Overcome ACL Risks and Boost Outdoor Resilience

As outdoor enthusiasts, injury is one of the hardest things we deal with. Being sidelined and missing out on a season of your favorite activity is heartbreaking! We would know: as a teenager, I tore both ACLs within a couple of months of each other! Those injuries were devastating at the time, and took a lot of work to come back from. 

Among skiers, ACL tears are the most common knee injury. And they are especially common among women.  

The good news is we have tools we can use to understand how likely we are to injure our knees. Armed with that knowledge, we can make smart decisions about how to train to reduce our risk. Of course, there's no way to guarantee remaining injury-free. Life happens! But we can stack the deck in our favor, and that’s powerful.

What follows is an assessment of your personal ACL injury risk. Knowing what your weak points are can be scary, but with that information, we’ll be able...

Are you able to use your outer glutes to stabilize your hips? 

Take this quick test to find out. 

The Tutu Test came together after one of this year's Ski Babes asked for some help identifying if she was using her outer glutes or not.

I had just taught a Halloween Ski Babes workout in costume (sweaty ballerina) and realized how helpful it was to be wearing a tutu when demonstrating proper hip alignment! 

And so the Tutu Test was born. :) 

The goal of the Tutu Test is to help you identify if your outer glutes are doing their part in stabilizing your hips.

And if they're not, I've got techniques in this video to help them pick up the slack. 

When you're able to activate your outer glutes, you take some of the load off your IT Bands (if you have a chronically tight IT band this might be part of what's happening). 

You'll also have better luck keeping your knees in alignment over your ankles, which is a huge part of helping prevent knee...

How are your knees these days?

I've got a couple friends who are struggling with knee injuries at the moment, so the subject of healthy knees has been heavy on my mind. I know how devastating it can be to have a knee injury - or an injury of any kind, for that matter - so I'm hoping today's video will help you assess the health of your knees and more specifically assess if you're at risk for an ACL injury. 

This is a personal passion topic for me, because when I was in High School, I tore BOTH of my ACLs with a couple months of each other. ‍ 

It was a low point for me, for sure (Read: I was heartbroken). But luckily my surgeries went well, I was able to rehab and re-strengthen successfully, and I've been able to be as active as I want (including playing rugby, running, skiing, backpacking, etc.) with no issues ever since.

My experience has made me super passionate about helping other people PREVENT injuries like mine, though, which is what the video I...

If you have tight hips, sore knees, stiff ankles, or an aching back, especially in the mornings, this video is for you! This is an easy sequence you can do to get the blood flowing, increase mobility, and let go of some of that morning stiffness that we so often start the day with. 

Best part? You don't even have to get out of bed to do it. Start your day by taking care of your knees, ankles, hips, and back... before you've even gotten out of bed. It's the gentlest, coziest self-care around. 

Enjoy!