Alpine skiing’s all-time winningest racer just dropped the most relatable training truth bomb of the year—and gym rats everywhere are feeling seen.
In a recent glimpse into her off-snow grind, Mikaela Shiffrin—Olympic gold medalist, World Cup record-breaker, and walking advertisement for functional strength—admitted the one move that simultaneously builds the power behind her legendary turns and makes her want to flip the barbell (or TRX straps) across the room: inverted rows.
“It’s a love/hate with inverted rows,” the American star said, capturing the exact dual feeling every athlete knows too well. Love because the exercise sculpts the posterior chain, reinforces the core stability that keeps her carving clean edges at 60+ mph, and contributes to those viral “back abs” that once broke the internet. Hate because… well, inverted rows are the quiet assassin of upper-body workouts. Hanging under a bar or rings, pulling your chest to the handle while fighting gravity and keeping a rigid plank position? Pure suffering dressed up as “horizontal pulling.”
For a skier whose sport demands explosive single-leg power, rotational control, and bulletproof shoulders, inverted rows check every box. They build the mid-back thickness and scapular strength that help absorb the G-forces of a high-speed turn without collapsing. They’re scalable, joint-friendly compared with heavy bent-over rows, and force the core to work overtime—exactly the kind of functional carryover Shiffrin has prioritized for years, especially through injury comebacks.
Yet the love/hate is real. Anyone who’s programmed high-volume inverted rows knows the burn that hits the lats, rear delts, and biceps while your core screams for mercy. It’s the move you know is making you better… and the one you still quietly dread when it shows up on the whiteboard.
Shiffrin’s candor lands at a perfect moment. Fans have watched her rebuild from a nasty abdominal injury, dominate World Cup slaloms, and chase more Olympic hardware with the same obsessive attention to detail that has defined her career. Hearing the GOAT admit even she wrestles with certain exercises humanizes the machine. It also reinforces what coaches have long preached: the best athletes don’t love every single rep. They just show up and do them anyway.
So next time you’re hanging under the bar, fighting through another set of inverted rows and questioning your life choices, remember: even Mikaela Shiffrin feels the same way. Love the gains. Hate the burn. Keep pulling.
The greatest skier on the planet just made suffering in the gym a little more fashionable.
