I just got back from my first weekend of skiing this season. A nice surprise snowfall made the local resort decide to open early just for the weekend. I have been good about the strengthening of hips, core and legs as I encourage you to – and even my old moguls knees felt good.

But I realized that I probably should be more explicit about the benefits of stretching and self massage through foam rolling. Performing just a few simple stretches and working the IT-band, lower back and hip flexors with the foam roller will help free up your body and get rid of some those adhesions that make you feel stiff. I have actually made a cheat sheet with the stretches and moves that I recommend you do and it is totally free. You can download it here on Strong Skier if you sign in at the green line on top of the page. You can also get it in the Facebook page shop for free.

For the foam rolling you can also use a tennis ball or anything that you can roll on to do these deep stretches that can be hard to treat with regular stretching.

Rolling can be quite painful if you have a lot of adhesions, so go easy with the pressure to begin with. The adhesions will loosen up as you roll back and forth though so the idea is that you roll your pain away.

It will take you about 10 minutes to go through these stretches and will help take off tension from the lower back, hips and knees. These stretches are good both in the weeks leading up to going skiing and for recovery after.

I hope you’ll like these. Give it a try and let me know what you think.