Part 5 – Meet your new friend

Over the past few days, I’ve given you an insight into specific boarding conditioning that should be turning you into one strong and stable hell raiser.

There are many other exercises that could be integrated into your yearly training plan, however I want to focus on a piece of kit that I think is invaluable for improving and maintaining range of motion and mobility of the muscles and joints.

Meet the foam roller, a simple chap and cheap to buy. This can be stuffed in your board bag with ease and weighs virtually nothing. In fact I’m so convinced of the rollers efforts to ease you into a better performance, I get all my clients to use one on a daily basis. You will learn to love the roller!

You can use the roller for two main purposes. The first is to reduce muscular tension often found as trigger points or tender points within muscles. The second is to mobilise joints, in particular the inter-vertebral joints of the spine.

Exercise 1 – Reducing muscular tension

You might ask why do I need to do this? Remember that early on we talked about posture and its relationship to optimal performance. The further you are away from good alignment, there exists more chance of reduced mechanical performance (how well you move) and the incidence of injury. The foam roller can help you identify any potential tender spots, which may have formed from repetitive movement, poor nutrition or psychological stress. The body is composed of tonic or stabilising muscles (prone to shortening/strengthen) and phasic or movement muscles (prone to lengthen/weaken). These can be dysfunctional for a variety of reasons.

Using a foam roller and reducing the neuromuscular tension prior to stretching has a much better effect on range of motion, than simply stretching alone.

The rectus femoris or thigh muscle is predominantly a tonic muscle that can cause your pelvis to tilt forwards (one of several muscles), which can change your centre of gravity and performance on the board.

Exercise 2 – The Release

• Place the roller just above the knee with your arms straight down.
• Avoid extending the back too much.
• Roll up the thighs until you reach the top. Gents may need to stop a little earlier!
• Get off the roller and replace above the knees. DO NOT ROLL DOWN the thighs.
• IF this is quite comfortable, try completing on one leg at a time.
• Repeat 2-4 times each side, pay attention to any tender spots.
• If the tension does not subside you may be going too hard, apply pressure accordingly

The Stretch

You have probably stood up and lifted your heel to your backside to stretch out your thighs. This stretch is simply ineffective as it causes the pelvis to tilt further forwards.
Using a Swiss ball or Chalet sofa serves to stretch the muscle without the tilt associated with standing.

• Place a ball against the wall.
• The thigh that you are going to stretch is placed behind you with the shin on ball.
• Place the other leg forwards on the sole of the foot.
• Raise arm up in the air (same side as stretch) to add a multi dimensional stretch.
• Now attempt to squeeze the glute or backside muscle on that side to increase the stretch. This may be very tight for you, so go gently to start!
• Hold for five seconds then relax for five, complete 3-5 times.
• Avoid leaning back.
• Repeat on the other leg.
• You may wish to try a ratio of 2:1 for a side that appears tighter.

If you’ve covered all the advice in this series of article, you’ll be well prepared to hit the slopes. Keep an eye out for our more advanced training for snow and ski later this year.

Here’s a snowboard and a ski video to get you motivated.

Pro Snowboarder Jeremy Jones Shredding the Backcountry from Teton Gravity Research on Vimeo.

Seth Morrison, K2 SKEEZE THE MOVIE 3 from Drew Lederer on Vimeo.

See you on the chairlift!

Part 4 – Crank it up!

So the season or next trip to those powder adorned peaks is coming up and your training should warrant a change now that you have developed a good base of flexibility, stability and strength.

Now it’s time for power!

In other words we can start to throw in some funky exercises that are going to add some serious bite to your performance. A lot of people tend to throw themselves straight into a strength or endurance programme without working through the continuum previously mentioned. If you don’t take time to find out which muscles are tight and need stretching and which may be long and need strengthening, your body’s misalignment is going to increase due to the nature of boarding.

Exercise 1 – Squat and Toss

The squat and toss is a great exercise that can have a great impact for combined jumping and twisting movements and works pretty much all muscles in the body with a lot of emphasis on the rotators of the trunk and the extenders of the trunk hip and knee joints. It also requires the use of the stretch shorten cycle of muscle tissue and constitutes a plyometric exercise that is very demanding and movement specific for boarding. This exercise will seriously increase your ability to pull off rotations with ease!

• Stand 90 degrees and at least 2 or 3 feet from a wall
• Wind up by moving into a squat and rotating away from the wall.
• Power up and as you straighten throw the ball against a wall or to a partner.
• Catch the ball and return to the start position.
• If your working for pure power complete as many as you can in 12 seconds.
• Complete on the other side.
• Remember to stop when your form breaks or movement slows down.
• Increase the intensity by increasing the weight of the medicine ball.
• Further progressions would be kneeling on a Swiss ball and for those with big swingers and great stability standing on the Swiss ball.

Exercise 2 – The Prone Cobra

Now if your competing or boarding on a regular basis your muscular dysfunction is going to increase quite rapidly so its really important to complete key postural exercises to keep you aligned and injury free.
The Prone Cobra is the exercise to do at the end of a day to help out with such issues and is an excellent entry exercise for back conditioning. It is particularly effective for reducing rounded shoulders that is often seen in the sedentary office worker and over exerciser. It also effectively conditions the long back extensors that run from the lower back to upper back. If you have an excessive lower back curve, you will need to contract the glutes first before executing this exercise, or you run the risk of increasing the curvature.

• Lay flat on the floor with your hands facing the ceiling.
• Contract the back extensor muscles, pulling the chest away from the floor.
• Rotate the arms away from the trunk, pulling the shoulder blades together.
• Keep the chin tucked in.
• Hold for ten seconds then relax, rest for ten seconds.
• When you can complete ten reps try reducing your rest time to five seconds.
• When you can complete 15/20 repetitions progress to 1/2/3 minute holds.

Tomorrow sees the last article in our series on pre-winter season training (sniff!) – Get ready to meet your new friend!

This article originally appeared on Snowboard Club UK.