First, there was the rollicking beauty of the ad featuring My Morning Jacket’s cover of “Your Land” with a backdrop of the country’s most gorgeous mountains and seascapes.
Then, there were the videos featuring ski mountaineers, climbers and trail runners demonstrating exercises designed to prep athletes for each of those sports. I started doing Kit DesLauriers’ Quadzilla Complex workout a few weeks ago, and feel stronger already.
As if that wasn’t enough to make it seem like The North Face marketing team is living inside my head, TNF recently unveiled the Mountain Athletics iPhone app, which allows you to program your phone to deliver customized workouts for your sport of choice, all designed by the folks at the Mountain Athlete gym in Jackson Hole, Wyo. I’ve been a little bit obsessed with this gym ever since Outside and SKI magazines profiled it a few years back, but reading the training plans and exercise descriptions on its website made my head hurt (if you can figure out how to do a “pinch-grip assessment and work” or an “operator ugly,” you’re a better woman than I am). 
Enter the Mountain Athletics app, which idiot-proofs the whole workout process. Not sure what to do after your legs are aching from a strength workout the previous day? That would be a lactate tolerance/core workout followed by a recovery day. Need a demo of core exercises such as the EO, or loaded jump squats? Big-mountain skiers like DesLauriers and Angel Collinson star in videos showing exactly how to preform each movement. (By the way, when Angel Collinson told me in the video not to “sandbag” the situps in the circuit she was demonstrating, you better believe I listened to her).
Do I feel a bit foolish for being so easy to market to? I might feel that way, if I weren’t so tired from this morning’s lower-body strength workout (those loaded jump squats are no joke!).
How are you training for your winter sport of choice?
Amy Reinink 