Strong Knees for Ski Season: The Session I Run Every Fall
Connor Clayton · The Kneehaber ·
Skiing is the reason I do any of this. I grew up trying to become a professional freestyle skier, and I got as far as 60th in the world in slopestyle before four ACL tears in the same knee (two of them on skis) put a stop to that dream. These days that knee has no ACL in it, a compromised meniscus and some arthritis, and I've skied every winter since 2023 anyway: park laps, powder days, hut trips in the backcountry, you name it. Being able to keep skiing on that knee matters to me more than almost anything, so every fall I run the same block of movements to make sure my legs are ready before the lifts open. This is that work, written out, with a video of me doing every exercise.
Every winter since 2023 on a knee with no ACL. None of it is luck.
Why December hurts
The knee injuries in skiing happen early. Not in February when you're fit and your legs know the job again. Early. Every December, orthopedic clinics fill up with skiers who went out on legs that hadn't done anything like skiing since April. The knee is the most injured joint in the sport, about a third of all ski injuries, and ACL and MCL sprains alone make up somewhere between 10 and 33 percent of them. The research keeps pointing at the same things: fatigue late in the day, early-season legs, and snow conditions you can't control. Two of those are out of your hands. The legs are the one you can do something about.
Here's what day one usually looks like. First run, you feel great. Second run, the thighs are warm. By the third or fourth, the quads are on fire and the form goes: you sit back, the skis drift apart, you stop absorbing the bumps and start bracing against them. That's the afternoon run where a ski catches on a bit of chop, the knee has nothing left to hold it straight, and the season is over before lunch on day two.
Being fit all summer doesn't cover it, either. You can run, lift and bike all year and still be cooked by lunch, because skiing asks for a kind of strength nothing else trains: quads that keep firing while they burn, adductors that keep the skis together, a glute med that holds the inside edge, hamstrings that hold the shin when a ski hooks, and calves and shins working inside a boot all day. Those muscles go to sleep in April, and it takes weeks of the right work to wake them back up.
First, grab the free Ski Guide
The session below is one day out of a 3-day week, and the whole week is in the Kneehab Ski Guide, a free PDF: Day A is squat strength, Day B is the burn (the session on this page), Day C is single leg strength and landings. Every exercise links to a video of me doing it, and the equipment list is in there too. Grab it first so you have all three days on your phone, then read on for the day that feels most like skiing.
The Kneehab Ski Guide. Three days a week, written out, with a video for every exercise.
Free download
The Kneehab Ski Guide
The whole 3-day ski-prep week as a PDF: Day A squat strength, Day B the burn (the session on this page) with the Downhill Burner, Day C single leg and landings. Sets, reps and a video of me doing every exercise, plus the equipment list.
The PDF lands in your inbox in about a minute. You'll also get my weekly knee-training email, and you can unsubscribe anytime.
This is one full session from Kneehab Ski, week 1, and it's the one that feels most like skiing. Three parts: a quick warm-up, the burn (long holds and lateral strength), then lateral power and hips. About 40 minutes. Every exercise below links to a video of me doing it. Sets and reps are written as sets x reps.
Warm up
Banded air squats, 2 x 15. Band above the knees, push out against it the whole way down and up.
Banded fire hydrants, 2 x 12 per side. Glute med switched on before you load it.
Single leg balance, 2 x 30 seconds per side. Eyes up, soft knee, quiet foot.
The burn
This is the part that feels like the third run of the day, on purpose.
Spanish squat isometric, 3 x 30 seconds. Band behind the knees anchored in front of you, shins vertical, sit until the thighs are parallel. Shins vertical keeps the load on the quads and off the joint.
Spanish squat pulses, 3 x 15. Same setup, straight after the hold, pulse an inch up and down from the bottom.
Lateral lunges, 3 x 8 per side. Dumbbell at the chest, step wide, sit into the hip of the working leg. Edge-to-edge strength.
Curtsy lunges, 3 x 8 per side. Dumbbells at the sides, back leg crosses behind, front knee tracks over the toes. The glute med and the adductors in the same crossed-up position a turn puts you in.
