Grass Skiing, Plyos and Strength @ CVU

Yesterday was a perfect morning for training at CVU. Fall sports are going through tryouts, so there was a lot of activity beyond our training. After warmup, the crew did a circuit-style plyometric and strength routine. The athletes jogged between 5 stations that included plyos, abs, push ups, bench dips, narrow-pushups, and walking lunges. Coach Eli Enman and I supervised the plyos and helped with technique and timing.

After nearly 60 minutes of that, we put on our skis (thats right, snow skis!) and did some short relays. Grass skiing is extremely taxing on the body – it is like trying to ski uphill through about 10″ of heavy snow. There is almost zero glide, meaning you can never really relax your muscles and recover. The benefits of grass skiing are that striding uphill is nearly exactly the same as on the snow: the body position, the balance, the kick phase, and the resistance from the grass is like a steep climb on snow. Rollerskis are nice, but they give you 100% guaranteed kick every stride – no matter how steep the climb. And there is much less resistance (friction) on a rollerski than on snow. If you don’t believe me when I say it is like real skiing, look at the pictures (below) of the athletes on the ascent. Body position is dead-on.

I remember seeing Kris Freeman (US Ski Team) and Pat O’Brien (Craftsbury GRP) doing some short sprints on grass skis last summer with coach Zack Caldwell. Earlier this summer, there was video of the Craftsbury athletes practicing sprint starts. And just recently, the athletes at Rochester Nordic Racing (coached by Jason Hettenbaugh and my dad, Roger Weston) posted video of their own relays on grass!

CVU has such perfect grass and also many steep hills between the fields. The hills were actually steep enough to glide down! It wasn’t fast, but it was fun and good for balance.

Click the pictures to enlarge!