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The Preparation Brief

What happens in the ten weeks before your client arrives

You are being asked to put your name next to this, so you should know what it is. This is the whole of it, in the order a client meets it, written by the head coach — a Doctor of Physical Therapy who skis, practicing in Bozeman — for the instructors, guides, outfitters and clinicians who send people to Montis.

What a client does each week

Strength, most training daysA 25–45 minute session from a catalogue of filmed movements, following the prescribed progression. The coach reviews completed training when deciding what comes next. Legs, trunk and the capacity to absorb repeated landings and turns are the point; the rest is in service of it.
Conditioning, where the week has roomThe coach reviews the client’s logged days outside — skiing, hiking, running and other activity — alongside the training plan when deciding what conditioning to prescribe.
A check-in on SundayThree questions: how the week went, anything in the body, one question for the coach. Two minutes.
A review from the coachEvery week, in writing, in the app: what changed in the plan and why, or why it stayed the same, and the answer to their question.
Calls in weeks 2, 4, 6 and 8Fifteen minutes each. Week 8 is the pre-trip planning call. The kickoff before week 1 is an hour: goals, schedule, gear, a movement review and a conditioning baseline.
The Ski-Day Playbook before travelWarm-up, breakfast, snacks, fluids, when to break and when to call the last run, recovery that night — written for this client and this trip, rehearsed before they leave. One section is addressed to you, if they choose to share it.

The plan is one framework, with coaching decisions based on the client’s time, equipment, body and capacity, skiing goal, food and logistics, and how they responded last week. The written review explains any change to the plan.

How the coach reviews their days

A coach-assigned block follows its prescribed progression. Logging an outdoor day does not automatically rewrite it. The coach uses the training record and check-ins to decide whether the plan needs a change.

  • The client shares planned mountain days and records completed activity. The coach reviews those days when deciding whether to change the gym schedule.
  • The coach reviews the week’s combined training and outdoor activity, including available imported activities, rather than treating each workout in isolation.
  • Reported soreness, symptoms and recovery are part of the coach’s review. The coach considers changes to the prescribed work in the written review.
  • Knee symptoms or an injury concern belong with the client’s clinician. Logging a symptom does not provide a diagnosis or medical clearance.
  • A history of knee surgery and the clinician’s restrictions guide the coach’s progression decisions. The coach checks required clearance and progression evidence before advancing the plan. The app does not clear a client to return to sport.

Where a person reads and decides

Every week the coach reads what the client logged, what they completed and what they said in the check-in, then writes the review. Software can prepare a draft from those facts; the coach reviews it before sending. The coach owns changes to the prescribed plan, and medical decisions stay with the client’s clinician.

Data from a client’s watch or from Strava stays with the plan’s arithmetic and is never shown to the drafting software. The client’s training, body and check-ins are theirs; you see the one paragraph they choose to share, and only that.

What it refuses to be

  • Not lessons, not guiding, not the trip. Those are yours and the plan is built to make them go better, not to touch them.
  • Not physical therapy and not a diagnosis. Pain, injury and return-to-sport questions go to a clinician. A client with a surgeon or a physical therapist keeps them; the plan runs underneath their clearances and never past them.
  • Not a guarantee. Nobody can promise a client will not get hurt or will ski well on day three. What is promised is that the preparation was done, around their life, with a clinician watching how they responded to it.
  • Not a game. No streaks, no badges, no leaderboards. A training app for adults with a trip to get ready for.

What we lean on

The case for preparation is not exotic. Skiing spends lower-body strength and the capacity to absorb repeated eccentric load, turn after turn; fatigue degrades technique and judgment long before it ends the day; and ten progressive weeks is enough time to change both strength and endurance in an adult who trains two or three times a week. The second half of the case is the one most programs skip: the plan has to respond to the client’s actual week, because a plan a tired person cannot follow is not a plan. Strength training is among the best-supported interventions in sports injury-prevention research, and we hold to that modestly — it lowers risk, it does not remove it.

What we ask of you

  1. Send the paragraph with your link to clients who book with you. Nothing else about how you work changes.
  2. If the client shares their playbook section with you, read it before the day and reinforce it when it matters: the warm-up, the breaks, the last run.
  3. After the trip, two sentences to Montis about how it went. They shape the next block.
  4. When a client asks you a preparation question, the answer is “ask your coach”, and the coach answers it that week.

Questions about any line on this page: hello@montislab.com. The head coach answers these personally. The offer itself — money, what you never do, how to start — is at montislab.com/partners; what the client sees is at montislab.com/ski-performance.