How should you train before ski season? 西西's off-season conditioning notes

This post is about what skiers and snowboarders can train in the months without snow. It is not a prescription and it is not treatment; if you already have pain or an injury, see a doctor, physical therapist or other professional first.

Once the season starts you are on the mountain every day: up early, ride, eat, sleep. The gap for dedicated training disappears. Vice principal 西西’s conclusion: if you are going to train, do it now.

This post is for you if you:

• are so worn out in the first week of every season that your legs go weak, and want to know what to train beforehand
• have heard of “the core” but don’t know which part it means for snowboarding
• want to turn off-season training into a plan with an order to it

What follows is 西西’s view and compilation, drawn from 西西’s Threads posts and teaching notes. It is not JSBA textbook wording. 西西’s methods are kept separate from public research and guidelines; the latter are at the end, under “What public guidelines say”.

Plan the big cycle first, then the movements

西西’s starting point is the “big cycle” (a macrocycle): before the season arrives, lay out training intensity for the whole year.

Once the season really starts, training actually has to scale back a little and hand the main load to riding itself. That also means there is no dedicated training during the season. If you want to train, now is the time.

西西, Threads, September 2026

西西’s layout runs through the four seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter), with intensity split roughly into four stages (low, medium, high, very high) that stack up all the way to a peak before the season.

For what to train, 西西 currently cares most about four things: balance, flexibility, strength and neuromuscular control.

西西’s notes also hold a reminder to self: looking back, 西西 rode every day last season but did not do conditioning every day. That is a standard 西西 sets personally, not a rule for readers.

Key point: schedule the time first, then choose the movements; build intensity before the season, and leave the season to riding.

Deep core: three muscles and a practice list

西西 took a weekly one-hour online class with Chiharu Saitō of JSBA for four months. Over those four months, 西西 says, Saitō kept coming back to one thing: training the deep core muscles.

Reading sports-injury papers, 西西 found that the papers, too, kept stressing the same thing. 西西 explains the idea like this:

• Global muscle: a large muscle that spans several joints
• Local muscle: a muscle that spans only one joint, or even lies directly against the joint

The deep core belongs to the second group. 西西 lists three muscles, with 西西’s own understanding of what each does for riding:

Muscle	西西’s description	Practice list (compiled by 西西)
Multifidus	Runs close along both sides of the spine; one of the deepest spinal muscles, controlling tiny movements of single spinal segments. 西西 says it steadies your spine in high-speed turns and jumps	Cat-cow, bird dog, single-leg bridge, slow Romanian deadlift
Transversus abdominis	The deepest abdominal muscle; its fibres run horizontally, wrapping the abdomen like a belt; contracting it raises intra-abdominal pressure	Belly breathing, plank and its variations, stomach vacuum, abdominal draw-in on all fours
Pelvic floor muscles	A group of muscles that holds up the pelvic cavity like a hammock; 西西 says it stays slightly engaged while you ride	Kegels, squats with a pelvic floor contraction, bridge, yoga boat pose

西西 adds the deep layer of the erector spinae as a fourth item, trained with the superman and yoga’s cobra pose.

These descriptions are 西西’s notes; the editors have not checked them line by line against an anatomy textbook. 西西’s list does not say how many sets to do or how far to take each movement. If you want to follow it, have an instructor or physical therapist look at your movement first.

Key point: the deep core is not a single muscle; 西西’s list is the multifidus, transversus abdominis and pelvic floor.

Hips, thoracic spine and stance: force only transfers once you loosen up

In another note, 西西 says that to make real progress during the season, you need to train three things systematically in the off-season: ankle rigidity, opening the hips, and range of motion in the thoracic spine. Core strength ranks as the most important, because in the halfpipe, the stronger someone’s core, the steadier their posture and the better they can turn momentum into horizontal speed.

A few of the exercises 西西 mentions:

Stick your bum out. 西西 calls it the “embarrassing secret”: let the two glutes spread apart instead of clenching them. 西西’s observation is that most people standing at work clench their glutes, with the tailbone tipped forward. This small exercise suits the days without snow.

One-minute eye movement. 西西 learned it from Chiharu Saitō:

1. Keeping the lumbar spine still, rotate the thoracic spine left and right, and note your current range.
2. Cover one eye with one hand.
3. With the other hand, sweep a finger left and right like a windscreen wiper.
4. Keeping your head completely still, slowly follow the finger with the open eye.
5. Breathe deeply, for about one minute.
6. Rotate the thoracic spine again and compare before and after.

西西 says the thoracic range of motion clearly increased the first time. Suspecting an illusion, 西西 had a partner do it too, and the partner also felt the thoracic spine open up. These are two people’s subjective impressions, not an experiment. The explanation 西西 compiled from reading papers: eye movement engages the deep muscles of the neck, which affect the thoracic spine through neural connections; postural control is one coordinated, whole-body system. This is 西西’s compilation of notes, with no research data attached. If you have a neck or eye condition, don’t try it on your own.

Put your focus on the pelvis. This was 西西’s insight from classes with Saitō. When you fold, if your focus is on bending down at the knees, the knees feel a lot of pressure and the front of the thighs gets tight. Move your attention to the pelvis instead and let it rotate toward the direction of travel: the upper body naturally tips slightly forward, and the lower body folds along with it. 西西’s check: if your gluteus maximus and the biceps femoris at the back of the thigh have tightened, you are doing it right.

This is a movement-awareness cue, not a way to treat knees. If your knees already hurt, get a professional assessment.

Key point: the hips, the thoracic spine and awareness of the pelvis are the three areas 西西 works on in the off-season.

What public guidelines say

Below are public guidelines you can check yourself. Read them separately from 西西’s methods.

• World Health Organization, 2020 guidelines: adults should do at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity a week, or at least 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity, or an equivalent combination of the two; plus muscle-strengthening activity at moderate or greater intensity that covers the major muscle groups, on 2 or more days a week.
• American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) position stand: adults in general should do resistance training for the major muscle groups 2 to 3 days a week, and also neuromotor training involving balance, agility and coordination; flexibility training at least 2 days a week, totalling 60 seconds for each major muscle-tendon group.

Both guidelines address health-related fitness for adults in general, not training specific to skiing or snowboarding. 西西’s big-cycle schedule and deep core list have not been validated by these two documents, and they do not conflict with them either; the two operate at different levels.

Who this post is not for

• People with a current injury or pain: see a doctor or physical therapist first, and don’t treat this post as a prescription.
• People who want sets, reps and weights: this post doesn’t have them, because the sources don’t give them.
• People looking for “X times better in Y weeks”: this post has no effect multipliers, because without a source we don’t write one.

The next post covers stretching and breathing between back-to-back ski days during the season: How 西西’s wife stretches and breathes between back-to-back ski days. To test the movements on snow, see the courses page; for how to use a low stance on a snowboard, see Carving: how low to crouch.

The training views and lists in this post come from 西西's Threads posts and teaching notes; the content of Chiharu Saitō's classes is 西西's retelling. The public guidelines are cited in this post's source list. 西西's views do not represent JSBA's official position, and they are not medical advice.