Winter Sports Safety: How to Prevent Injuries While Enjoying Outdoor Activities

From skiing down snow-packed slopes to strapping on ice skates, the winter season offers a variety of fun, family-friendly activities for people at all skill levels. But winter sports also come with unique safety risks due to bulky equipment, slippery surfaces, and frigid environments.

“Staying warm, staying loose, staying conditioned, and knowing your limits are all great ways to reduce the risk of injury while enjoying winter sports,” says Dr. Elan Goldwaser, a pediatric and adult sports medicine physician with NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

Here, Dr. Goldwaser, who is also the team physician for U.S. Ski & Snowboard, shares with Health Matters tips to help kids and adults stay safe while enjoying winter sports and activities.

With temperatures often well below freezing, it’s important to protect yourself against frostbite. To help stay warm, dress in layers:

• Base layer: Moisture-wicking thermal material to stay warm and dry.
• Middle layer: Cotton or polyester for insulation.
• Outer shell: Windproof and waterproof for protection.

You can remove layers if it gets warmer, but you can’t add them later. Dress warmly and adjust your layers as necessary.

When you’re in cold weather, your muscles can tighten up, so the best way to combat that is by staying loose. To help avoid sprains and strains, touch your toes and lean side to side before putting on gear. Stretch again after to loosen muscles tightened by the cold.

Participating in winter sports puts you at risk for dehydration. Despite the cold temperatures people can work up quite a sweat; plus, cold weather suppresses your thirst mechanism, and if you’re in high altitude, the dry air can further accelerate fluid loss. By the time you feel thirsty, you are already significantly dehydrated. 

Signs of dehydration can include:

• Feeling colder than usual
• A dull, throbbing headache
• Dry mouth
• Dizziness

Learning how to fall on hard, slippery surfaces is important for injury prevention. Don’t place your arms out in front of you to stop yourself if you’re falling. That can lead to fractures in the bones of your wrist and arm. Instead, try to fall on your shoulder, knees, or butt if you are snowboarding or on your side if you are skiing so your body can more safely absorb the impact.

It’s also important to be aware of your surroundings when you fall. If you fall while ice skating, do not leave your limbs or hands splayed on the ice, because you risk having someone skate over them. If you fall while skiing or snow tubing, try to hurry off to the side of the slope, and look uphill to make sure there’s no one coming directly at you.

Wear protective equipment like a helmet if you’re skiing or snowboarding and wrist guards if you’re snowboarding. But it’s also important to know how to wear your gear:

• Skates and boots should be slightly larger than regular shoes for toe movement.
• Use arch supports if you have flat feet to prevent misalignment and strain. Kids and adults with flat feet can purchase over-the-counter inserts to provide extra arch support in their gear.

While there is no evidence that helmets will prevent concussions, they will protect a skier’s skull from traumatic injury from a crash, or from being hit by equipment like stray ski poles or skis, or from branches and objects while navigating glades. Helmets are invaluable for safety and protection while skiing.

Watch the Weather

For skiiers and snowboarders, weather changes can impact the difficulty rating of the mountain instantly.

• Flat Light: Overcast days create “flat light” where you cannot see bumps or ice patches easily. 
• Ice vs. Powder: A steep run you conquered in soft snow can be terrifyingly dangerous when it is icy. Adjust your terrain choice based on the conditions, not just the map rating.
• Cold Stress: If you lose feeling in your toes or fingers, or if your face feels waxy, go inside. Frostbite can set in before you realize it, especially with wind chill.

Whether you’re a novice skier or an experienced snowboarder, you should know your limits, both physically and by skill level. Stop when you’re tired and don’t try to push yourself if you’re not ready. Progress should be gradual. Jumping from an easy course to a harder one before you’re ready isn’t challenging yourself, it endangers yourself and others.

If you choose to ski or snowboard alone, regardless of your skill level, stick to populated, groomed runs where ski patrol is frequent. Tell someone where you are going to be and when. Carry a fully charged phone in an inside pocket (to keep the battery warm) and consider sharing your GPS location with someone.

While it’s easy to end up with bumps and bruises from falling, sometimes what you think is just a bruise could be a stress fracture, a microfracture on your bone that happens when there is too much activity too quickly and your bone is not structurally ready to handle the workload. A bruise typically happens from banging a body part into something, while a stress fracture is a gradual, deep ache directly on a bone that sharply hurts when pressed on and may have a small bruise associated with it.

Stress fractures can start to feel better if you take off your skates or skis, leading many people to try to “play through the pain,” but continuing the activity can lead to worse outcomes, like a break in the bone. The best thing to do is to reduce activity to the point where you don’t feel pain and rest the bone. Typically this type of injury will resolve itself in about six weeks.

Generally speaking, soreness should peak at 24 to 48 hours and improve by day 3. If pain is worse on day 3 than day 1, or if it wakes you up at night, it is likely an injury rather than simple fatigue. Consult with a doctor or medical professional if you experience lingering issues.

Elan Goldwaser, D.O., is a sports medicine physician with NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center and an assistant professor of sports medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. He cares for athletes of all levels and ages, with a specialty focus on office-based interventions that accelerate healing. Dr. Goldwaser serves as the team physician for U.S. Ski & Snowboard, head team physician for Fordham University Athletics, physician for the New York City FC soccer team, and ringside physician for the New York State Athletic Commission.