How to stretch and breathe between ski days: what 西西's wife teaches

After several days of riding in a row, the legs and hips get tighter and tighter. This post has two parts: the stretching and breathing taught by the wife of 西西, SnowWind’s vice principal, and published exercise guidance and research. The two parts are kept separate; as you read, keep track of who said what.

This is not medical advice. If stretching brings sharp pain or numbness, or you already have an injury or ongoing pain, see a doctor or physical therapist first.

This post is for you if you:

• feel your hips and thighs lock up after two or three days on the snow in a row
• aren’t sure whether to keep riding when you’re tired, or to take a day off
• want to know what a breathing exercise before bed has to do with skiing

What 西西 and 西西’s wife do

Tired? Take a day off and stretch properly

Last season, 西西’s habit was to ride every day. Then 西西’s wife explained why stretching matters, and the routine changed to this:

When our bodies feel tired, we stop for a day and give ourselves a full, thorough stretch.

西西, Threads, November 2025

西西 sums it up like this:

• Massage guns, massage balls, foam rollers and other massage tools all help muscles relax.
• A deeper release can only come from “active stretching”.
• Stretching brings pain and tension you don’t feel in daily life. When it comes, use the breath to accept that pain.
• In 西西’s account, once the brain’s danger alarm switches off, the pain is less intense and the joint’s range of motion opens up.

That last point is 西西’s account. Published research has no direct conclusion on this “alarm switching off” mechanism; the research section below explains.

Tight hips break the line of force

西西’s example is the glutes. Tight glutes, 西西 says, make the line of force through the body disjointed while riding; once the upper glute muscles are stretched out, power from the core and even the shoulders can travel all at once to the soles of the feet, and the legs “seem to get a whole lot longer”.

That is 西西’s own physical sense of it. 西西’s off-season training notes also mention the pelvis: when you fold, put your attention on the pelvis rather than the knees; 西西’s own feel is that the knees take much less pressure (see the previous post).

Key point: a day off the snow is not slacking. 西西 and 西西’s wife build it into the plan and use it for active stretching.

Lateral breathing before bed: the cylinder model

西西 says this is a breathing exercise 西西’s wife teaches at bedtime. The original instruction is simple:

Every night before bed, when you practise breathing, hold both sides of your ribs and breathe sideways. You should feel the core expand laterally.

西西, Threads, September 2026

Behind it is a “cylinder model”: core stability comes from a whole cylinder, not from a single muscle.

The key point, as 西西 relays it: if the cylinder expands only top and bottom (diaphragm and pelvic floor) and not side to side (transversus abdominis, multifidus), it is unstable in a handstand or in the reverse-bow (angulated) movements of riding.

The other link is high edge angles. At that point, 西西 says, the body relies on lateral flexion of the hips and of the spine (some instructors call this “folding at the hip”) to move the centre of mass to the inside of the turn. If the core has tension only front and back, with no pressure side to side, the lower back collapses as speed rises and the whole line of force falls apart.

One word, “back”: straightening the pelvis before bed

西西 relays another lesson from 西西’s wife, and it is a single word: “back” (后). When going to sleep, imagine drawing your eyes back, instead of reaching forward as if always searching for something; when standing, draw the shoulder blades and chin back too.

西西’s explanation: when people are tense or curious, they can’t help tipping the head forward, so the fascial chain along the back of the body is constantly stretched and the front constantly compressed; over time this leads to problems such as a hunched back, a belly pooch and a collapsed chest (this is 西西’s account; we have not verified it). Before bed, do one small movement to feel the posterior chain and straighten the pelvis: stand with the balls of your feet on a yoga mat and your heels on the floor, then follow the cues in the post’s images.

The detailed cues are in the images of the original post. There is no text version of them here, and we do not fill in the steps on the post’s behalf.

Key point: 西西’s wife teaches three things: a day off for active stretching, lateral breathing, and straightening the pelvis before bed.

What research and public guidance say

What follows comes from peer-reviewed literature and is kept separate from what 西西 and 西西’s wife do.

How much to stretch. The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), in its 2011 position stand, recommends that adults do flexibility training at least 2 days a week, with 60 seconds in total per exercise for each major muscle-tendon group, to maintain joint range of motion.

When to stretch. A 2016 systematic review (Behm et al.) compared static, dynamic and PNF stretching. Some of its results:

• Static stretching of 60 seconds or more per muscle group reduced immediately tested performance by 4.6%; under 60 seconds, by 1.1%.
• All forms of stretching increased joint range of motion, but the gain usually lasted less than 30 minutes.
• Static and PNF stretching had no clear effect on all-cause injuries or overuse injuries.
• The authors recommend placing stretching within a warm-up that includes dynamic activity after the stretching.
• The authors note that the change in range of motion may come from a short-lived drop in muscle-tendon stiffness, or from a rise in “stretch tolerance” through neural adaptation.

These studies are about general athletic performance, not skiing. The editors’ inference: if you are going to do long static stretches, a rest day or the end of the day’s riding makes more sense than the time before the first lift. This is an inference, not a research finding.

Breathing. A 2018 systematic review (Zaccaro et al.) called breathing at fewer than 10 breaths a minute slow breathing, included 15 studies, and concluded that slow-breathing techniques are associated with greater autonomic, cerebral and psychological flexibility, including measures of parasympathetic activity. The review covered healthy adults and did not directly measure stretching pain.

So: 西西 and 西西’s wife’s “accept the pain with the breath”, the neural-adaptation hypothesis of stretch tolerance, and the slow-breathing research point in a similar direction, but no single source links the three directly. This is the editors’ observation, not proof.

Who this post is not for

• People with acute pain, a fresh injury or swelling: see a professional first, and don’t push through it with stretching.
• People who want a full prescription of “so many seconds, so many sets per exercise”: 西西’s posts don’t give one, and this post cites only ACSM’s total.
• People who want to replace medical treatment with breathing: that is not what this post means.

For the overall training plan, see the previous post: how to train in the off-season. If you want an instructor on the slope to look at your stance and how you use your hips, see the courses page.

What 西西 and 西西's wife do is taken from 西西's Threads posts of November 2025 and September 2026. The research and guidance come from the ACSM 2011 position stand and the systematic reviews by Behm et al. (2016) and Zaccaro et al. (2018); the URLs are in this post's source list. The views of 西西 and 西西's wife do not represent JSBA's official position, and they are not medical advice.