One Breath, One Turn

By Robert Gagnon

Enjoy your next ski vacation without being exhausted at the end of each day. Breathe well and get the best performance your body can give to you when you ski.

Another vacation at the mountain and after half a day you are already tired. Studies on athletes show that training their breathing muscles helps increase their performance and their endurance. Some simple exercise like synchronizing your breath when you walk can help you to improve your endurance. Here is a sample exercise that you can start with and use every day. When you walk try to take as many steps as you breathe in as when you breathe out. The number of steps you do has a lot of importance. A person with over 18 steps in total is considered to be in good condition. The result is better if you do this drill breathing only with your nose. It will become a reflex action when you walk and you can adapt it to your skiing.

Now that you are well trained with your respiration muscles lets apply it to skiing. Something that we don’t pay that much attention to but has a lot of importance is the way your respiration is working when you are skiing. As simple it sounds, the importance can be the difference between losing control and getting the perfect turn in some situations.

Let’s compare with another sport: Tennis. The tennis player breathes out loud when they hit the ball. What is the movement at that time? As the arm comes forward and presses the thoracic cage, it is natural that the air comes out. It’s at that same moment that the tennis player exerts the biggest effort.

Now take a big breath in and out. What happens with your upper body? The thorax becomes bigger when the air is on the way in. The opposite happens when the air is expelled. What is the link with skiing?

When you begin a ski turn your feet go away from your upper body and extend your legs. This is the proper time to take air in. Half way through the turn your feet retract toward you. You are facing downhill. Your knees bend and your upper legs come back toward your stomach. At that moment the air is expelled. In other words the motion of your legs synchronizes with your respiration. The legs have an effect similar to a pump, pull and push.

Visualize the following:  You’re traversing across a slope and you begin the turn down toward the fall line.  At the initiation of the turn the effort required is minimal – you’re in the “pull” phase of the turn.  As the arc progresses, you dig in your edges and exert the greatest effort in the turn – you’ve entered the “push” phase.  That push action expels air from your lungs.  Skiing the bumps amplifies this phenomenon.  A perfect performance requires excellent rhythm between motion and respiration.

If your turns have a perfect round shape you should take as much time breathing in as breathing out. The curve will be as long at the first part of the turn before the fall line as the completion at the end of the turn. Try to synchronize your breathing and your turn together in different kinds of turn shape. Try it in the bumps and see the difference. In the case of a racer the apex of the turn is different. Racers adjust their respiration with the same motion but at a different place in the turn. This detail can make a big difference between first and second place when their result is only separated by few hundred of a seconds.

In many sports athletes use this technique of respiration to be ”in the zone”. You get the feeling that nothing can stop you. All the movements are automatic and you’re operating on autopilot.   Although difficult to achieve, it will help you deliver optimum performance.   It takes practice, discipline and more practice. Running and biking are two great sports to reach this state of mind.

So now when you are out on the slope keep in mind the importance of synchronizing the movement you are doing with your breathing and the reflex will become natural when you’re on the slopes. Do it every time you can and in particular when you don’t have to worry about the difficulty of the run you are skiing. The fact that you are breathing well makes your body more relaxed and increases your concentration. The respiration is the link between your body and your mind. Enjoy your full day of skiing without being exhausted.