Olympian Mikaela Shiffrin's Workout For Toned Legs

With a fitness regimen so rigorous, it’s no surprise Shiffrin has been lauded by Time as “the best skier in the world.” So what does a training day look like for an athlete of her caliber?

The Colorado native typically wakes up between 5 and 6 a.m., has breakfast, and does 30 minutes of warm-up moves. Then for the rest of the morning, she hits the slopes for her practice runs.

In the afternoon, she switches to gym workouts, focusing on “cardio, strength or mobility.”

Warm-up exercises for the alpine ski star usually consist of stationary biking and stretching. As for her gym training, they typically include intense workouts like sprinting across the gym while dragging a weighted sled, skating on a slide board, rowing on an ergometer, and throwing medicine balls.

Her former coach, Jeff Lackie, also focused heavily on squats, which explains all that leg power. Squats are crucial to developing lower-body strength, enabling Shiffrin to remain stable in the ski position.

“Even though Mikaela makes slalom look effortless, much like a figure skater or a ballerina moving gracefully across the stage, there is a huge power component to that which makes that huge bound or series of tight turns look effortless,” Lackie told CNN.

He continued, “We try to incorporate all the attributes she needs to be successful all season long. We never go through a period where we focus on one single attribute. We try to maintain a similar load of training (total minutes multiplied by her perceived level of exertion) when she's on snow and off snow.”

And after all that grueling workout, the gold medalist swears by one simple yet very important fuel: sleep.

“Sleeping is my meditation,” Shiffrin told SI. “It’s the only time you can recover, physically and emotionally, at the same time.”