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This year I have returned to alpine skiing and found myself relatively fit for quite intensive skiing session (up to 10 runs per hour for 3-4 hours straight twice a day for 5 days) except for two things where my body failed.

Second one: While I can do quick intensive turns without problem I've found that my legs haven't enough strength and endurance - I can't hold steady downhill body position for longer than a few seconds and when I do hockey stop from high speed my thighs hurt a lot.

I already do more than hundred body-weight squats a day twice a week and I need to find out how to increase load on my legs but preferably without additional equipment as I live in a very small apartment and can't afford to spend additional hour to go to a gym.

So far I've found that pistol squat is good to increase load but I have problem with my left knee and I probably won't be able to train both legs equally. Another one is wall sit but again, Wikipedia says that it is terrible exercise for someone with an existing knee problem. Any advice?

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  • Pistols and loaded squats (e.g. barbell front or back squats, dumbbell squats, goblet squats with a kettlebell) are the options that come to mind. Single leg deadlifts, too. I would focus on the logistics or medicine to do those before looking for alternatives.
    – Dave Liepmann
    Commented Apr 26, 2013 at 13:54
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    Pretty much a duplicate of bodyweight leg exercises for strength/hypertrophy
    – zero-divisor
    Commented Apr 26, 2013 at 15:39

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There is one main thing you need to keep in mind when it comes to training for alpine skiing.

  1. Train specifically

Skiing is what I would call a relatively eccentric loading your quads and glutes. This is where your muscles are constantly working in an lengthening phase, relatively in a squatting position. So, you need to train specifically to this phase. My recommendation is for you to look into the slide board equipment.

There are many versions for the slide boards. I would strongly recommend for you to look into this piece of equipment. Here are some exercises that you can do in the mean time to get your quads stronger with just body weight.

  1. Single leg squat
  2. Alternate plyo lunges
  3. Squat jumps

Good luck!

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  • These links are broken
    – Jodes
    Commented Apr 10, 2014 at 14:29
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My advice would be to look into burpees.

Compared to your current body weight exercises, you will have more dynamic load on the posterior chain that body weight squats or wall sit. You will also get a nice aerobic workout.

One work-out routine that fit burpees very well is tabatas.

Regarding your knee, check with a doctor. My own experience is that trouble in the knees have to do with the technique in the exercises and overdoing them. That is, work out slow and deliberate in the beginning.

For a minial investment that fits your small apartment, I would also consider a kettlebell.

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  • Well, I can handle dynamic load pretty well (as I said above), my problem is with continuous load. As I understand there are two types of muscle fiber - fast and slow, and I need to train for second type.
    – AlexD
    Commented Apr 27, 2013 at 12:42

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