Some of you may know Katie Wilson, she and her family are members of Elite and she also works in the playroom at our Mequon location. She is also a pro athlete snowboarder who recently competed on the international stage at the Snowboard World Cup and NorAm Cup.
Katie has been hitting the slopes since she was only 6 years old. Her parents saw her innate talent and encouraged Katie along the way. Check out her interview with WISN while she was in Utah at the Snowboard World Cup.
In addition to her training in the snow, she works with one of Elite’s personal trainers in the club through our AMP program in the off-season as well. Here’s what he had to say about Katie’s fitness training regimen.
From Jason Liegl, Katie’s trainer at Elite Sports Club – Mequon:
When I first started training Katie, her sport of boardercross racing presented with some unique challenges. Speed is important, but she does not run. Jumping is important but at the wrong time it can be a bad thing. Balance is important but she competes with both her feet strapped to the board. But after analyzing some footage on the X-games and YouTube and talking with Katie I realized that while the situation was unique, we did not have to necessarily re-invent the wheel.
When working with Katie during the off-season, we break it up into a trimesters.
Snowboarder Fitness Training: Trimester 1
During the ‘first trimester’ we begin to focus on getting her body balanced out after a long competitive season. These first workouts look pretty basic. After a season of training and competing in a semi-crouched position can leave Katie’s hips, lower and upper back a little tight. So, here we will focus a little more on active stretching in our warm-up and begin introducing some basic agility drills and plyometrics.
The strength work that we do in the beginning lets us see where her strength levels are and also if the quality of her movements are off a little. So, if the movement quality looks a little off we will start to reinforce proper set-up and work on technique. If the quality looks good we start back with training but still focus on offsetting the season.
Snowboarder Fitness Training: Trimester 2
As we begin progressing to the ‘second trimester’ we start to focus on strength a little bit more. We try to look at total body strength because it all ties in together while Katie is competing. Lower body strength is really important because during races Katie has to pump her legs over the rollers to help create/maintain speed and is also valuable in both jumping and landing. We start to get a bit more intense with some trap bar deadlifts, various forms of squatting and some lower body power exercises.
Upper body strength requirements in boardercross are a little different compared to other sports. It is really important for Katie to have a strong and powerful back to be able to generate some force by pulling herself out of the gate. So here we will focus on doing pull ups, TRX rows, DB rows among other exercises. With core work we continue to work on building a stable core by utilizing different forms of planks or the ab wheel.
Snowboarder Fitness Training: Trimester 3
The ‘third trimester’ of Katie’s offseason we continue trying to build total body strength and power but now start to add in some balance work. For lower body we start to use some sled work to help the core and lower body work together. While still focusing on strength we will start to use tempo in the exercises. The purpose is to not only help with muscular strength but to also help strengthen the connective tissue.
A big change that we add to the last part of the off-season is to start adding in some circuits. The purpose here is to take some of the strength we build during the summer and now start to turn it into a little bit higher intensity work. Trying to mimic competing for a couple of minutes at a time.
We wish Katie the best of luck in her upcoming competitions! And you can help support her too as she competes in the World Junior Championships in the Czech Republic February 14-20. Visit her RallyMe.com page.