Oct. 26, 2011 - Issue #836: Winter Guide 2011
Preparing to get physical
Jason Roncesvalles, a personal trainer and owner at CrossFit Armoury, says transferability is the key to maintaining body strength and flexibility throughout the seasons. "During the summer people are active outdoors. That's functional movement, whereas in winter a lot of people end up going to traditional gyms and they lose the functional movement when they're confined to machines," says Roncesvalles. "The transferable benefit to real life isn't the same."
Exercising using real movements like squats and dead lifts rather than bicep curls can improve the transferability of the exercise from the gym to real life. And it will improve the likelihood you'll develop the real muscle and core strength necessary to survive the ski hill.
But regardless of being inside the gym or out, a key to preventing injury is to maintain a level of activity throughout the year. Dr Donald Voaklander at the Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research recommends any exercise that maintains balance.
"If you do weight-bearing activity all year round the nerve system will be trained up to moving and it will protect you more," he says, which will help to prevent slips and falls on the ice and snow in the winter months.
Voaklander also recommends proper outerwear. "You want to make sure the footwear you're wearing is appropriate," he says. "Sometimes you grab the broom and think, 'I'll just dust this snow off before I go to work' while in your dress shoes, and that can cause the most accidents."
That overestimation of ability can cause big problems, even if you're just taking the toboggan out for a test drive, says Voaklander: "Emergency departments report a lot of sliding injuries, head injuries and surprisingly it's adults on the hill, jumping on the toboggan after a beer."
If you're in that state, it's unlikely you're wearing the proper equipment. Voaklander recommends preparing for the weather, saying that dressing in layers, mittens instead of gloves, waterproof boots, helmets for skating, toboganning and on the curling rink will decrease the likelihood of injury and frostbite for any activity in the frozen hinterland.
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