How to Prevent Ski Injuries

Male: None of us want our ski vacation cut short by an injury. The Steadman Hawkins Clinic has a team of positions who specialize not only in treating injuries but also, in preventing them

Tom Hackett: My name is Tom Hackett. I’m an orthopedic surgeon with the Steadman Hawkins Clinic and the team’s—for the United States snowboard team. It’s funny. The first year I worked here, I was so busy taking care of vacations. I skied more in Japan than I skied in Vail, even though I was living on the mountain. But now, I get out actually as much as I can and often times, I will hike the mountain early in the morning and try to take at least one run down before I start my day. I’m a huge fan of getting into the trees and off the beat and path a little bit, skiing or snowboarding or even telemarketing sometimes.

On average, snowboarders have more injuries with their wrist and arms and upper extremity where our skiers more commonly have injuries in their lower extremities and in their knees and tibias. Amateurs have probably some more wrist injuries, whereas, the professional snowboarders and the riders that are really at the very highest level tend to get injuries sort of head to toe. But in general, it’s more hand and wrist injuries in snowboarders and leg in the injuries in skier.

Obviously, I’m a scientist and a surgeon, so I always look for data and there are a number of studies looking at the efficacy or the success rate of preventing injuries with—And there are some studies that sort of support that and other studies don’t necessary support that. So, what I’m saying is it’s essentially a little debatable about whether they help or not. But as someone who counts on his hands for his living, I tell you what, I wear them a lot myself. So, I think that they can be useful for some writers especially more beginners, probably it’s a good idea.

I think there are a couple of things and we’ve done some studies on this at the Steadman Hawkins Clinic. And really during some strengthening and conditioning long before you ever get on the slopes is by far the most important thing. One of the more common injuries in skiers is anterior cruciate ligament tear and ACL tear and by strengthening your hand string muscles and some of the other muscles on the back of your leg, you can help to prevent that. We’ve also learned by looking at statistics that people are typically hurt and more towards the end of the day, and also more towards the end of their vacation. So, we try to tell people that taking a rest day towards their vacation is a wise thing to do and that if it said three or four o’clock in the afternoon and you’re thinking about just taking one more run, you might want to think twice about that because statistically, people tend to get hurt at the end of the day.

Unfortunately, if you’re in the situation where you’re hurt on the hill, just trust the ski patrollers to come down. I’ve had the opportunity to travel around the world and work on different ski areas and different ski mountains. I’m confident that the ski patrollers we have here are by far the best in the world, and I would trust them with my life. And so, any unfortunate incident that you do get hurt; just be thankful you’re in a good place and the patrollers will take care of you. And when you get to the bottom of the hill, the rest of us will take you take you from there.