Every November, a lot of Winnipeg skiers wax their skis, wait for the first real snowfall at Windsor Park or Assiniboine Park, and then head out for a two-hour tour on legs that have not done anything ski-like since March. Most of them feel fine on the day. A surprising number feel their hips, low back or shoulders for the next week.
Cross-country skiing has a reputation as a gentle, low-impact sport, and in many ways it is. But "low impact" is not the same as "low demand." Classic and skate skiing ask for sustained hip extension, single-leg balance on a sliding surface, repeated trunk flexion with the poling motion, and a cardiovascular effort that few other winter activities match. The body that handled this in March is not the body you have in November unless you kept training.
Where the demand actually lands
It helps to think about what each stride is doing. In classic technique, the kick comes from a powerful hip extension on one leg while the other glides. That is a loaded single-leg movement, repeated thousands of times, on an unstable surface. Skate skiing adds a lateral push, which places more work on the hip abductors and on the adductors that control the leg as it swings back under you.
Double poling is where the trunk takes over. You flex forward hard from the hips and trunk, drive the poles, then extend back up. Done well, this is a whole-body hinge driven by the lats, abdominals and hip flexors. Done on a tired or unprepared body, it tends to become a repetitive low-back flexion pattern with the arms doing the work the trunk should be doing. That is why the most common early-season complaints are low-back stiffness, anterior hip or groin soreness, and shoulder or elbow irritation from poling.
None of these areas fail in isolation. A stiff upper back changes how far you can reach forward in the pole plant. Limited hip extension shortens the kick and pushes you into more lumbar extension to compensate. This is regional interdependence in action: the spot that hurts is often paying for a restriction somewhere else.
Why the first week on snow hurts
The simplest explanation is also the most useful: a sudden spike in load. If you have done little lower-body or trunk work through October and then ski for 90 minutes on a Saturday, your tissues have been asked to tolerate far more than they are currently prepared for. Tim Gabbett's work on the training-injury prevention paradox describes this well. The problem is rarely the activity itself; it is the gap between what you are prepared for and what you suddenly ask of yourself.1 There are no bad exercises, only too much too soon.
Soreness in that first week is not a sign of damage. It is a normal adaptation signal. But it is also a sign that you could have arrived better prepared, and arriving prepared is more enjoyable than arriving sore.
What a sensible six-week lead-in looks like
You do not need a complicated program. You need a few weeks of exposure to the movements skiing demands, at a volume your body can absorb. Strength and balance training has good evidence behind it for reducing sports injury risk across a range of sports, and it is the backbone of what we would suggest here.2
- Single-leg strength: split squats, step-ups and single-leg Romanian deadlifts, two or three sets of six to ten per side, twice a week. These build the hip extension and lateral stability that classic and skate strides depend on.
- Hinge and trunk work: kettlebell swings or hip hinges, plus band or cable pull-downs performed from a forward lean to mimic double poling. Keep the trunk braced and let the hips drive.
- Thoracic mobility: open-book rotations and extensions over a foam roller help you reach forward in the pole plant without borrowing from the low back.
- Aerobic base: two or three sessions a week of brisk walking, cycling, rowing or roller skiing if you have access. Build time gradually rather than intensity.
Progress the volume slowly. The ten percent rule is a rough guide rather than a law, but the principle holds: let total weekly work creep up rather than jump.
On the day
Warm up by moving, not by stretching. Static stretching before activity does little to prevent injury and can briefly reduce power output, while a progressive, movement-based warm-up prepares the tissues for what is coming.3 Five minutes of easy skiing, a few leg swings, some arm circles and a handful of practice double poles will serve you better than touching your toes in the parking lot.
Keep the first few outings shorter than you want them to be. An hour at easy intensity, with a day or two between sessions, lets you find out how your body responds before you commit to the long tour. If something lingers for more than a few days, gets worse rather than better, or changes how you walk, that is worth an assessment. You can read more about how we assess sport injuries if you want a sense of what that involves.
Skiing well through a Manitoba winter is one of the real pleasures of living here. A few weeks of preparation now is a small price for a season that starts strong instead of sore.
References
- Gabbett TJ. The training-injury prevention paradox: should athletes be training smarter and harder? Br J Sports Med. 2016;50(5):273-280.
- Lauersen JB, Bertelsen DM, Andersen LB. The effectiveness of exercise interventions to prevent sports injuries: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. Br J Sports Med. 2014;48(11):871-877.
- Behm DG, Blazevich AJ, Kay AD, McHugh M. Acute effects of muscle stretching on physical performance, range of motion, and injury incidence in healthy active individuals: a systematic review. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2016;41(1):1-11.