Lateral box step downs, 3 x 8 per side. Stand sideways on a box, lower the free heel to the floor slowly, tap, push back up. Knee over the toes the whole way.
Straight out of the guide: Day B (this session, with the Downhill Burner at the bottom) and Day A (squat strength).
Lateral power and hips
Skater hops, 3 x 6 per side. Bound sideways, land on the outside leg and stick the landing for a full second. That stuck landing is the whole point.
Single leg lateral hops, 3 x 10 per side. Small, fast hops over a line on one foot, quiet landings.
Rapid twist drops, 3 x 12. Start standing on a plate (or similar object). Twist the hips and feet side to side, fast, while keeping the shoulders square to the front. A similar feeling to quick turns (think moguls) on skis.
Adductor isometric hold, 2 x 30 seconds per side. Lay on your side and cross the top leg over the lower. Lift the lower leg into the air to fire up the adductors. The inner thighs keep the skis together.
Standing hip abductions, 2 x 12 per side. Band around the ankles, stand tall, no leaning. The glute med holds the inside edge.
Cool down
Hip 90/90s, 2 x 5 slow switches per side. Let the hips settle after the lateral work.
When the session above starts to feel easy, add this at the end. It's the finisher from block 2 of Kneehab Ski, and it is the last run of the day, in a gym: a 30-second wall sit, straight into 10 jumping air squats, straight into 10 slow bottom-half squats. That's one round. Rest 60 seconds. Two rounds the first week, three after that. Quads on fire and still holding is the entire point for December.
Edge to edge. The lateral work above is what this feels like on the inside.
How to use it
Run this once a week between now and your first ski day, with a squat strength day and a single-leg day around it. That three-day week is exactly how Kneehab Ski is built: Ski A is squat strength, Ski B is this, Ski C is single-leg strength and landings. Eight weeks before your first ski day is the plan. Four weeks out still beats starting on the chairlift. The free Ski Guide above has all three days written out with the sets, reps and videos, so you can take the whole week with you.
What you need
Most of this is bands and bodyweight, and the strength pieces get better with a dumbbell or a kettlebell. Some of these are affiliate links. I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you, and they're the exact things I train with.
Large resistance bands, the Battle Bands I use for the Spanish squats and the adductor and hamstring work.
Door anchor, so a closed door becomes your band anchor.
A step and a chair. A stair or a low box for the step downs, a chair or couch for the balance work.
Slant board for the squats and step ups on the other two days. A thick book or a wedge works in a pinch.
Dumbbells or kettlebells for the lunges, the squats and the single leg RDLs. Nice to have, and the fastest way to make this a strength plan instead of a band plan.
The ATG backward treadmill. If I could only buy one thing for my knees, this is it. Five minutes walking backward on it is how I warm up every session in the garage, and it's the best thing I've found for knees that ache on the downhill. I wrote a full review of it here.
Where the work leads. The same legs, every winter.
Want the whole 12 weeks built for you?
This session is one of 32 inside Kneehab Ski: eight weeks to build ski legs at three days a week, then a two-day in-season block you repeat until the lifts close. Every exercise is a video of me, and the sets, reps and weights progress week by week, so you always know exactly what to do next. Open the app, tap the day, train.
The Kneehab Training App. Every program, every session and every video in one place, on your phone.
And Kneehab Ski is only part of it. It lives inside the Strong Knees System, which is the whole ladder I'd put any knee on: six programs and over 40 weeks of training in one app. Foundations (8 weeks, bands at home) wakes up the muscles that protect the knee. Strength (12 weeks) builds the quads, hamstrings and hips with real load. Performance (8 weeks) brings back jumping, sprinting and cutting. The Patellar Tendon Fix handles pain right below the kneecap, and the Knee Mobility Library runs alongside all of it. Kneehab Run lands in November at no extra cost. Start wherever your knee is right now, work your way up, and come back to Kneehab Ski every fall.
What's in the app today. Kneehab Ski is in there now, and every new program I build gets added for every member.
Every exercise filmed, with the sets, reps and weights written in week by week.
Send me your lift videos in the app and I'll tell you what I see.
