Training – FasterSkier

Development in Norway Isn’t Just a Plan. It’s a System.

Jim GalanesMay 12, 2026

This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. A review of a recently published paper from Norway, “Long-term development culture for sustainable Olympic success: Lessons learned from Norwegian cross-country skiing” by Jacob Walther and Øyvind Sandbakk, is worth the time. Long-term development culture for sustainable Olympic success: Lessons learned from Norwegian cross-country skiing – ScienceDirect We’ve all heard...

Feature Lifestyle Training

If we know better, why don’t we do better?

Jim GalanesApril 25, 2026

This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. Where do High School and USCSA programs fit into our development. In a recent article, I laid out the disconnect between what we say about long-term development in Nordic skiing and what we do and the rewards. “Long-Term Development in Nordic Skiing: What We Say vs. What We Actually Do”....

Feature Strength Training

Plyometrics: Where They Fit Within a Training Program

Jim GalanesApril 16, 2026

This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. Where do Plyometrics Fit Within a Training Program Hint: You Don’t Start with Plyometrics Over the past few years there’s been a noticeable shift in how athletes and coaches talk about training. More emphasis on power. More interest in being “explosive.” That’s a good direction. Cross-country skiing is a power-endurance...

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When to Increase Training Load… and When to Wait

Jim GalanesApril 8, 2026

This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. As this ski season wraps up, many of us coaches are doing similar work. Using spreadsheets or a popular training platform, we map out training for the year. We plan the yearly hours, monthly hours, and weekly hours, along with defining the training intensity distribution. We also plan how long...

Feature Juniors Training

Long-Term Development in Nordic Skiing: What We Say vs. What We Actually Do

Jim GalanesApril 3, 2026

This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. As the season winds down, it’s worth stepping back and asking a simple question: Does the way we develop young skiers in the United States reflect the philosophy we say we believe in? I know everyone is probably done with hearing about how the Norwegians do it, so let’s look...

Feature Training

Using Heart Rate Variability to Guide Training

Jim GalanesJanuary 27, 2026

This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. In my coaching and consulting work, I get a lot of questions about using heart rate variability (HRV) to guide training. This is a follow-up to a previous article, where I want to move from theory to practice and show how HRV has been one of the most valuable...

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The Long Game: Over-Training in the Development Years.

Jim GalanesDecember 4, 2025

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...

Training

Long Drive, Good Thinking

Jim GalanesNovember 20, 2025

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...

Biathlon Community Juniors Lifestyle Masters

First Tracks and Timeless Traditions: Inside the West Yellowstone Ski Festival & Clinics

Matthew VoisinNovember 7, 2025

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...

Feature News Training

Training Philosophy—a Holistic View

Jim GalanesNovember 6, 2025

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,...

Lifestyle Racing Travel World Cup

From Olympian to Entrepreneur: How Garrott Kuzzy Turned a Life on Skis into Lumi Experiences

Matthew VoisinOctober 29, 2025

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.”...

Feature News Training

Why “Training Volume Is the Biggest Predictor of Success” — and Why That’s Only Half True

Jim GalanesOctober 24, 2025

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...

Feature Juniors Lifestyle Training

“Being a Champion of the World, Not a World Champion”: Inside the Norwegian Model of Lifelong Sport with Trond Nystad

Matthew VoisinOctober 9, 2025

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...

Feature News Training

Pitfalls of Junior Athlete Training: A Case Study in Overload and Misguided Intensity

Jim GalanesOctober 6, 2025

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,...

Feature News Training

A Review: Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool—“Peak”

Jim GalanesSeptember 29, 2025

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...

Feature Juniors Resources Training

Things All High School Ski Racers Should Do in the Fall to Prep for Winter

Matthew VoisinSeptember 26, 2025

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...

Feature News Training

Training Zones

Jim GalanesSeptember 23, 2025

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...

Feature News Training

Rethinking Endurance Training: The Implications of Pontzer’s Constrained Energy Model

Jim GalanesSeptember 12, 2025

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,...

Feature News Training

Does Lactate Threshold Even Exist?

Jim GalanesSeptember 9, 2025

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...

Feature News Training

High Intensity Training

Jim GalanesSeptember 4, 2025

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...

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