research – FasterSkier

Call for Questions

FasterSkierAugust 5, 2019

Here’s a call for questions and comments about a May 2019 article titled “Energy system contribution during competitive cross-country skiing” published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology. Longtime cross-country coach and athlete mentor Adam St. Pierre will be writing a story about these academic findings. FasterSkier will publish Adam’s story at the end of the month. We’d love your questions and feedback about “Energy system contribution during competitive cross-country skiing” to help Adam shape his...

Doping Research

Limiting Factors – A Genesis of Blood Doping (Part Five)

FasterSkierApril 10, 2019

This is part four of a multi-part series titled “Limiting Factors – A Genesis of Blood Doping”. It comes to FasterSkier from Sammy Izdatyev. You can read part one here, part two here, part three here, and part four here. Sammy Izdatyev is the pen name of a Finnish sports enthusiast and unaffiliated amateur historian, who has been interested in endurance sports since the turn of the millennium. He hopes that his pro bono – research can...

General News Research

What Studying Twins Can Tell Us About Fostering Motivation for Exercise

Chelsea LittleDecember 6, 2017

One of the biggest public health challenges worldwide is physical inactivity. As the World Health Organization a study of American Birkebeiner participants which found that participating in group-based exercise provided an important extra bit of motivation even for people who were quite self-motivated to exercise or train. Another piece of the picture was examined in Finland. There, researchers had the opportunity to use a study of twins to disentangle the genetic and environmental contributions to...

Biathlon General Interviews News Racing Research

How Do You Make a Top-10 Biathlete a Medalist? Find 12 Seconds, Somewhere

Chelsea LittleSeptember 28, 2017

Biathlon is a notoriously variable sport: besides skiing, there’s the shooting aspect which can ruin a race in a matter of seconds. Sometimes an athlete like Lowell Bailey wins a World Championship for the first time after 15 seasons competing; sometimes the most reliable guy in the sport, Martin Fourcade, finishes 46th. It’s a wild world. Norwegian PhD student Øyvind Skattebo set out to quantify just how variable the sport is, and what amount of improvement...

General News Nordic Combined Racing Research Resources Testing Training

What Predicts Nordic Combined Success? Study Finds Out

Chelsea LittleJuly 31, 2017

What are the physiological capacities of nordic-combined athletes and can laboratory tests predict performance capabilities on the World Cup? Those are the questions that a team of Norwegian researchers set out to answer by testing 12 competitors from eight different countries before a 2015 World Cup competition in Trondheim, Norway. The study, led by Vegard Rasdal of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the Norwegian Olympic Sports Center, was recently published in the...

Book Review General Health Lifestyle News Research Resources Training

We’re Not Invincible: More Heart Arrhythmias in Endurance Athletes (Book Review)

Chelsea LittleJuly 27, 2017

When I heard that there was a new book coming out about heart arrhythmias in endurance athletes, I was interested. Several years ago, I read some of the research papers that the book’s authors refer to. One was a cohort study on participants in the Vasaloppet, the 90-kilometer ski marathon in Sweden. Those researchers found that skiers who competed in more Vasaloppets had more heart arrhythmias – as did those who finished the race the...

General News Research

What Does the Climate Future Hold? Research Predicts Much Shorter Ski Seasons

Chelsea LittleJuly 24, 2017

“I think if you’re a nordic skier in New England, you should definitely be alarmed.” “That’s one of the main take-homes: skiing is not going to disappear completely, but it will generally be higher [in elevation].” So says Cameron Wobus, a Bowdoin ski team alumnus and a researcher at Abt Associates, a global research firm. Wobus and colleagues based in Boulder, Colo., and Washington, D.C., recently published a study in Global Environmental Change assessing the...

Biathlon General Juniors News Racing

Troubling Data: 1 in 5 Norwegian Junior Women Show Disordered Eating

Chelsea LittleSeptember 23, 2016

New research shows that nearly 20 percent of female junior skiers and biathletes in Norway display disordered eating, with the percentage even higher at elite sports high schools.

General News

If a Skier Falls in the Forest, Does the Sound Scare the Birds?

Chelsea LittleJuly 14, 2016

While we think of cross-country skiing as a low-impact sport which enjoys rather than exploits natural areas, research shows that even our small ski trails can impact wildlife through forest fragmentation and stress responses to disturbance by skiers.

