GREAT NORTHERN PHYSICAL THERAPY P: 406-586-4678

Early Season Nordic Skiing Drills

Early Season Nordic Skiing Drills

Thanks to the Bridger Ski Foundation the Gallatin Valley has some of the best groomed nordic ski trails in the nation! The snow is finally here (hopefully to stay) and soon the trails will be getting into skiing shape. Early season is the time of year to work on your technique and do some drills. Spending a few minutes at the beginning or end of your ski in the pre-season working on these will help your technique and training throughout the rest of the year. Here are a few ideas for working on your balance and specific strength.

  1. No-pole skiing: Spend 5 minutes skiing without your poles. This will help you to really focus on your weight transfer which is key to good skate technique. I suggest dropping your poles on the side of the trial and keeping your hands on your hips while you do this drill. Keeping your upper body still will force your weight to go over each foot as you skate side to side.
  2. Gentle Downhill Balance: Pick an easy downhill to practice your balance on. Try to glide as long as you can on one ski. This will challenge your balance and improve your single leg strength. 
  3. In a pinch (or in case we don’t have great snow) any dryland single leg balance will be helpful for your skiing technique. Try balancing on something unstable like a BOSU ball or practice your single leg balance while bouncing a ball!

Hopefully we’ll have some groomed trails soon and remember to support them by buying a grooming pass to help BSF cover the costs of grooming such amazing trails for us!

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The pelvic floor is certainly a hot topic of conversation for many men and women. Specifically, people begin to focus on their pelvic floor when they are having incontinence, urgency/frequency, prolapse, or pain associated with going to the bathroom or having sex. These are all issues related to pelvic floor dysfunction. But, what many don’t realize, is that your pelvic floor is also integral in one of our most basic functions: breath.

The diaphragm, our respiratory muscle, is located at the bottom of the ribcage. At rest, the diaphragm is a domelike shape, and with inhalation the diaphragm muscle contracts and drops downward toward your pelvis. This downward motion is followed by a shifting downward of internal organs, into the pelvic bowl. The pelvic floor muscles and fascia make up the bottom of the pelvic bowl. So, with this downward force during inhalation, the pelvic floor muscles also descend or stretch slightly downward. Immediately following inhalation and pelvic floor descent, is exhalation, and similarly, the pelvic floor follows the diaphragm as it rises upward to a resting position. This synchronous rising and falling of the diaphragm and pelvic floor is often referred to as the “piston effect”.

Not to be left out, the lower abdominal muscles (transverse abdominis) also contribute to this synchronous movement pattern. Working together by relaxing and stretching with inhalation and a “belly breath”, and tightening and drawing inward slightly with exhalation. In this way, the diaphragm, abdominals, and pelvic floor make up an abdominal cylinder that modulates intra-abdominal forces and pressure changes.

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Our pelvic floor physical therapists can help evaluate these movement patterns and coordination of these systems, and create a treatment approach specific to you and your individual challenges.