Fitness Routines

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Marie Mercer on October 19, 2008 at 7:19pm

Well, as a fitness instructor who literally wrote a book on this subject, I should probably be first to answer. I focus on incorporating balance, agility and strength. This means lots of work on the stability ball, bosu, etc. I write about this about three times a week on my Colorado Mountain Fitness Page.

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Permalink Reply by Connie on October 29, 2008 at 9:48am

Hehe - yeah the speed skating is my latest thing. :) It's actually been wonderful so far for my legs and knees. I don't think I could squat below 90 degrees for about 5 years. It was pretty much an alignment thing and never really came back. I could squat plenty of weight to about 100 degrees, but hit 90 and I needed to pull myself up or sit down because it felt like I was ripping my knees apart. And all of the sudden I can squat to like 120 degrees and stand back up. I honestly never throught I'd do that again. So... I don't know what that's actually useful for, but it's got to say something!

Actually I'm pretty sure that it's because skating has been awesome for my VMO muscles (any knee rehab patient can tell you all about that) and that's been fixing my patella alignment better than all the knee rehab exercises I've been doing all these years.

Anyway, the secondary benefit has been ankle strength/balance. AMAZING. I started off skating and by the time I'd barely get warmed up and feel balanced on the skates, my ankles would be tired already and I'd be back to wobbling. I've been at it for a few months now and can make it through about an hour and 10 minutes or so of a skating session before they're feeling a little tired. And where that has paid off is in silly little things like stream crossings when we're mountain biking. I used to need help passing my bike across and then wobbling my way across things - and all of the sudden it's everyone else wobbling and getting their feet wet and I can hold my bike in one hand and walk right across the wobbliest little logs or oddly spaced wet rocks. Again, it's a little thing, but I can see a big improvement in a short period of time. And I've spent a lot of time over the years balancing on BOSU balls and doing yoga balance poses and that sort of thing. But I don't think any of those things were really pushing my ankles to build strength like the skating has.

So anyway, that's my cross training these days. And then in winter I'm planning to do XC skiing too. It'll be interesting to see how the speed skating transfers to skate skiing...

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