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. In March of this year, an alpine coach from a Colorado based ski club—a club that encompasses all U.S. Ski & Snowboard (USSS) disciplines—was reported for abusing a nine-year-old child during a post-season training camp in Taos, New Mexico. The club promptly reported the coach...
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 2021, our family decided to do the 2022 Vasaloppet, marking the 100th anniversary of this iconic event. That meant setting an alarm for 1:30 a.m., firing up the computer, and scrambling to grab a spot as the Vasaloppet website went live. With 15,800 entries...
The International Biathlon Union is deeply saddened to learn that former Olympic and World Champion Laura Dahlmeier has passed away at the age of 31 following a tragic mountaineering accident in Pakistan. Laura was one of the greatest athletes to grace biathlon and her loss is felt deeply by everyone in biathlon, the wider German sport family and beyond. The IBU’s thoughts are with Laura’s family and friends during this very difficult time. Throughout her...
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...
Any given day at Craftsbury Outdoor Center in the summer is a hive of activity. A sculling camp here, a group run there, and throw a rollerski race in too. Everyone though, comes back to the Center’s porch, eventually. On Friday morning, a group of middle school-aged runners, containing more than a few skiers among them, went out for their morning group run. When they came back around, a few lit into the hushed, excited...
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. U.S. Ski & Snowboard (USSS) has mandated that to be eligible to attend USSS events, all member coaches must be Level 100 Certified. According to USSS, the goal of the Level 100 Cross Country Ski Coach Education is to provide new and developing coaches with...
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. This final installment in the “Bad Sports” series chronicles the actions of those athletes who simply got caught. There are plenty of reasons, plenty of rationalizations, plenty of explanations, plenty of excuses that quickly follows any doping test that delivers positive results . . ....
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. These “Bad Sports”installments have allowed us to spend mid-summer days reflecting on ways that the world’s best skiers have been tempted tempted to misbehave in seasons past, and in the season to come. But the world’s best are not the only ones who may resort...
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...
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 three decades of coaching—monitoring dozens of athletes and using tools like Firstbeat analytics to track training load and recovery—I’ve developed my training theory that I call “continual improvement.” Some exercise physiologists, sport scientists, and coaches question whether this is even possible. Others...
The nefarious use of performance enhancing drugs is not limited to shadowy old communist nations that once hid behind the Iron Curtain. There are also those many cases involving relatively believable (though equally questionable) explanations of the circumstances—food contaminations, mistaken prescriptions, innocent mistakes, misunderstood limitations and/or applications. As FasterSkier cited in an earlier article, Martin Johnsrud Sundby claimed to have had no knowledge of the illegality of the mechanism (a nebulizer) with which he administered...
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. There are many famous innovators and trend-setters in the sport of cross-country skiing: I’m not one of those, though I was around at a time when cross-country skiing was changing fast, and when many voices participated in discussions of what the sport would become. A...
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. Norway’s great champion, Martin Johnsrud Sundby, would lose his overall World Cup title and his Tour de Ski championship in 2015 over doping infractions related to the use of asthma medication nebulizers. Sundby had been the dominant figure in distance racing for a number of...
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’ve been using Heart Rate Variability (HRV) to guide endurance training for nearly 20 years. As with every innovation, we do research and test it extensively before we introduce the use with athletes. I was introduced to HRV by Tiina Hoffman the former skier and...
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. A Winter Olympics on the horizon in 2026 reminds inherently-skeptical ski-journalists of Sochi in 2014. At those Olympics, a whole host of Russian athletes were disqualified due to their involvement in a government-sponsored doping scheme. Remember that one? The secret hole in the wall of...
Over the past couple of decades coaching endurance athletes, I’ve noticed a consistent relationship between three key performance metrics. Whether this relationship is push-pull or more synergistic is still up for debate—but one thing is clear: when these three improve, so does overall performance. These metrics are: Power or velocity at aerobic threshold (AT) Average power during a 6-minute max effort Peak power during a 10-second sprint When we pair this external data with internal...
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. The Olympics are designed to be a simple thing: “The important thing in life is not the triumph, but the fight,” said Baron de Coubertin (founder of the modern Olympic Games)” The essential thing is not to have won, but to have fought well.” Those...
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. “A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.” So said the inimitable and irascible vaudeville and film comic, W. C. Fields. We can assume his statement was made in jest . . . sort of. What we do know is that plenty of...