Professional Alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin knows how to make workouts and training fun. Shiffrin, 29, shared a video of herself wearing green leggings and a gray tank top, doing pull ups with an exercise ball. She wraps it all up with a cute silly dance. “Silly-dancing is the BEST way through a session 🤗🤭🤪💃🕺,” she captioned the post. Shiffrin works hard and trains hard—here’s how she stays focused and fit.
1. Core Exercises
Shiffrin likes to work on her core when she’s not skiing. “I sort of love to hate all of the moves that I ever have to do!” she told Fit Bottomed Girls. “I think my favorite workouts are generally the core workouts. The burn you get in your core is that immediate gratification — you can feel it and you know you’re getting stronger. I feel like my core is strong, my back is strong, and it just ties everything together.”
2. Taylor Swift Playlist
Music helps Shiffrin focus before a race. "I'll start building out a playlist for the season, that's kind of my specific training and race day playlist,” she told NPR. “It ends up being something I listen to a lot. There's always a lot of Taylor Swift in there. But there will sometimes also be some classical, some piano, just some instrumental songs. Pretty much anything that makes me feel more inspired.”
3. She Loves Her Carbs
Mikaela Shiffrin/Instagram
Shiffrin enjoys plenty of carbs, especially pasta. “I go through phases where I write down everything I eat and I keep track of calories,” she told Clean Eating. “For the most part, I have a pretty good gauge of the portions that I should have: carbs versus protein, versus vegetables. The easiest way for me to have energy is to have some carbs. I always have pasta after a race and after training to fuel me up and get me ready for tomorrow. Carbs aren’t bad. Everything in moderation. I’m not afraid of carbs. I just try to keep it all balanced.”
4. Philosophical About Failure
Shiffrin has good advice for young athletes. “Anything you do — probably in life but definitely in sport — you have to go into it knowing that you're going to fail,” she told NPR. “And knowing that it's probably going to be painful, because it's supposed to be. If you care about the thing at all, then it should hurt and be disappointing. I find that sometimes in the most emotional, difficult moments, you have to take your sense of self and ego out of it, and just know that that is something that happens to everybody. It will happen to everybody. You will not avoid it.”
5. Intuitive Eating
Shiffrin listens to her body when it comes to food, especially sugar. “I go through phases,” she told Fit Bottomed Girls. “I want dessert every night. I make cookies every night and I have dessert. And then I get to a point where I’m like, okay, it’s time for me to stop having cookies every night. You just take little steps. And then I’ll say, I’m going to stop having sugar three days a week. And then, all of a sudden, you’ve gone a week without sugar and it’s really easy to continue, and you don’t crave it.”
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