An alpine skier has to have velocity, power, anaerobic endurance, skill and agility. That's why training in alpine skiing is much more than skiing. Riitta's trainings are so-called combination trainings. It means that you can improve for instance your power and agility in the same training. Riitta gets her power training mostly with free weights. In addition, she makes towards uphill vertical and horisontal jumps with an extra load on her hip. It is easy to change these trainings to an anaerobic training.

Riitta does different kinds of fitness including some coordination and aerobic parts. Riitta cycles and skates with in-liners in the summer time. She likes to play squash, badminton and tennis. Riitta likes to swim and do aquafitness too.

Riitta thinks that it is important for her to ski every month a year. That's the way she keeps the snow touch on. Riitta concentrates on the skiing technique in the late spring and in the summer. From the beginning of August she starts to move the new technique to a racing performance. It means that she skis less, but with a higher quality, more aggressively and more like in a race. When the racing season is on, Riitta concentrate on racing, but sometimes she needs to have some technical trainings.

Also the mental training is included in Riitta's training program. It means relaxing, after which a certain training phase or situation is gone through by thinking. This is connected with the creation of positive images of different matters, which endeavours to bring about successful performances. The hard training consumes a lot of energy. Already for several years Riitta has controlled her diet, due to which Riitta's food is versatile and healthy.