Where had I messed up?

Upset athletes and intense research, including calls to the Olympic training center, drove me to the answer.My dryland program had focused on concentric leg strength. But alpine skiing demands eccentric leg strength. Think of concentric strength as “positive” strength. This is the strength you use to stand up from the bottom of a squat, or hike up a steep hill. Eccentric strength is “negative” strength. You use eccentric strength to lower yourself into the bottom of the squat, and hike down a steep hill. Eccentric strength absorbs force. Alpine skiing primarily demands eccentric strength. My program design had trained concentric strength. I’d swung and whiffed.

I immediately started searching for the best exercises to train eccentric strength. There aren’t many. The strength coaches at the Olympic Training Center told me they used a stationary bike originally built for nursing home patients. It mechanically pedaled against the patients, forcing them to fight and absorb the force pushing against them. The Norwegian ski team uses a pneumatic squat machine which allows the athlete to slowly lower a heavily-loaded barbell, and the machine lifts it back up.

Neither of these would work for me. I was stumped.

Then I remembered the “Leg Blaster” – a complex of bodyweight leg exercises I originally learned at a Vegas training conference. Eccentric training causes more muscle damage than concentric training. More muscle damage = more muscle soreness the next day. Basically, it’s not the hike up the mountain that will make you sore tomorrow, it’s the hike back down.

This is what I remembered most about the Leg Blaster: I was sore as hell the next day.

So for the dryland ski training cycle the following year I replaced all the heavy back squats and loaded lunges with Leg Blasters, and my athletes crushed it the first day at the resort.

The best thing about Leg Blasters is, no equipment is needed. We deploy two versions of the Leg Blaster workout: the “Full” and the “Mini.”

In the video below, you’ll see Marmot and Backcountry.com Athlete, Pip Hunt, blast through a Full Leg Blaster. Note how she goes all the way down and all the way up for each air squat, and lunges forward, not backward, during the in-place lunges. Also note how she sprints through the complex.