Focus On Conditioning: Still Time For This Season
[Editor Note: This article was contributed by Peter Schmaus, MD, Orthopedic Spine and Sports Medicine Center, Paramus, NJ. and Senior Attending Physician, Hackensack University Medical Center. SeniorsSkiing.com is very grateful to have his view on conditioning.]
Pay Attention To Body Tuning Before You Hit The Slopes Or Trails.
Many of us pay more attention to our equipment than the most important equipment of all—us! Many ski injuries and overuse syndromes can be avoided by simple preventative maintenance. While sharpening your edges and maintaining bindings are smart, even more important is a musculoskeletal tune up on yourself. This is even more crucial as we age and the musculoskeletal system inevitably displays the wear and tear of the years.
We lose muscle mass annually as we age over 40, but this can be reversed with the correct exercise regimen. Joints inevitably become stiffened both from cartilage thinning as well as tightening of the soft tissues surrounding the joints and spine. These conditions, while not completely reversible, can be managed with exercise programs stressing both flexibility and strengthening.
While stabilization and core are buzzwords frequently used in the fitness field, for snow sports those words cannot be repeated too often. Fitness trainers, therapists, and physicians refer to muscle groups that are core stabilizers. These include the rectus abdominus, external and internal obliques, back extensors, and the pelvic floor muscles.
These are your natural weight lifting belt and lumbar support muscles. They stabilize and support the spine in all planes, and a strong core helps provide balance and force required to carve a turn or navigate a field of moguls. Core muscles even support your spine when pulling off your boots at the end of the ski day. Exercise methods include Swiss ball, back extension, modified crunches, various planks and supermen. All can be done in the home without elaborate gym equipment. And do not forget the simple push up and proper squat.
We frequently refer to the posterior chain, which includes the gluteal muscles, the hamstrings as well as latissimus, and back extensors. Regimens can include lunges, modified dead lifts, squats, kettle bells and burpees. If your bodyweight does not provide sufficient resistance, add some light weight. Simple flat plates, kettle bells, or even resistance bands will suffice. Then move on to side-to-side exercises, which simulate ski motion. Keeping your center of gravity well centered is the physics behind a good day on the mountain.
Be mindful that snow sports, while not overly aerobic, do require exertion and therefore increased cardiovascular activity. That is aside from the long walk uphill though the parking lot with all your heavy equipment.
Also important especially as we age are balance exercises. Stand on a balance or wobble board. Not a challenge? Hold two light weights. Go through your regimen while remaining balanced on the board. It is not easy in the beginning, but the benefits of enhanced balance and stability are crucial on uneven terrain. Constructing a preventative exercise program well in advance of those first days on the mountain will reduce the risk of injury, making those days on the mountain more enjoyable and injury and pain free.
SeniorsSkiingGuide: Big Bromley
Bromley Mountain Is Just Right For Seniors.
Bluebird day at the top of Bromley Mtn, VT. Credit: Tamsin Venn
At Bromley Mt. in southern Vermont, runs are not too long and not too short, just right for senior legs to make a top-to-bottom, 1,300 vertical-foot run without a thigh-burn break.
Although you would be remiss not to stop. Views from the top of the Sun Mountain Express stretch from the Adirondacks to the White Mountains. In the near distance, snow-dusted hills and ridges roll away. Trails curve through bright deciduous trees, and dipping into a glade is a friendly undertaking.
I found the sweet spot on a trail called Corkscrew over to Pabst Peril, smooth as Guernsey butter, after a recent seven-inch snowfall. The Pabst reference is to Bromley’s original owner, Fred Pabst, grandson of Captain Frederick Pabst, founder of Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer.
Black diamonds here are really what other areas would call blues, reducing the high alert meter. A high speed lift and groomed trails ensure sharable speed and vertical feet tallies on your Ski Tracks app. A south facing slope, flooded in sunshine on a wintry day, is enough to banish SAD for the entire winter, although some skiers’ fondest memories are sun-and-shorts spring ski days, and the world is grand.
Bromley is known as a young family-friendly mountain, which is always good news for seniors. It welcomes a lot of others as well: tele skiers (a popular annual telefest); moms (Feb. 8 is Mom’s Day Off); snowboarders (Sochi Olympics medalist Alex Deibold is a native son); uphill skiers sunrise through dusk . (The Appalachian Trail swings around back.); and exchange students (who trade Lima, Peru for Peru, Vt., to work here in their summer). Also innkeepers, young racers guided by the Bromley Outing Club, and lines of kids in weekly afternoon school programs.
Bromley is right-sized for seniors, lots of do-able trails, even the Black Diamonds. Credit: Bromley
As an independent mountain, managed by Brian and Tyler Fairbank of the Fairbank Group, which also runs Cranmore Mt. and Jiminy Peak, Bromley still has a senior’s season pass, and senior day pass discounts as low as $39 for a midweek day ticket if bought at least a day in advance.
