Marko Rossi, a physiotherapist working with the Finnish national team, believes that passive stretching is not the best possible mobility training. There are also studies on the subject that show that stretching does not speed up recovery, remove metabolic waste products or affect post-exercise muscle pain.

“Skiing has progressed in terms of equipment and ski tracks, but sometimes it feels like mobility training is still in its infancy,” Rossi says to Maastohiihto.com.

The best muscle care, according to Rossi, is well-planned training and training load management. Passive stretching is a waste of time, he says, but it would be useful to pay attention to active mobility training even more.

“A skier’s joints need to have a certain amount of elasticity and mobility to optimize power output and to be able to exploit endurance qualities. There must be a certain capacity for mobility in the angles required for skiing, especially in the ankle, hip, and pelvis. For double poling, there must be sufficient movement in the shoulder girdle and in the shoulder plate area.”

Rossi thinks of body care as part of the training package, which is why good warm-ups can also serve as muscle maintenance exercises. In addition to the aerobic part, Rossi believes it would be good to do activations and dynamic and functional mobility in the initial warm-up. The same exercises can also be done during the cool down.

“If you think of the warm-up as part of muscle maintenance and you do it six days a week, it easily becomes three hours of light training. For best results, spend a little time on functional mobility exercises in each session.”

According to Rossi, for many, assumptions about the effects of massage are also misleading. Massage brings temporary relief to sore muscles, but it doesn’t remove the reason why they are sore.

“Massage is OK to a certain extent, but I think it’s overrated. Spending an awful lot of time and resources on massages is always away from practice.”

“According to the old school way of thinking, often at the end of a hard week of training, a massage is given when it is thought to be restorative. In reality, it can add minor muscle damage and strain to already tired muscles. It takes two or three extra days to recover from a massage.”

Marko Rossi gives some examples of exercises that could be done, especially before a run:

• Calf raises with two or one foot (can be done with knees straight or bent)
• Back against the wall, knees bent, lifting the heels, and doing a pumping movement
• Different variations for hip flexors: use a rubber band on the foot and lift the legs
• Split squats both forward and backward