When you decide to enter the winter resort and make some impressing tricks or just spend a good time you have to be prepared for that. In case you have never made any physical drill before, after half an hour you will drown in your own sweat. Your legs will failure.
The next day you will not be capable of moving your body at all due to the ache. Snowboarding requires the appropriate level of strength, endurance, and flexibility. If you want to enjoy your riding experience, then you should prepare your muscles for the slopes.
Without the proper knowledge, you can injure your body easily. That is why we give you the necessary info to prepare yourself for hitting the slopes. You will see the list of very effective physical drills for snowboarders above. They fit both male and female athletes.
Stretching Workouts
Stretching is essential while doing sports. Snowboarding is not an exception. You need to approach this with responsibility. Make stretches dutifully and you will protect yourself from sprains. Bear in mind the best time for doing this is after training because of its relaxing effect.
You should especially focus on your shoulders, triceps, biceps, quadriceps, calves, piriform muscles and hamstring in particular. The main rule you should follow is not to turn stretches into pain. Untrained ligaments and tendons can tear. You should tighten them smoothly.
Exercises for Beginners
Beginners, the people, who only start doing physical drills, should focus on strength training. You need to enhance your overall energy for better performance in snowboarding. With rare exceptions, the fitness for winter sports does not differ from any other fitness exercises. This paragraph introduces the target drills for your lower body and core since these muscles work the most while hitting the slopes:
- Squats. The newbies can do bodyweight squats. Humanity has not invented a better exercise for your legs yet. In terms of biomechanics, this movement is the most “naturally occurring” for human anatomy among numerous leg exercises. And it is incredibly effective since it loads your quadriceps, core, glutes, back and partially hamstring at once. It increases the power of your lower part of the body drastically. It does not matter whether you are a novice or an experienced snowboarder. You should add this drill into your workout anyway.
- Back extension. This movement loads your back extensors. You should do this to prepare your back for heavier, more complex compound movements.
- Romanian deadlift. In fact, this is the only effective exercise for your hamstring. Load as much weight as to make 10 reps. In the beginning, take just the bar and feel the work of your hamstring, maintaining the good form.
- Push-ups. This drill develops your chest, front deltoids, triceps, and abs. The bodyweight exercises are a good start for the beginners to strengthen the upper part of the body.
- Crunches. They target every section of your abs. A strong core is a key to easy snowboarding maneuvers.
Intermediate Snowboarding Workout
You should do the previous exercise list but make the weight progression within the optimal rep range and the proper form. But also, you should add complex additional exercises to strengthen your body further:
- Bench press. It loads the same muscles as in the case of push-ups. However, it is much more comfortable in terms of weight progression. To gain strength and muscles you need to increase the number of plates on the barbell. The best form for non-bodybuilders is a kind of powerlifting technique since this movement is biomechanically natural. When the back is arched a little and shoulder blades are kept together, the stress on the shoulder joints is minimal.
- Deadlift. This exercise trains mainly your back extensors but also loads glutes, hamstring, and quadriceps. Your back will be as strong and tough as steel after 1-2 years of training.
- Rotating box jump. It is especially useful for snowboarders since it develops your coordination. You can perform this drill at the end of your workout as a cardio.
- Back barbell squat. It is a more complex variant for those, whose legs get used to the bodyweight.
Fitness for Advanced Riders
Beginner and intermediate workouts can be composed as full-body, meaning you do all the exercises within a single trip to the gym. But after a couple of months, you can make split workouts. This means you train your upper body one day and the lower body the other day. The 3-day split may consist of:
- Legs-abs
- Chest- triceps- front deltoids
- Back-biceps- middle and back deltoids
You should also do balancing drill, for example, balance board squats. Also, you can do some jogging after the workout.
Conclusion
These are the best exercises not only for snowboarding but for daily life too. Before performing any exercise, do the warmup. And also do some warmup sets before lifting weights. For instance, before squatting with working weight, do 3 warmup sets.
The first one has to always be with just a bar. Also, to keep constant gains, you need to load adjoining muscle groups (back+ biceps, for instance) per week. If you are the beginner and use full-body training, there is no need to load the same muscle even twice a week.
Give them time to recover. Keep 6-10 repetition range. Do not try to set personal records every week. Your nervous system should recover as well. Otherwise, you can get into overtraining and lose the gains.