It happens every ski season. Out of shape, often overweight, clueless skiers return to the slopes after a seven or more month hiatus and attempt to ski him and her self back into shape. More often than not, the ski yourself back into shape crowd are advanced intermediate or better skiers. They know how to ski but just don’t seem to understand or at least appreciate that in skiing, as in the rest of life, there’s more to the action than technique, technology and the Puritan derived faith that will power conquering pain is virtuous, practical, intelligent and might work. As Santayana says, “If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved.”
Trying to ski oneself into skiing shape is lunacy. There is enough inherent risk in skiing without tilting the odds against the skier by being ill prepared. Ullr, the Norse god of skiing, was known for strength, and arriving at the beginning of the ski season without lots of it is gambling with an already risky business. Do not blow off Ullr.
Still, in skiing as in the rest of life, there are no guarantees. The well trained skier who begins the season is only changing the odds in his or her favor. Ullr approves of playing the odds.
The best conditioned skier will, after enough runs, become fatigued. This is especially true early in the season when even the fit body is not yet well trained for skiing. There is nothing that will fine tune the conditioning of a skier except skiing, so early in the season it pays even the most physically fit skier to pay attention to how the body feels. The muscles are used differently in a gym, on a mountain bike and running than they are on a pair of skis, and they will fatigue sooner and deeper than they did at the end of the previous ski season. The body announces its fatigue with OBLA (onset of blood lactate accumulation) and it should be heeded. OBLA means the body is tired and needs a little respite before resuming skiing. The body is not sore, just tired. An hour’s rest will usually suffice, though OBLA will likely appear sooner than it did during the first round. OBLA is manageable. It is only fatigue, but to ignore OBLA signs while skiing is akin to driving an automobile with bald tires at high speeds on wet roads. Tired muscles do not function very timely or well. Any skier who is that out of touch with his body is a threat to himself, to other skiers, and, of course, to Ullr’s Angels, the ski patrol who will sooner or later have to collect him.
More serious and more prevalent among early season out of shape skiers is DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness), a completely different malady than OBLA, though the two are often confused with each other. DOMS is not caused by lactate accumulation and does not announce fatigue to the body, but it is often caused by ignoring OBLA and pushing on through fatigue. DOMS is authentic microscopic injury and accompanying inflammation to muscle fibers. DOMS means there is damage that must be healed before the body can function properly, not just fatigue that can be addressed with a little rest. Soreness means there are small tears in the muscle fiber, actual physical damage, not just the fatigue that an hour’s rest will alleviate; and just using those injured muscles increases the risk of further destruction. DOMS appears a day or sometimes two after the exercise that caused it. Sore muscles will be weaker, prone to further injury, and slower to act and react. Using such muscles on a pair of skis is akin to driving an automobile with tires beyond bald, showing the threads, at high speeds on wet roads. Any skier that out of touch with his body is both dumb and dangerous. “The good thing about such people,” says one knowledgeable physical therapist, “is that they’re good for business.”
The solution is, of course, a pre-season conditioning program entered into no later than the first of September. Any skier who does not have such a program in their past is going to have OBLA, DOMS and dumb in their future.
It is the way of Ullr.