Warm-up before skiing: an 8-minute routine for the lift

An 8-minute active warm-up before your first run raises your heart rate, loosens ankles, knees, hips and back, and wakes the muscles that brake and balance in turns. Evidence that warm-ups prevent ski injuries is suggestive, not proven, so keep it short and ski the first runs easy.

Updated: 2026-11-04

The chairlift drops you at the top, your legs are cold and your boots are stiff, and the first run is the one where many people fall. A short warm-up costs five to eight minutes and fits into the time you would spend queueing for coffee. This guide gives you a routine you can do next to the lift station, explains what the research does and does not say, and tells you what to leave out.

Does warming up before skiing prevent injuries?

Honest answer: probably it helps, and nobody can prove it for skiing. A systematic review of randomised trials in different sports found five high-quality studies. Three showed that a warm-up significantly lowered injury risk, two found no effect. The authors concluded that evidence was insufficient to endorse or drop routine warm-up, while the weight of evidence leaned towards less injury^[1]. None of those trials were done on a ski slope.

Skiing data points the same way without settling it. In a questionnaire study of 588 skiers with a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), about one third were hurt on their first day on snow and roughly 57% within two days. Women were hurt more often in the first hour of skiing than men: 28% against 17%^[2]. This is an association from self-reports, not proof that cold muscles cause tears. It does fit a simple idea: the first runs of a day and the first days of a season are the risky part, so enter them prepared.

A warm-up is also not the same thing as training. What reduces injuries in controlled trials is regular neuromuscular training: balance, landing, strength. A review of the best trials found that multi-part programmes cut acute knee injuries by about half (risk ratio 0.46) in the sports studied^[3]. That is why your warm-up is a bonus on top of pre-season work, not a replacement for it. If you want the full plan, start with the ski fitness plan.

What should a ski warm-up do?

Keep the goal modest. In five to eight minutes you want to raise your heart rate a little, loosen the joints that ski turns load (ankles, knees, hips, lower back), and wake up the muscles you will ask to brake and balance: quads, glutes, calves and trunk. You are not trying to get tired. If you sweat through your base layer before the first run, you did too much and will be cold on the lift.

Static stretching is a poor fit here. Holding a stretch for a minute in the cold does little for your first turns, and the evidence for it preventing injury is weak. Save stretching for after skiing or the evening; see the ski stretching routine.

The 8-minute routine at the lift

Do this in your boots, with skis off, on a flat spot out of the traffic. Skip any move that hurts.

1. March or easy jog in place, 60 seconds. Lift the knees slightly, swing the arms. This starts the blood flow.
2. Leg swings, 10 forward and back and 10 sideways per leg. Hold a pole or the fence for balance. Small range first, bigger on later reps.
3. Ankle and calf raises, 15 reps. Boots limit the ankle, so you only wake the calves. Rise slowly, lower slowly.
4. Squats to a comfortable depth, 10 slow reps. Knees track over the middle of the foot, chest up. Think ski position, not gym depth.
5. Reverse lunges, 5 per side. Step back, lower, push through the front heel. If your knee wobbles inward, shorten the step.
6. Lateral steps, 10 each way. Wide stance, shift weight from one leg to the other. This copies the load of a turn.
7. Hip circles and trunk rotations, 10 each. Your spine twists and bends in every turn, so give it some range.
8. Arm circles and shoulder rolls, 10 each. Cheap and useful before you grab poles.

Then ski. The first run is part of the warm-up: pick a green or an easy blue, keep turns round and speed low. Do not start the day on the steepest piste in the area.

How cold changes things

At minus ten, a standing warm-up cools quickly. Do it right before you clip in, and wear the layers you will ski in until you feel warm, then open a zip. If the lift ride was long and you got cold, repeat the squats and lateral steps at the top. Hot drinks do not warm your muscles; moving does.

Altitude and tired mornings count too. After a late night or a long drive, your coordination is slower, and the first runs feel it. That is another reason to ski easy first. For the legs that burn early in the day, see why your legs burn when skiing.

Warm-up for the first day of the season

If it is your first day of the year, treat the whole morning as a warm-up. The legs that carried you through last winter have lost some of their endurance, and the study above found about one third of ACL tears happened on the first day^[2]. Plan short runs with a break every hour, drink water, and stop before the legs shake. The guide on the first day back on skis goes deeper. And if you have time before the trip, six weeks of home training does more than any lift-side routine; see when to start ski training.

Common warm-up mistakes

• Warming up in the car park, then queueing for 20 minutes. The effect fades. Do it close to the lift.
• Long static stretches. Short, active moves work better before skiing.
• Going all out. A warm-up that tires you steals energy from the first runs.
• Skipping it on easy days. Beginners and children fall more in their first runs too. A first-day study at three large Scottish ski areas found first-day participants were injured at about 2.2 times the expected rate^[4].
• Ignoring pain. A warm-up should feel like loosening, not like pain. If a joint hurts, swells or catches, stop and see a doctor or physiotherapist.

Warm up in the app, too

Every SnowStreak session starts with a two-minute warm-up: marching in place for 60 seconds, then leg swings for 60 seconds. It is deliberately short and it is a pre-season habit, not a lift routine. Use it as the pattern and extend it with the squats and lunges above on snow. The app is free to start, runs on iPhone only for now and keeps your data on the phone. It does not replace advice from a physiotherapist if you have a knee or back problem.