Ok....here's a pratical question which is not TTS or PMTS and which eveyone from Ott to tommy to Harrison can throw in a few thoughs on.......
Last year I worked hard on my "ski fitness" and also my ski technique.
In respect to ski fitness, I was wondering if anyone had some practical, quantifiable rules of thumb as to what they work on e.g. wall sits for say 5 minutes or say balancing on one-foot with eyes closed for 3 minutes.......
What I'm after are the best exercises which I,or anyone else, can do, say, at work or on train to/from work ( read city commuter ) which would build strength into the more important muscles....
Please don't suggest buying a book .
I appreciate HH has written a book on fitneess and some of those ideas are in the "old/new" testament aka Book 1 & 2 but I'm after specific stuff you can do/work on when your not wearing gym-type clothes etc and when your alone and wanting to kill a few minutes etc and which are really working the vital muscles....this is not a question about cardiovascular fitness...I'm talking the real stuff e.g.......of when you're pushing it down the steeeps and you need to be able to rely upon your strength of your ankles/quads for those few crucial moments as your are trying to finish off those last few turns on a run..........I'm sure you get my drift on this.....
As I said earlier, I find wall-sits on trains and one-legged balancing on trains and railway platforms a great exercise but I find the strength I want for longer endurance ski trails is not there at the end.........I can identify that my weakest muscles seem to be in the Quads......but I get the feeling that the real problem is in my Ankles/calves and that this weakness is being referred to my quads.......
As a closer ...I'm not prepared to pound the pavement with endurance jogging/runnig as I feel this would be damaging to the other joints etc in my body ( general advice received from orthopaedic specialist about the overall harm that jogging on hard surfaces does to joggers )
So, any helpful suggestion would be appreciated........
Yes, I'm generally fit, play sport on the weekends and ride a bike, walk to the train station etc but I think these activities only build up my endurance/cadiovascular system but do not add ski fitness/strength to my ankles/quads.......
This can't be a rocket-scientist question so I'm puzzled as to what I'm not doing that others must be doing ( but I dare not say, its old age.......at 50ish I'm still in my ascendency.......) that gives them the edge at the end....
I'm open to ( polite ) questions and am ready for the usual round of hecklers but I feel this is an area of skiing which generally needs to be addressed as fitness to me equates to less chance of injury and therefore a longer number of years ( hopefully of trouble-free ) skiing........
Bluey