The Silver Griffins is “for skiers 60 plus with a sunny attitude.” For $15 annual dues, you get parking near the base lodge midweek non-holiday (the youngsters have to park on the other side of Route 11), discounts in the cafeteria, ski shop, rental and repair service area, plus a name badge, monthly after ski parties in the Stratton View alcove, other social functions, and lots of tall tales from when Bromley was a two J-Bar mountain.
Fun Facts
Marvie Campbell celebrates 50 years as a ski instructor at Bromley.
Seniors Seasons Pass: 70 plus, $549; age 65-69, $599. No blackout dates.
Advance Sale Lift Tickets: As low as $39, depending on day and month.
Bring the grandkids: Bromley put in a terrain park this year, built by the experts at Arena Snowparks.
Fat Tire Fridays: Burger and Beer Special for $10 in the Wild Boar Tavern.
Skiing History Day: March 2. Fanatics unite. https://www.bromley.com/winter/events/
Why Stay Home Lodging: Midweek $99/night, includes lodging, tickets, and breakfast for two. http://lodgeatbromley.com/vermont-vacation-packages/
50th Anniversary: Marvie Campbell celebrates her 50 years as a Bromley ski instructor this year.
Mountain Stats
- Summit Elevation 3,284 feet
- 47 Total Trails
- Nine lifts
- 86 percent Snowmaking
- www.bromley.com
This Week In SeniorsSkiing.com (Jan. 11)
Avalanche Alerts And Deaths, Keep Warm, Telemark Memoir, Snow Tool Mystery Glimpse, Tire Chain Reminders, Why You Have To Enter Email Again.
Over the past week, there have been monumental snow falls in Colorado, California, the Canadian Rockies, and most of western Europe. Click here for snow totals over the last seven days from different resorts in the Alps from OnTheSnow.com. In California, I-80 was closed due to spin-outs and low visibility that came with heavy snow and rain. More was forecast for this week.
Multiple feet of new snow are falling on existing bases on both continents. That combination creates an unstable snowpack and brings extremely serious avalanche risk. In fact, seven deaths have already occurred in the last week both in North American and Europe from avalanches, according to Snowbrains.com. Some of these were backcountry skiers, another couple were snowshoeing in the Alps, one death came when snow swept through an avalanche safety class in Silverton, CO.
Obviously, winter snow sports depends on snow and cold weather. When the weather becomes severe, it is wise to pay very close attention to where you are going, whether you are prepared, and even it is wise to venture forth.
There’s a very instructive expression for those who sail, boat, fish, or otherwise head out to the ocean that also applies to those who live and play in snow country.
If you go to sea, you must know what you’re about.
If you’re not, the sea will find you out.
Snowfall in Europe, January 2019
Indeed, if you head to snow country into significant weather, please know what you are about. If you ski in backcountry, follow common sense rules: pack a shovel, avalanche beacon and related equipment, ski with a group, watch the warnings. If you are driving in the mountains, make sure your car has the “box in the back” with emergency tools, including chains. [See Marc Liebman’s article on tire chains in this issue.] If you’re just out there skiing the groomers, know your limits, keep hydrated, know when to head to apres ski.
Otherwise, you could get found out.
This Week
Correspondent Harriet Wallis brings a very funny article on keeping warm. Her advice to women is pretty specific: Ladies, Don’t Wear Black Underpants On Super Cold Days. Find out why by clicking here.
Author Roger Lohr (c) and two buddies try a three-man tele turn. What’s with the group turning thingy, guys?
SeniorsSkiing.com’s XC editor and publisher of XCSkiResort.com Roger Lohr shares some memories of his Telemark skiing experiences. Did you know that Telemark skiing and NATO have some things in common? Did you know that making group Telemark turns is a “thing” in that sport?
Our Mystery Glimpse features what looks like a bit of daredevil skiing with a device that was meant to be helpful at ski resorts. What are we talking about? Click here. Also, we reveal the names of those flying family members who were ski jumping in tandem from last week’s MG. Not surprisingly, several readers got that one. Easy.
Our bet is that most seniors think negatively about snow chains. Unwieldy, noisy, clunky, but ultimately necessary in certain circumstances. (See above comments on severe winter weather.) Correspondent Marc Liebman reminds us why these nuisances are important to master. Click here on his tire chain story with a link to some resources on how to select the right chains for your vehicle.
Finally, we re-cue our explanation of why our readers sometimes have to re-enter their names and emails. We do this because we have a lot of new readers who may not know how our no-password access to Subscriber-Only Content works. We also do this to stem some of the nasty-grams we get from some frustrated readers who are not shy about letting us know about their frustrations and what they think of our so-and-so online magazine. So, to those people, we say: Be nice. There are reasons you are having these re-entry issues. Click here for more.
January is Learn To Ski And Snowboard Month. Bring a friend to your favorite resort. There are 140 ski resorts offering nearly 300 special learn-to-ski programs this month. In fact, some resorts are celebrating Learn To Ski month with celebrations on January 11th. Click here for more.
Thank you for reading SeniorsSkiing.com. Remember, there are more of us every day, and we aren’t going away.
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