The Norwegian Junior National Team consists of twelve boys and girls, including three returning team members. In other words, Coach Jon Arne Schetne has an almost brand new team to take care of. This year’s team has about the same number of training camps as earlier, about 35 days for the year. In addition to a glacier ski camp at Sognefjell in June, and two camps after snow arrived in November, it is mostly dryland training that is the main ingredient on the program.
The big goal for the team is the Junior World Championship in Rovaniemi, Finland, which will be held in the end of March. The late date for the Championship makes the season preparation a little different than earlier years.
– Since the Championship is so late, we need to train well throughout the whole season, and we are not letting up the training volume until after Christmas, almost a month later than normal, says head coach Jon Arne Schjetne.
The junior team’s training is according to Schetne traditional Cross-Country training, he has however set a bigger focus on quality training to improve explosiveness, speed and strength than in earlier years. During the team’s first camp at the Olympic Training Center in Oslo, the regular max VO2-test was amended with test for explosiveness, speed and strength.
– We did many of these tests last year also, but I was not happy with the results. We are therefore creating more focus on these elements, which I think are becoming more and more important. Alike the rest of Cross-Country Norway, the Junior Team is also focusing extra on skating.
– We will be more conscious about the distribution of intensity session in classical and skate techniques. We want to prioritize more hard sessions skating on rollerskis, since mus of the other specific intensity training is done in classical techniques, such as ski-walking and moose-huffs (ski-striding).
The team’s plan for this year’s training camps is:
20-23. May: Testing and dryand training at the Olympic Training Center in Oslo
20-25. June: Glacier skiing at Sognefjellet
26. June: Rollerski race, Kragerœ
8-13. August: Open junior dryland training in Trysil
14-15. August: Dryland training Trysil
4-9. September: Dryland training, Savalen
4-5. October: Testing at the Olympic Training Center inOslo
6-10. October: Dryland training in Halden
6-11. November: On-snow training in Gombu
26 November — 1 December: On-snow training in GÃ¥lÃ¥/First competition