General News Racing World Cup

Johaug, Weng and Teammates’ Physiology, Training Described in New Paper

Chelsea LittleMay 23, 2016

Want to know everything about the training and physiology of the top Norwegian women? A new paper tells all, using training diaries and test data from Marit Bjørgen, Therese Johaug, Heidi Weng, Ingvild Flugstad Østberg, Ragnhild Haga, and Maiken Caspersen Falla.

General News

New Study Shows Chugging Water Before Doping Test Alters Biological Passport Markers

Chelsea LittleFebruary 29, 2016

A "void-drink-wait" strategy, used by some dopers to avoid detection in analytical tests, also has impacts on Athlete Biological Passport blood markers, a Danish research team has found. There remains no accurate method to detect blood plasma volume manipulation.

General Health News Resources Training

Välbe’s Asthma Comments Off The Mark, Medical and Scientific Community Says

Chelsea LittleJanuary 29, 2016

A few things are clear: athletes, in particular winter endurance and pool athletes, have a high incidence of airway hyper-responsiveness, much of which may be undiagnosed. This can be treated with inhalers, which are not banned by WADA and have been repeatedly shown not to be performance-enhancing. And - those athletes can win.

General News Racing Tour de Ski

Men Can Expect a Dip in Results Post-Tour de Ski, But Women Recover Faster

Chelsea LittleDecember 28, 2015

How much does competing in the Tour de Ski hurt a skier later in the season? For women, barely at all, a new study finds - but for men, there's an increase in illnesses after the Tour, a drop in results, and less of a chance to medal at championships, compared to years where the same athlete doesn't compete in the grueling race series.

General News

Herbal Supplements Commonly Used by Athletes Lead to Emergency Room Trips

Chelsea LittleOctober 22, 2015

Herbal supplements and micronutrient vitamins are largely unregulated and may in fact contain substances prohibited by WADA. But a new study also shows that they cause thousands of emergency room visits per year in the U.S.

General Juniors News Racing

Young Perfectionists are at Risk of Burnout, but Good Parenting Helps

Chelsea LittleOctober 5, 2015

Henrik Gustafsson, a psychology consultant to the Swedish Olympic Committee and its cross-country skiers, published new research showing that junior athletes who were perfectionists were at greater risk of burnout. The worst risk came when parents emphasized winning over having fun, feeding into these perfectionist tendencies.

General News Racing

For Better-Feeling Marathons, Try Taking More Feeds

Chelsea LittleSeptember 2, 2015

A recent study found that taking more frequent feeds - six over the course of a 30 k rollerski time trial - helped maintain higher and more consistent blood sugar levels and minimized gastrointestinal discomfort, even if it didn't necessarily improve performance times. "Get to know what works best for you," recommended researcher Ben Stocks.

General Interviews News

The Mind Makes a Winner: An Interview with Emotional Intelligence Researcher Sylvain Laborde

Chelsea LittleAugust 27, 2015

Dr. Sylvain Laborde of the German Sports University is researching how to develop emotional intelligence training specifically for athletes. "They understood after the first session that they could really get something out of this," Laborde said of working with an initially reluctant rugby team.

General News

All About Emotional Intelligence and How It Boosts Sports Performance

Chelsea LittleJuly 6, 2015

Emotional intelligence - how one perceives, understands, and manages emotions - can give athletes better coping strategies, more motivation, and the potential to be a team leader. Even on the recreational side of things, emotional intelligence is associated with the difference between inactivity and a healthy engagement with exercise. The good news is, you can train it.

General News Racing World Cup

Is Cross-Country Skiing Predictable?

Chelsea LittleJune 25, 2015

A study published in December says yes - in fact, the authors write that the correlations of results from one World Cup to the next is more predictable than in any other sport they looked at.

General News

Fast Start Wins the Race? Increasing Effort, Not Pace, is Key

Chelsea LittleMay 28, 2015

New research shows that in long ski races, an athlete's speed slows slightly lap by lap, but heart rate and other physiological indicators increase as the effort takes its toll. This typical pacing strategy appears superior to starting slow and drastically increasing speed later in the race. We tested a case study using data from 2015 World Championships.

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