How to Prepare for Winter Sports: Get Your Body Ready and Avoid Injuries
November 09, 2021
With its abundant snow and ice, Canada is ideal for winter sports. Visitors from all over the world travel to our beautiful country to enjoy skiing, ice climbing, snowkiting, snowmobiling, and even curling. It’s little surprise that sports tourism has contributed billions of dollars to the Canadian economy in recent years.
Sports can be physically demanding and dangerous. That’s why it’s so important to make sure your body is prepared for intense exertion before you get active this winter. You’ll reduce your risk of short- and long-term injuries that could affect your quality of life for years to come.
In this post, we’ll explore several fantastic exercises to help you prepare for your favourite winter sports.
Conditioning Exercises
If you live a sedentary lifestyle or it’s been some time since you last worked out, your body could be underprepared for the intensity of a day of skiing or ice climbing. Your performance will suffer, and you could hurt yourself.
Make it easier with a regular routine of warm-ups, stretches, and strength-building exercises. Start as early as possible to allow your body time to develop before you take part in winter sports.
You should also consult your doctor before you embark on a new fitness regimen if you have any health concerns or you simply want to ensure your body can withstand the greater strain.
Warming Up
As reported by WebMD, a good warm-up is vital to:
- Raise your body temperature
- Loosen your joints
- Expand blood vessels for better circulation
- Encourage easier muscle contraction
- Make exercise less stressful for the heart
You can try various warm-up techniques, such as jumping jacks, running on the spot, or using a jump rope. But take a few minutes to stretch thoroughly first. Loosen up your shoulders, knees, neck, and hips before you start even a mild warm-up exercise.
Building strength
Strength is fundamental for any winter sport, whether you love skiing or snowboarding. Here are a few fantastic reasons why strength training can help you get ready for outdoor activities:
- You can build stronger bones.
- You can reduce your risk of injury.
- You can enhance your heart health.
- You can gain better flexibility and mobility.
- You can improve your balance to decrease your danger of falls.
You have several strength training options to choose from. Free weight and bodyweight exercises can help you build strength in a controlled, safe way. Squats, climbing stairs, taking a brisk walk, swimming, lifting dumbbells and barbells, and planking all develop strength in specific parts of the body.
If you’re not sure where to start, our specialists can help you prepare your body for winter sports through recommended exercises tailored to your health and goals. For example, you may receive treatment from Michael Gitlits, B.PT, a Registered Physiotherapist at Bloor Yonge Chiropractic. He’s dedicated to helping patients boost their physical performance through an in-depth understanding of the human body, sports injuries, and recovery.
Michael will develop a plan to reduce your risk of injury when participating in winter sports, recover from injuries you have sustained in the past, and get the most out of your favourite activities.
Physiotherapy Programs to Prepare Your Body
Bloor Yonge Chiropractic offers two comprehensive programs designed to help you improve your physical performance and prevent injuries:
Let’s take a close look at each.
Athletic Performance Enhancement
Bloor Yonge Chiropractic developed this program to benefit patients looking to increase their physical activity or athletes (at all levels) who want to enhance their performance.
The Athletic Performance Enhancement program includes:
- Conditioning analysis
- Treating existing conditions
- Education to improve your performance
- Injury prevention
We can customize this program to suit patients of diverse ability levels. Our specialists, including Michael Gitlits, work with patients through various approaches. These include:
- Chiropractic/physiotherapy to optimize neuromusculoskeletal function for performance improvement and injury prevention.
- Massage therapy to increase performance and recovery.
- Sports-specific training to implement the right strategies.
- Technique re-education to build strength, improve endurance, and prevent injury.
- Acupuncture to relieve tension, pain, and stress, increase focus, and promote healing.
We’ll begin this program with an in-depth assessment to identify your needs, current health, and more. We’ll then implement a plan to suit your long-term goals.
Injury Recovery and Prevention
With this program, Bloor Yonge Chiropractic’s team provides injury rehabilitation therapy (for mild and severe cases), along with injury prevention and performance improvement. This program can prepare you for winter sports by targeting various injuries, and improving flexibility and range of motion.
We can treat a range of injuries, such as:
- Head trauma
- Whiplash
- Frozen shoulder
- Muscle strain
- Disc herniation
- Pregnancy-related injuries
- Degenerative muscle, nerve, or joint conditions
Our Injury Recovery and Prevention program encompasses numerous possible approaches, including chiropractic care, massage therapy, and acupuncture. Other types of therapy may be offered, such as:
- Stability training to restore strength and endurance.
- Ergonomics to optimize workstations and perfect exercise techniques to prevent further injuries.
- Shockwave therapy to break down scar tissue, encourage tissue healing, and fight inflammation.
- Continuous Passive Motion (CPM) to progress injured joints through controlled ranges of motion, to enhance healing and prevent the formation of scar tissue.
We’ll invite you to a detailed assessment at the start of this program. We’ll conduct a physical examination and discuss what winter sports you hope to take part in. This enables us to devise the right treatment plan to prepare your body for the activities ahead. We may also recommend additional therapies to help you achieve your desired results.
Bloor Yonge Chiropractic’s team will also schedule frequent check-up sessions to monitor your progress and offer further assistance as required. Whether you choose our Athletic Performance Enhancement or our Injury Recovery and Prevention program, you’ll be ready to bring your A-game to your favourite winter sports.
To get started with your preparation process, book a consultation with Bloor Yonge Chiropractic online today!