Strength training for skiing, golf or gardening is for anyone whose body does something they love. It means breaking that activity down into the movements it asks of your body. Physical therapy is built to get an injured joint back to baseline, and the things you love usually ask for more than that. Getting past baseline is done one step at a time, with a coach, until you trust your body again.
Key Insights
- Your body is worth getting ready for what you love.
- Physical therapy gets you to baseline. Hobbies ask more.
- Your workouts rarely look like your activity.
- Look above and below the joint that hurts.
- Getting ready is easier beside other people.
Is strength training only for athletes?
Strength training is for anyone whose body does something they care about. Athletes prepare for their sport because the sport asks a lot of their joints. Recreational activities ask a lot of the same joints, and a lot of adults are left to guess how to get ready for them. A skier, a golfer who walks the course and a gardener all ask their body for something specific, over and over. When it starts to hurt, the usual answer is to stretch more, see a physical therapist, or quietly do less of the thing they love.
Whether it’s downhill skiing or gardening, your body needs to be able to let you do the things you want to do.
I know what it’s like when it can’t.
Even in my twenties, I had to opt out of playing sports with my friends.
My body was getting in the way of my life.
That’s a scary feeling.
When people sit down with us for a free intro, the majority name something outside the gym they want to get back to or keep doing.
Golf, running and pickleball came up, along with gardening, snowboarding with family, hiking a fourteener and endurance horse racing.
Maybe one of those is yours.
Is getting back to baseline enough to ski, golf or garden again?
Often it is not. Physical therapy is very good at its job, which is getting an injured joint back to baseline so daily life stops hurting. Going back to skiing, golf, running or a full day in the garden asks more of that joint than daily life does. After a serious knee injury, many people finish rehab and never return to the level they played at before. Getting from baseline to above baseline is a separate stage of the work, with its own plan.
When someone tells me their knee won’t let them do the thing they love, they usually think they need more stretching.
Or another round of physical therapy.
Often they’ve already been through physical therapy, and it didn’t fully get them there.
Your knee may have stopped hurting on the stairs.
It still may not feel ready for a full day on the mountain, eighteen holes, or an afternoon on your knees in the garden.
Getting past baseline takes two things: learning to load the joint properly, and learning to trust it again.
How does this show up for skiers, golfers, gardeners and runners?
The limit looks different in every activity, because every activity leans on the body in its own way. A skier needs one leg at a time to be stable and strong. A golfer needs hips that rotate and legs that can walk a full course. A gardener needs to be comfortable kneeling, bending and bracing for hours. A runner needs ankles, knees and hips that can handle the same landing thousands of times.
Maybe you ski.
Something hurt last season, and you’re not sure it won’t happen again.
Maybe you golf.
You can walk the front nine, and by the back nine your knee hurts.
Maybe you garden.
You spend a Saturday bent over a bed, and by the end of the day your knees and back feel it.
Maybe you used to run.
You want to get back to it, and your knees haven’t let you yet.
What does strength training for skiing actually look like?
Strength training for skiing looks like the movements skiing uses, broken into exercises you can progress. That means single-leg balance and ankle, knee and hip strength. It also means turning the hip in and out, low back strength and bracing your core. It includes exercises where you twist or resist a twist. Each exercise starts where you are today and moves toward what a day on the mountain asks of you, and the workouts rarely look like skiing.
Every exercise has an easier and a harder version.
You start on the one you can do well today, and you move up when it gets easy.
A golfer gets the same treatment, pointed at a different problem.
With a lot of golfers, the knee pain after a long walk comes from an ankle or a hip that isn’t moving well.
A gardener builds time in a bent-knee position and comfort with their weight on their knees.
They also work on bending over, bracing properly, and doing small repetitive movements well.
A runner rebuilds the ankles, knees and hips before the miles increase.
All of them can be in the same small group, each on their own program.
How do you learn to trust your body again?
Fear of getting hurt again keeps people away from their sport even after the injured joint has healed. When you are working out alone, you cannot tell whether a movement will hurt you. The safest choice feels like never trying it. That avoidance means the joint never gets the practice it needs, and the fear never gets tested. Trust comes back through practice that starts easy enough to succeed at and gets harder in small steps.
With a coach you trust, you get a smaller version to try first.
You try it, it goes fine, and the next version gets a little harder.
What this looked like for Drea
Drea is a chef who wanted to get back to running, and her knees had made her unsure of something as simple as getting up off the ground. Over four weeks of one-on-one sessions, she got comfortable getting up and down, worked through easier versions of her exercises, and started to trust her knees again.
She’s spent her entire career on her feet.
When she first sat down with me, she said:
“Being a chef, I’ve been doing it over 30 years. It’s hard on the body. There are some days that I can feel it on my knees.”
The biggest thing we did was give her the space to trust herself.
I showed her different ways to get up and down, and I made each one easy to try.
She squatted down to a box instead of all the way down.
She did her knee exercises on the ground instead of on a step.
Eventually she started getting up and down on her own.
And I kept reminding her how much of this was in her own head, until she started saying it to herself.
The day before her last one-on-one session, she told me:
“I’m realizing all my apprehensions were in my head.”
It took one month.
She’s getting up and down off the ground comfortably now, and she’s already making plans to get back to running.
Questions people actually ask
When should I start strength training for skiing?
Start in the fall.
Colorado’s first ski areas usually open in mid to late October, and the bigger resorts follow in November.
Will I be doing the same workout as everyone else in the group?
Everyone in the group is on their own program, built around their body and the activity they’re getting ready for.
The coach moves between you, so a skier and a gardener can work out side by side.
Why not just hire a personal trainer?
A small group of four or fewer works beside you, each on their own program and each getting ready for something they love.
You still get a coach who knows your body and adjusts your program on the day.
Get ready for the things you love in Fort Collins
If there is something your body has been keeping you from, the next step is a conversation. We run a free No-Sweat Intro at our gym in North Fort Collins. You sit down with us, tell us what you want to get back to, and take a look around. At the end we tell you what we would recommend and what it costs, and you decide from there. Everyone who joins starts with OnRamp, eight one-on-one sessions with a coach, before joining a small group.
If a past injury is part of your story, read how to work out around an injury.
If you played sports growing up, read what changes when a former athlete comes back.
You can book your free No-Sweat Intro at RE:GEN in Fort Collins whenever you’re ready.
Sources
- Fifty-five per cent return to competitive sport following anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction surgery: an updated systematic review and meta-analysis. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2014.
- Kinesiophobia, Knee Self-Efficacy, and Fear Avoidance Beliefs in People with ACL Injury: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports Medicine, 2022.
- A systematic review about strategies to reduce kinesiophobia after Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction. Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine, 2024.
- Colorado’s Ski Season Is Just Weeks Away, Here’s When Resorts Expect To Open. Adventure Sports Network, 2026.
Josh Maranian is the Founder and Owner of RE:GEN Fitness Club, a semi-private personal training gym in North Fort Collins, Colorado. The gym specializes in helping adults who want to get strong, move well, and stay consistent without fitness taking over their lives.
