start to begin with is some kettlebell loading. Dumbbells are another thing you could be using. Once you master the body weight squat pattern, you will be ready to progress the exercise with a bit of extra weight. All right? Thanks, guys.