Most masters skiers who train seriously already carry a bias, whether they’ve named it or not. Some default to the barbell — squats and deadlifts, both feet planted, load stacked on the bar. Others have read enough about ski-specific training to have gone the other way, filling their sessions with split squats, step-ups, and single-leg deadlifts because skiing “is a single-leg sport.” Both camps are half right. And in the preseason, when training time is finite and the loading has to build toward opening day, the half that’s missing is what quietly limits the result.
The question isn’t which is better. Bilateral and single-leg work do different jobs, and a preseason build that leans too far in either direction leaves capacity on the table. The useful question is how to split them — how much of each, in what order, and how that ratio should shift as the season gets closer.
What Each One Actually Builds
Bilateral strength — the back squat, front squat, trap bar and conventional deadlift — is where you develop and express maximal force. Two legs on the ground, a stable base, a bar you can load progressively over weeks. This is the environment where you build the raw strength ceiling that everything else draws from. You cannot load a Bulgarian split squat the way you can load a trap bar deadlift, and the nervous system adaptations that come from moving heavy loads bilaterally are real. The deadlift still matters for skiers over 50 for exactly this reason: it’s the most efficient way to build posterior chain force, and force is the foundation power and endurance are built on.
Single-leg strength — step-ups, split squats, single-leg Romanian deadlifts — is where that force gets made usable for skiing. Skiing is a single-leg sport at the moment that matters most: maximum edge engagement, when the outside ski is loaded and the inside leg is doing something entirely different. Bilateral strength does not automatically transfer to that position. The stabilizers around the hip and knee that hold a single-leg stance under load are trained directly by single-leg work and barely touched by the barbell. This is why a skier can have a respectable squat and still feel unstable on one edge in variable snow.
The mistake in each direction is predictable. The barbell-only skier builds a strength number that doesn’t show up on snow, because the strength was never loaded through the position skiing demands. The single-leg-only skier builds a stance that feels stable at light loads but has no real force behind it, because they never built the ceiling. Preseason is where you refuse to make either mistake.
Build the ceiling in summer. Make it usable in fall.
The Split Shifts Across the Build
The ratio of bilateral to single-leg work should not be fixed. It should move as the preseason progresses, and the direction of that movement matters more than the exact percentages.
Early in the build, bilateral work carries more of the load. This is where you re-establish or extend your strength base — heavier bilateral lifts, moderate reps, the barbell doing the work it’s best at. Single-leg work is present, but it’s largely bodyweight and light-load, focused on movement quality: can you own a stable single-leg stance, hinge cleanly on one leg, control the descent of a split squat without the knee drifting. You’re building the foundation and screening the pattern at the same time.
As the build moves toward the season, the balance tips toward single-leg work. The bilateral lifts don’t disappear, but they shift into a maintenance role while unilateral loading climbs. This is deliberate. The closer you get to snow, the more your training should look like the demand — and the demand is force through one leg, under fatigue, in a stance that keeps changing. By the final block, single-leg strength under load is doing most of the ski-specific work, and the barbell is holding the ceiling you built earlier rather than pushing it higher.
This arc is exactly how the two flagship programs are structured. The Summer Strength Build opens with a bilateral emphasis — trap bar deadlift, goblet and front squat — and progressively increases unilateral loading through its three phases, so that by the power-and-performance block the single-leg work is carrying real weight. The Fall Transition picks up from there and pushes the unilateral emphasis further, adding lateral and single-leg demand under the balance and power challenges the season is about to impose. The handoff between them is the split shifting in real time: build the ceiling in summer, make it usable in fall.
Order Within the Session
Within a single training day, the sequencing follows the same logic as the ratio. Heavy bilateral work goes early, when the nervous system is fresh and you can express and build maximal force safely. Single-leg strength follows, once the primary lift is done. This isn’t a rigid rule for every session, but it holds for the days where you’re actually loading both patterns hard.
There’s a reason not to reverse it. Single-leg work done first pre-fatigues the stabilizers and compromises the heavy bilateral lift that needs them. And single-leg work is where balance and control degrade first under fatigue — which, for the ski-specific blocks late in the build, is sometimes the point. Training single-leg strength when you’re already tired builds the exact capacity skiing demands, because skiing asks for stability on one leg on the last run of the day, not the first. There’s a full case for that in the piece on preseason single-leg work under fatigue — but it’s a deliberate stress applied late in the build, not the default way to run every week.
Which Single-Leg Exercises Earn the Slot
Not all single-leg work is equal, and preseason time is too limited to spend on the low-transfer versions. Three patterns cover most of what a masters skier needs.
The Loaded Split Squat
The split squat, loaded, is the workhorse. It trains single-leg strength through a large range with enough stability to actually load it meaningfully — you can hold real weight in a Bulgarian split squat in a way you can’t in a pistol squat. It’s one of the better strength builders available for skiers, and the full case for Bulgarian split squats is worth reading if you’ve been treating them as an accessory rather than a main lift.
The Step-Up
The step-up, done with intent rather than momentum, trains the terminal knee extension and hip extension that turn initiation draws on directly. The Peterson and Poliquin variations bias different parts of that chain, and both belong in a preseason build.
The Single-Leg Romanian Deadlift
The single-leg Romanian deadlift trains the posterior chain unilaterally and, just as importantly, trains anti-rotation — the ability to hinge on one leg without the pelvis twisting. That’s the stance stability skiing lives on. It’s the exercise most skiers are missing, and it exposes left-right asymmetries the barbell hides.
It’s specificity. You’re not adding split squats because they’re harder or because they burn more. You’re adding them because the position — force through one leg, stabilized at the hip — is the position skiing loads you in. If an exercise doesn’t get you closer to that, it hasn’t earned the slot.
The Practical Answer
If you want a starting point rather than a philosophy: early preseason, run roughly two parts bilateral to one part single-leg by hard-set volume, with the single-leg work kept light and clean. By the final block before the season, invert it — closer to two parts single-leg to one part bilateral, with the bilateral lifts holding your strength rather than chasing it. In between, move the dial gradually. Don’t flip it in a single week.
The deeper structure of unilateral and frontal-plane training — how the step-up and split-squat variations are loaded, progressed, and sequenced against the bilateral lifts — is laid out in Chapter 21 of Ski Strong for Life (Unilateral & Frontal Plane), with the posterior chain work in Chapter 22 alongside it.
Don’t Manage the Ratio by Hand
The Summer Strength Build and Fall Transition programs sequence this bilateral-to-single-leg shift across their combined weeks — structured so the loading progression matches where you are in the season, instead of leaving you to guess the split.