Dryland Training – By Tom Gibbings

As we approach the winter holidays and the thought of a stress-free month, try out some dryland training to keep in shape for the ski/snowboard season – if you get in the habit now hopefully you can continue these throughout the year and then all of next summer to be in prime condition for next year.  The more you work out, the less likely you are to get injured.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Tom Gibbings, and I am a new student at the Marshall School of Business MBA candidate 2010. I just moved back to the city after living in Mammoth for 4.5 years. For the 5 winters that I lived and worked up there I got in a ton of snowboarding, had my fair share of injuries, and had a bunch of friends get injured. Many snowboarding/skiing injuries are preventable and if I can help prevent just one injury this year, my job is done.

I urge all of you, regardless of skill, go out and do some dryland trianing. Here are the things in order of importance that you need to be concerned about:

1. Flexibility
2. Core Strength
3. Leg Strength
4. Balance
5. Shoulder Strength

FLEXIBILITY
When you eat it on the hill, many times you twist things that aren’t meant to be twisted. This includes legs, knees, shoulders, etc. Many injuries can be prevented by working on your flexibility. Whenever you go to the gym, take that extra 10 minutes to stretch out. Believe me, its way easier to stretch for a few minutes than using crutches to get to class (I was on crutches when I had to interview to get in to USC and it sucked). A good goal to set is to be able to touch your toes with your feet together. Second, work on doing leg circles.

One quick side note about leg circles. Yes I know it looks lame and you feel retarded doing it, but it works really really well. Here is a video of leg circles. The only thing I do differently is that I do them while on my side instead of on my back:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHp_pyZV4tY

CORE STRENGTH
Core Strength is just as important as flexibility. On top of doing sit ups and leg raises:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ysNevIv0w
you need to do back extensions. I don’t know how it is for skiiers but as a snowboarder the beginning of each year is marked with a sore back unless I do a bunch of back extensions. You should be doing these 2 – 3 times a week. Here is a video of back extensions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvlYhyA47rU

Leg raises are very important to people who are in to park. It doesn’t matter if you are really good at park or just starting out. So when you go off a jump, you want to get in a compact ball to be stable. This is where throwing grabs in on your snowboard really helps. Well, to get in to that compact ball you need to raise your snowboard up so you can grab it. This is where the leg raises really helps.

LEG STRENGTH
There are many ways to work on leg strength. I find that riding on the stationary bike works the best because it really hammers those quads. The stair master is probably second best and running a close third. Besides cardio, you should throw in some leg strength training in there as well. Squats and leg extensions are good ones. Another thing that I picked up from Mammoth is bleacher jumping. A decent place to do this is right by the indoor rock wall at the Lyon’s center. Jumping up and down those things are a good idea.

Leg strength is another big one for those aspiring park rats. When you go huge off a jump, often times when you land you will notice that you are doing what I call a “super squat.” You will be able to prevent injury by those times when you accidentally go a little too huge and end up landing a little past the landing zone. Landing on or before the knuckle of the landing and on the flats passed the landing is where most ACLs go bye-bye. Leg strength can help prevent this from happening.

BALANCE
For balance exercises in the gym, the Bosu Ball is your friend. Here is a youtube video of a great exercise:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGXIQj4sTn8

What I have been doing for the passed couple years is line up about 5 Bosu balls in a line that are 18 inches apart and jump from one Bosu to the next. Once you get good at this, jump on one foot down the line of Bosu’s. Then once you get that down, do 180s from Bosu to Bosu down the line.

Lastly, if you turn the Bosu Ball upside down, try to balance on the hard plastic side. Once you get that down using two feet, try to balance on one foot.

I don’t think I need to go much in to why balance is important in snowboarding. However I will say that it plays a huge part in jibbing (rails, boxes, etc. basically when you snowboard on stuff that isnt snow)

SHOULDER STRENGTH
Ok so this one is for the park rats and those aspiring to get into freestyle. IF YOU ARE GOING TO WORK ON SPINS OR JIBS, THIS MATTERS TO YOU. When I was learning how to hit the C-box in Mammoth this really helped me to avoid injury. Typically when you mess up on a rail or box, you end up landing on your shoulder. Avoid shoulder injuries by making sure you are strong enough to keep that area together when you land on it. This also comes in to play when you are working on spins. A good example is when I was working on back-side 540s. I was having issues with catching my edges when landing and rag dolling. I never ended up getting the trick down, but I was able to avoid a trip to the hospital by making sure I had the proper shoulder strength to keep all that stuff in the right spots.

Other tips to avoiding injury: besides common sense and wearing your helmet, I wear impact shorts whenever I am in the park. These things have saved my butt many times and I always wear them. Don’t worry, you can’t really tell you have them on. I am a huge advocate. Next time you are in Mammoth go into Wave Rave and check them out. Trust me your tailbone will thank you.