By Ian Markow, FRCms, Kinstretch, EXOS Performance Specialist, StrongFirst SFG1, NASM-CPT. Fifteen years coaching in Boca Raton.
Every year it goes the same way. The trip gets booked. Six weeks out, the training starts. A little StairMaster. Some squats. A few lunges while the coffee brews. The idea is to get ready for the mountain in time for the mountain.
Then the first day on snow arrives and the body finds out the truth. Skiing and snowboarding are high-impact sports. You cannot cram for a high-impact sport in six weeks any more than you can cram for a marathon in six weeks.
That is the gap. People treat skiing as a seasonal activity, so they treat their bodies as seasonal projects. The mountain does not care what month you started.
Why the six-week plan fails
Search “how to train for ski season” and almost every article tells you to start six to eight weeks out. That advice is not wrong so much as it is aimed low. Six weeks is enough to raise your heart rate. It is not enough to build the kind of tissue capacity a high-impact sport demands.
Here is the problem with seasonal training. Capacity built seasonally is lost seasonally. You spend the fall grinding out squats, you get a little stronger, you ski for a week, and then the training stops until next October. Every year you start from close to zero. Every year your body is meeting the impact of the mountain for the first time all over again.
Your knees, hips, and spine do not read the calendar. They respond to load, and they respond slowly. A tendon takes months to adapt, not weeks. Bone takes longer than that. The month or two of prep most people do gives them just enough fitness to feel confident and nowhere near enough capacity to be safe. That combination is how people get hurt.
Being ready to ski is not something you switch on in October. It is something you never fully switch off.
The volume spike nobody plans for
Here is the part that makes seasonal training so risky. You do not ski a little. You ski nothing for months, then you ski everything at once.
Think about how a ski trip actually goes. Zero days on snow all year. Then four, five, six days in a row. First lift to last chair. All day, every day, back to back. In a single week you ask your body for more high-impact volume than it has seen in the previous eleven months combined.
That is a volume spike. It is one of the most reliable ways to get hurt in any sport. The tissue is not just under-prepared for the intensity of skiing. It is buried by the sheer amount of it, stacked day on day with no time to adapt. Day one feels fine. Day three is when the knee starts talking. Day five is when something gives.
You cannot fix a volume spike during the trip. The trip is the spike. The only thing that changes the outcome is the capacity you brought with you. A body that has been loading and landing all year absorbs six straight days. A body that did six weeks of squats gets overwhelmed by day two and spends the rest of the trip guarding.
Skiing is plyometrics on snow
If you want to ski well and ski safely, you have to be able to jump and land all year. Not because you are jumping off cliffs. Because every turn, every bump, every absorption of terrain is a controlled landing. Skiing is plyometrics performed on snow, over and over, for hours.
The numbers back this up. The knee is the most injured region in skiers, making up about 31 percent of all skiing injuries. ACL injuries alone account for roughly 17 percent. And the mechanism is almost always the same. It happens during the braking phase. Landing from a jump. Catching an edge. Absorbing a load the leg was not prepared to absorb.
That braking action has a name in the gym. It is called eccentric loading. It is your quad lengthening under tension while it tries to slow you down. It is the exact quality you build when you learn to land from a jump under control. Skip that training and the first hard landing of the season becomes the moment your body is asked to do something it has not practiced since last winter.
You do not need to be a jumper to need this. You need it because stopping, turning, and soaking up terrain are all landings. If your body cannot decelerate on demand, the mountain will do the decelerating for you.
The ski boot problem almost nobody trains for
Now the part that gets ignored completely. Ski boots are some of the most restrictive footwear a human will ever put on. They lock the ankle and foot into a fixed shape for hours at a time. That restriction changes everything about how the leg above it has to work.
To turn a ski, you shift pressure to the inside and outside of your foot. That pressure travels up. It shows up at the foot, then the knee, then the pelvis. Good skiing is the ability to move that pressure cleanly through all three. Lock the ankle and take away the foot’s options, and the pressure still has to go somewhere. It usually goes into the knee rotating inward. That inward collapse is the same position that tears ACLs.
So you need two things that seem to contradict each other. You need to be able to control pressure and edge from inside a boot that barely lets your ankle move. And you need full, functional feet and ankles outside the boot, because you are going to spend long days locked in one.
If your foot and ankle have no range and no strength to begin with, hours in a rigid boot does not preserve function. It exposes the lack of it. The skier who can find the inside and outside of the foot, drive the knee without letting it cave, and stack it over the pelvis is the skier who turns with control instead of hanging on. That does not come from a wall sit. It comes from training the foot, ankle, knee, and pelvis to work together long before boot season.
The pain shows up at the knee. The problem is usually up and down the chain.
Here is what a leg-only approach misses. The knee is caught in the middle. It sits between a foot that cannot move and a hip that will not rotate, and it pays for both.
A stiff, weak foot cannot manage pressure, so the knee twists to make up for it. A hip that will not internally rotate forces the knee to do the rotating instead. A pelvis stuck on one side changes how you load that entire leg on every turn. The ankle, hip, and pelvis all cash out at the same joint. The one in the middle. The one that ends up sore or torn.
This is why prepping the “big skiing muscles” with squats is not enough. You can have strong quads and still feed every turn into a knee that has no help from above or below. Real readiness means the foot can load and move, the hip can rotate, the pelvis can shift, and the whole leg can decelerate under control. Then the knee stops being the only thing absorbing the mountain.
