Getting fit for skiing

Bandit,
I'm sorry to hear you've had the same kind of experience as me, with your collar bone. I think breaks involving the shoulder are a particular problem, and I'm not at all surprised to hear that you're not back to 100% yet. It took me about 6 months to re-gain the full use of my arm, and as I've said, it's still not quite back to full strength and it happened about 7 years ago now.

I think there are a lot of muscles attached to the lump of bone that I broke. In addition to the break, I also developed a frozen shoulder afterwards, even though I had been lifting the bad arm with the other arm above my head from the day I broke it (it's amazing how much one's arm weighs!). And it was total agony freeing the arm, manually, with 'torture' sessions by the physiotherapist and at home doing it myself.

Best of luck with the weight training etc. and I hope you regain the full use of the muscles on that side :D

Ally

I pretty much exercise every day & look forward to my endorphin fix. The down side to this is that I tend to train even when injured, dare say I have carried injuries around for the last twenty years. Fit for skiing? More like fit to drop. :?

Finn

AllyG wrote:Snowbandit,
I think I know what you mean by the rope tows. There was one in front of our hotel in Obergurgl, which you needed to use to get back to the hotel if you wanted to ski back. It was a very curious old-fashioned looking thing, and quite hard to use.
Ally

Sorry Ally but, in all seriousness, are you joking?
I practised every evening on that rope on my first ski trip after four hours of lessons every day for a week.
Maybe that's why your arms hurt :shock:
Rumbled

Caron-a
Did you really practise on that weird looking thing? How clever of you :D I found it most odd.

I can't remember now, but didn't it have something like bits of wood fixed to the rope? And you had to grab one of the bits of wood? The only time we had to use it was going back to the hotel, if we didn't use the bus, although we did have a go sledging down that slope once.

We were staying in the Crystal, across the road - were you in the same hotel, or one of the other ones? In the morning, in order to get to my younger daughter's lessons, we used to go up that gondola and all the way down the very long blue run to the meeting point. We were one of the first ones up there in the morning, and at the top it was like ski-ing corrugated concrete, because of the marks made by the snow-ploughs during the night.

Ally

AllyG wrote: In the morning, in order to get to my younger daughter's lessons, we used to go up that gondola and all the way down the very long blue run to the meeting point. We were one of the first ones up there in the morning, and at the top it was like ski-ing corrugated concrete, because of the marks made by the snow-ploughs during the night.
Ally

OOhh Ally, the early morning frozen piste machine ruts are an icon of skiing. Not an issue for you Ally, since you don't drink, but for others....

However, frozen ruts give great grip, and is a good time to try a quickish run, since the slopes are mostly empty.

Dave Mac,
We were certainly pretty quickish because otherwise we'd have been late for my daughter's lessons :D

I'm not too sure how one 'prepares' for the corrugated concrete experience, unless it's attaching oneself to a pneumatic drill for about 10 minutes per day before the holiday starts :D

bandit wrote:AllyG I have skied La Rosiere a few times over the years, and have been all over the resort (it is quite a small place). I can think of no drag lift that is so bad there.Perhaps conditions were poor with insufficient snow depth?

Bandit,
I'm not sure exactly where that drag lift was, but it was after we'd skied down the red run that goes right down to the road, the fontaine froide - the lowest piste in the resort. I think this run is quite often shut. The instructors were on about how amazing it was that it was open at Easter (we'd had masses of snow during the holiday). And we had to walk the last bit of it because the snow had all melted off it.

We went back up that very slow chair lift, and then possibly a bit more ski-ing, and then up that very steep drag lift. I was in my afternoon French ski lessons, and I remember the French lady in my group going on about the pain in her arms after we got to the top, and rubbing her arms, and asking me why mine didn't hurt (in French), and I didn't know how to say that I'd been exercising, in French, so I started jumping up and down doing star jumps (on skis) to show her what I meant and she went '.... le gym' and I said 'oui, le gym'.

And then I was really hot and thirsty after that drag lift, because it was a hot and sunny day, and I remember being very proud of myself because I said 'J'ai chaude, et j'ai soif' because I remembered not to say 'Je suis chaude' which means 'I am a nymphomaniac' rather than 'I am hot' :lol:.

Ally

I went jogging again this morning. Just thought I should make that little announcement.