Summer Cyclists to Winter Warriors: Part 2

By Ned Dowling

The unfortunate reality for skiers is that winter is short, and summer is long. Lacking an abundance of safe places to rollerski or ski tunnels, most of us turn to cycling in the summer for exercise and a dose of the outdoors. Even our favorite ski shops pack up the skis and roll out the bikes every spring. While cycling can be great training for Nordic skiing (the engine is the same, after all), hours of hard work on the bike still fail to train some of the fundamentals of skiing.

This three-part series aims to help turn Summer Cyclists (and runners and hikers) into Winter Warriors through a batch of targeted exercises beginning with single-leg balance and stability for efficient glide. Part III will help you transfer that capacity with a solid core.

This series is a collaboration between Boulder Nordic Sport and Ned Dowling, PT. Ned is a physical therapist at the University of Utah and with the Stifel US Cross Country Ski Team. He is a frequent contributor to fasterskier.com, where he presents articles similar to this series in an attempt to blend biomechanics, strength, and coordination to facilitate efficient ski technique for both performance and injury prevention.

Part 2 - Upper Body Strength

Upper body power is a major contributor and perhaps even a determinant of cross-country skiing performance. Poling accounts for up to 60% of propulsion in skate and classic diagonal and, obviously, 100% with double pole. For those who train for skiing year-round, upper body work is an essential part of the routine. However, for those whose summers are focused on running, cycling, or hiking, arm strength is often forgotten once the snow melts.

So what is the most efficient way to get the arms strong for skiing? Ideally, it’s a mix of both resistance training and endurance work. Picking up weights or stretchy bands is simple enough as long as you have a good idea of the muscles you need to target. (If you don’t know, read on–that’s the goal of this article.) The endurance component is more complicated and involves more equipment.

Rollerskiing is the gold standard since it best replicates the demands of the sport; however, not all of us have safe places to rollerski or are honestly brave enough. Specialized equipment like the SkiErg or Ercolina come very close to mimicking double poling in the comfort of your own home. On the cheap, you can rig a pair of resistance bands to pull on like the machines, but they have the inherent downside of adding more resistance the more they stretch–your poling motion will start easy and finish hard, which is the opposite of what happens while skiing. If you’re crafty, the old-school roller board is another option.

The mechanics of poling are primarily a shoulder motion with some contribution from the elbow depending on sub-technique (skate V2 alternate and downhill double poling will see a lot of elbow extension, the others not so much). There is also a major force contributor from the trunk, but that’s a rabbit hole tangent I’ll not explore here. As we push down on the poles, the glenohumeral joint, aka the shoulder, will extend (move backward) and internally rotate (rotate in). The primary muscles that create these motions are the lats, deltoids, and pecs. To a lesser extent, the triceps contribute to extension, and the subscapularis provides some internal rotation. By controlling motion at the elbow, the triceps contribute a ton in transferring force from the shoulder down to the poles. In addition to the big movers, we have a group of small muscles at the shoulder, which provide dynamic joint stability. Collectively known as the rotator cuff, they are your shoulders’ best friends, so we’ll be sure to include some exercises for them, too.

EXERCISES

Pull Ups

These may be the most specific exercise for strengthening the poling muscles, especially the lats. They do require a pull-up bar of some sort and a fair amount of baseline strength. Palms should be facing away, not towards you. If you find these absolutely impossible, you can unweight yourself with feet on a chair or a loop of resistance band (admittedly, this is precarious as a tight band shooting upwards between the legs is nobody’s idea of fun). If you can only muster one, try using a chair to help get your chin level with the bar, take your feet off the chair, and lower down slowly (aim for five seconds to lower).

Push-ups

These are second on my list, with a really good bang for the buck: triceps, pecs, some core, and a dose of shoulder stability. Hands close to the body equals more triceps. Hands further out will bias the pecs. If basic push-ups are too hard, drop to your knees or elevate your hands on a step or sofa. If you can knock out ten reps with ease, make them more challenging by elevating the feet on a step or sofa. Or harder still, put your feet on something that moves, like TRX straps or a physioball.

Dips

While the triceps are not the primary drivers for poling, they have to work very hard so that the force generated at the shoulder can bridge the elbow joint and push on the poles efficiently. They are often the weak link among sub-elite skiers because we tend not to pay much attention to them during the rest of the year. (Bonus: strong triceps will make it easier to maintain an aggressive road cycling position.) For that reason, I’m going big on the triceps and triple dipping on exercises. In addition to push-ups, dips are a great way to strengthen the triceps with minimal equipment. A chair, the edge of a sofa or bed, or even the bottom step will suffice. A proper dip bar is more advanced and also less likely to be lying around your house. While these do focus the triceps, a fair amount of shoulder blade stabilization is required–keep your shoulder blades down and out of your ears.