What being ready actually looks like
Being ready is not a six-week checklist. It is a body that stays prepared for a high-impact sport whether the trip is next month or next year.
That means keeping the ability to jump and land all year, not rediscovering it every fall. It means training the foot and ankle to move and load, so a rigid boot exposes strength instead of stiffness. It means a hip that rotates and a pelvis that shifts, so the knee gets help on every turn. It means treating your body like the equipment that matters most on the mountain, because it is.
None of that is complicated. But it does not happen by accident, and it does not happen in a month.
Three things you can start with
Enough about what does not work. Here are three places to start. Two of them almost everyone can begin today. The third is one to build toward.
Start today: the wall sit isometric
The wall sit gets mocked as a beginner move. Done with intent, it earns its place. Sit against a wall with your thighs parallel to the floor and hold. That is an isometric quad hold, and it builds the exact quality skiing hammers for hours: the ability to brake and hold a bent knee under load without giving out. It is joint-friendly, it demands almost no skill, and nearly anyone can start it this week. Hold for time, rest, repeat. When it gets easy, hold longer or drop lower.
Start today: the tibial rotation CAR
This one trains the turn. Sit with one knee bent and the foot planted, or with the leg out in front of you. Keep your thigh completely still and slowly rotate your shin bone inward and outward, moving only below the knee, going as far as you can control at each end. That is a controlled articular rotation for the tibia. It restores and strengthens the rotation your knee uses to shift pressure from the inside to the outside of your foot on every turn. Slow and controlled beats fast and sloppy. Almost everyone can and should be doing this.
Build toward: the low reaching lateral bound
This is the progression, not the starting point. Bound sideways off one leg, reach low toward the ground as you land on the other, and stick the landing under control. It trains single-leg deceleration and edge-to-edge control, the plyometric skill skiing is built on. It also asks a lot of the knee and ankle, so it is something to build into once you have a base of strength and control, not on day one. If landing on one leg feels shaky, that is your answer. Earn it first.
There is nothing worse than paying to ski and not being able to
Think about what a ski day actually costs. The lift ticket. The travel. The lodging. The gear. You spend real money and real time off to stand on top of a mountain. And then your back locks up by lunch. Your knees ache on every run. You do not trust your legs, so you ski scared and quit early.
Or worse, you are there to be with your kids, to keep up and keep them safe, and your body will not let you. There is nothing worse than paying for the day and watching it from the lodge.
That is the thing worth preventing. Not next season. Now.
Get your body ready before the mountain tests it
If you ski or snowboard and you are tired of showing up under-prepared, there is a better way than cramming six weeks of squats before every trip. I help clients build the kind of year-round capacity that makes the mountain feel easy instead of dangerous. Feet and ankles that work. Knees that hold their line. A body you trust from the first run to the last.
Book a free strategy call with me. We will look at what is actually limiting you and build the plan to fix it, so the money you spend to ski buys you a great day instead of a sore one.
Common questions about training for skiing and snowboarding
How far in advance should I train for ski season?
Ideally, year round. Most advice says six to eight weeks, and that is enough to build some general fitness, but not enough to build the tissue capacity a high-impact sport demands. Tendons and bone adapt over months, not weeks. Skiers who stay prepared all year meet the mountain with capacity. Skiers who cram meet it with confidence and not much else.
Why do my knees hurt when I ski?
Usually because the knee is covering for the joints around it. A foot and ankle that cannot manage pressure and a hip that will not rotate force the knee to twist and absorb load it was never meant to handle. Ski boots make this worse by locking the ankle. Building foot, ankle, hip, and pelvis function takes the load off the knee.
Do I need to do plyometrics to ski safely?
For most skiers, yes. Every turn, bump, and terrain change is a controlled landing, and landing under control is a plyometric skill. Knee injuries in skiing, including most ACL tears, happen during the braking or landing phase. Training your legs to decelerate on demand throughout the year is one of the best ways to protect them.
Are squats and the StairMaster enough to prepare for skiing?
They help, but they are incomplete. Squats build the big muscles and the StairMaster builds some endurance. Neither trains the foot and ankle function, the deceleration and landing ability, or the hip and pelvis rotation that skiing actually demands. Strong quads feeding a knee with no help from above or below still leave you exposed.
How do ski boots affect my body, and can I train around it?
Ski boots lock the foot and ankle into a rigid position for hours, which removes the foot’s ability to manage pressure and pushes that job up to the knee and hip. You cannot change the boot, but you can prepare the body. Training full foot and ankle function and strong, rotation-ready hips outside the boot means the restriction exposes capacity instead of a weakness.
Why do my knees and back hurt after a few days of skiing in a row?
Because of a volume spike. Most people ski nothing for months, then ski several full days back to back, asking the body for more high-impact volume in one week than it saw all year. The tissue never gets time to adapt between days, so pain builds as the trip goes on. The fix is not during the trip. It is the year-round capacity you bring into it.
About the author
Ian Markow is the founder of Markow Training Systems in Boca Raton, Florida. He holds FRCms, Kinstretch, Stick Mobility, EXOS Performance Specialist, StrongFirst SFG1, MoveMed Level 1, NASM-CPT, and NCCPT certifications, with fifteen years coaching in-person and online clients. His work centers on assessing and reframing the problem before prescribing, and on building capacity in tissue rather than protecting it into weakness.
