Preseason Training: 6 Ways To Survive The Fall

Fall is a tough season to navigate, replete with movie premieres, gear swaps, and season passes to purchase. Preseason in the ski world means hitting rails without much snow, prolonging your first injury, and actually being as excited about skiing as you pretend to be throughout the winter. Here are six tips to get you through the autumn strife.

Fill your iPod with this season’s hottest tracks (as demonstrated by movie trailers). Then, search Soundcloud and all torrent websites to download every song of that genre, flooding your iTunes with music you’ll hate next year. Keywords: trapstep, whomp, indieelectrocallmemaybestep.

Attend every ski movie premiere within a reasonable distance. Get autographs to fill your bedroom walls, your helmet, and your chest. Practice your vertical jump and reach for every free sticker thrown.

Practice walking stairs in ski boots. The last way you want to start your winter is by giving everyone in the lodge the impression that you don’t ski year-round. Throw those bad boys on and run up and down your porch steps until you’re no longer tripping on your own feet and the cuffs of your snowpants are sufficiently tattered.

Do parkour. Trampoline gyms, tennis-shoe-switch-ups on curbs, and that thing where you toss up your water bottle and flip it in 180-degree increments are all good uses of your time. Stomp a bottle-quad-flip before the first snowfall.

Get your gear dialed. I’m not talking about tuning your skis, waterproofing your jacket, and other stuff that matters. Instead, cut your poles, sticker your skis, and figure out which beanie best allows your goggles to fit under your helmet. That, and stand in front of a mirror in your outerwear while holding your skis.

Go to great lengths to build rails. Borrow questionable construction materials, use your creativity, and ask your uncle to weld legs onto that PVC pipe you found in your basement. Then go hide it in the woods and start sessioning it the first morning that frost is on the ground.

Now go out and buy your favorite ski brand’s 2012-13 sweatshirts to wear to your first event of the season: a new ski movie on your roommate’s couch.