After my posted articles on FasterSkier on “Junior Nationals” and “What’s the Hurry”, there was some anticipated discussion on my statements around over training, burn out, and the attrition rate in the sport. When I write, it is based on my experience, my research, and my opinion. I encourage and welcome the debate. Over training and burnout in junior athletes is real I think it is important to define the ways I view over training...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. Over the last six days, I drove 1,000 miles down to Tucson and 1,000 miles back to visit Bob Treadwell, a teammate on the U.S. Ski Team in the mid-’70s, along with our friend Tim Caldwell, who most readers will know from his long run...
When the first real snow falls in West Yellowstone, everything changes. The sound of car tires gives way to the swish of skis; coffee shops fill with cold hands and red cheeks; and this small Montana town of 1,100 becomes the epicenter of cross-country skiing in North America. A Small Town With a Big Nordic Heart Each Thanksgiving week, thousands of skiers descend on West Yellowstone for the Yellowstone Fall Ski Festival—an event that blends...
What follows is a simplified training philosophy that works, if you apply it consistently. I’m focusing on the core elements of endurance sports: aerobic endurance and capacity (VO₂max), strength, speed, and appropriate training volume. These are the levers that matter. Coaches love to talk about nuance and the next latest and greatest shinny object: not going too hard during distance days, going hard enough during high-intensity sessions, finding the right dose of speed and strength,...
Garrott Kuzzy’s journey from the trails of Minneapolis to the alpine valleys of Austria reads like a skier’s odyssey—equal parts serendipity, endurance, and vision. Before becoming an Olympian or founding Lumi Experiences, a travel company built around the joy of cross-country skiing, Kuzzy was simply a kid who loved movement. “There were no cell phones then,” he recalls with a laugh. “I think I was just playing soccer, doing the stuff kids did in Minneapolis.”...
We read it again and again in studies, articles, and coaching posts: “Training volume is the best predictor of performance.” It’s one of the most consistent findings in exercise science, appearing across endurance sports for decades, and in national training systems. But the statement is often repeated without understanding what it really means, or more importantly what it doesn’t. One reason this line gets repeated so often is that “train more” is an easy message...
When Trond Nystad talks about Norway’s athletic success, he doesn’t start with medals or podiums. He begins with children — specifically, children who love to play. “The model of Norwegian sport,” he says, “is to have as many kids as possible, for as long as possible, and try to make them as good as possible.” That simple mantra, lived out in ski clubs from Tromsø to Trondheim, is what he believes keeps Norway at the...
Over the years, I have often been asked to review training programs for junior athletes. Most of the time, these requests come when an athlete is underperforming, showing signs of overtraining, or failing to make anticipated steps in competition. Unfortunately, these situations occur far more often than we might think. In fact, I have reviewed at least a dozen similar cases in recent years, where athletes share the same training and performance profile: high motivation,...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. As I was re-reading “Peak” by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool, the quoted paragraph caught my attention. (I most often read my books multiple times as with each reading I tend to find more learning.) “A 2012 study of tennis players looked at the success...
For many high school cross-country ski racers, fall is filled with soccer practices or long cross-country runs. These sports build endurance, speed, and competitiveness—but skiing requires an additional set of skills. Transitioning from fall sports to ski season means making smart adjustments so athletes don’t just carry fitness into the winter but arrive with ski-specific readiness. We spoke with several EISA coaches about what young skiers should focus on as the leaves fall and the...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. About two years ago, I started asking myself if we could define training zones in a better way. Since then, I’ve looked at just about every model out there. From a metabolic perspective, the 3-zone models tries to anchor the zones on metabolic events. But...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. Over the past few years, I’ve been studying the work of Herman Pontzer, PhD, whose research in human energetics challenges long-held paradigms of how endurance athletes adapt to training. For decades, endurance training theory was based on the principle of cumulative energy expenditure: train more,...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. In the mid-90s, I began doing extensive lactate testing with the athletes I coached. For about ten years, I collected data before eventually abandoning the practice. Why? Because the results raised more questions than answers. Lactate values varied greatly from day to day, and the...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. We live in the information age where a tremendous amount of training information is available. When it comes to that information, much of it is biased, hyped, or stripped of context for each athlete’s individual physiology. New trends come and go, often pushed more by...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. “Starting out, it is difficult to train at L1–2. The unfit blows right through just shuffling on the flats. Any insight on how the rank novice can gain enough fitness to begin varying the level of effort?” Submitted by a FasterSkier reader, this is the...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. I want to highlight a comparison between how we trained in the late 1970s and 80s, and what we now consider best practices. I’ve reviewed some old training logs to refresh my memory, though with time, those memories fade. I started unstructured training around the...
I regularly share my thoughts on training through various social media platforms. My goal is always to spark discussion and share insight from decades of experience and study. But what I’ve noticed over time is that people often read between the lines and make erroneous assumptions that simply aren’t accurate. Some suggest I don’t value high training volume. Others think I advocate only for easy training or that I always train in 2-3 day blocks....
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. It’s Tour de France season, when the eyes of the endurance sports world turn toward the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Champs Élyssées. For three weeks in the middle of summer, a field of aerobically gifted, whippet-thin cyclists race endless miles across France, conquering knee-wobbling...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. Since the mid-1980s, I’ve had the good fortune of working with the late Dr. Jim Stray-Gundersen on several projects. Our first conversation was at a training camp in Hatcher Pass, Alaska, either in October 1985 or 1986. We were discussing how we could better assess...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you would like to see more articles like this one, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. In recent years Zone 2 training has become the latest fad. It seems like everyone has a different definition or interpretation of the infamous Zone 2 training. When discussing training zones, it is important to understand a couple of key points. Training zones are typically...