Get Your Hips Ready for The Ski Day With This Simple Mobility Routine

If your hips feel stiff every time you click into your ski bindings, you certainly aren’t alone. A lot of people overlook hip mobility, despite it being one of the most important aspects of ski fitness. This follow-along routine from Tom Gelle of Big Picture Skiing can work to open up your hips and reduce stiffness on the mountain.

The routine targets lateral and rotational hip movement, the motions that skiing tends to demand most. While most gym workouts train the body in a straight-ahead plane, skiing constantly asks your hips to rotate, abduct, and angulate. Gelle’s warm-up addresses all of it.

The sequence includes basic hip circles in an athletic stance, single-leg abduction, and adduction sweeps that simulate the leg separation skiers need when absorbing bumps or rebounding out of turns. From there, the routine works through side-reaching lunges, inliner-style wide-stance drills, and more.

A wall hip shift drill teaches skiers to create edge angles through the joint rather than by bending the spine, which is a critical distinction for anyone working on carving. The routine wraps up with figure-eight leg movements, ski hops to build dynamic lateral quickness, and hip drop exercises that train both knee-driven and hip-driven angulation.

You don’t need any equipment for this workout, just work within your own range and don’t push for flexibility that you don’t have yet. You should be trying to wake up the body, not become a gymnast. Doing this routine, or a shortened version of it, before skiing, can lead to immediately noticable results on the first run.

• Categories:  
• Skiing