Head coach of Rouge et Or nordic team at Laval University, Luc Germain shares part of his athletes' training plan during the holidays. "On January 1st, some of my athletes will be tired after a good celebration of the New Year, so I suggest them to come back to the basics ... and do only the first part of this super session, but if they can handle more, then the whole workout will leave them tired and happy!" he writes.
Merry Christmas! On the rare chance that you can sneak out for a workout during the busy holiday season, try the following 45-60 minute workout from Sam Tarling of the Maine Winter Sports Center.
During the holidays, opportunities for races can be few and far between, and it’s often easy to get into the lull of long distance skis with old friends. While these can be fun and beneficial, it's important to get some high intensity and completive training in before the season starts to intensify in January. BSF has the right idea with a hill-climb time trial on Dec. 28.
This Wednesday Workout comes to you from Canadian World Cup Team member, Perianne Jones, who's been training at home (and at altitude) in Canmore, Alberta, while preparing for her first international races of the season in Asiago, Italy, Dec. 21-22.
There are many things that “get better with age,” such as Ford Mustangs, select cheeses and cowboy boots. While society doesn’t usually place workouts in this category, Chris Osgood and his son Brayton may be changing that. The father-son duo celebrate Chris’ birthday every year by rollerskiing his age in kilometers. They most recently did 60.
Muffy Ritz, founder and head coach of the VAMPS women's masters group in Sun Valley, Idaho, leads us through the Vamps Hill Workout, which she adopted from UNH's Beach Hill climb and incorporates stations of moosehoofing, hill walking and bounding.
With the opening of Frozen Thunder in Canmore, Alberta, Perianne Jones of the Canadian World Cup Team shares an "easy-does-it" workout for getting back into on-snow training.
For this edition of our weekly workout, former U.S. Ski Team member Nancy Fiddler encourages you to put some pounds on -- via a weight vest. She still uses her 25-year-old one for a total-body workout and gives some ideas for strength sessions on and off skis.
Since nordic skiing is a lactate-tolerable sport, it's important to know how to get that stuff out of your system and deal with it on race day. That's why AWCA assistant coach Stefan Kuhn loves this lactate clearance workout: "It's super simple to do, but it really makes you have to dig deep," he says.
Pull-ups are one of those strength tests as old as time that most of us want to accomplish at some point in our lives. If you're already there, great, but there's probably room to improve or bust out more repetitions. Never done one before? Now's your chance.
Repeating certain workouts over the course of a training season allow athletes to gauge progress. These aren't necessarily "tests" per se, but more an opportunity to evaluate improvement and feel. Swiss National Team Head Coach Guri Hetland takes us through one such session.
It happens all too often. Inexperienced skier takes off from the start of a distance race as though it is a sprint qualifier, only to struggle through several more kilometers. Will Sweetser, competitive programs director at the Maine Winter Sports Center, has a workout that encourages athletes to take an honest look at their individual ability and find a sustainable pace for every distance.
Speed workouts make fast skiers in more ways that one might think, SMST2 Head Coach Gus Kaeding says. He lets us in on a couple of his go-to variations on a staple workout.
Caitlin Gregg shares a group workout that pushes her to the max on any given day. Formerly of Central Cross Country (CXC), Gregg is currently training in Minneapolis with her husband Brian and racing for the Methow Olympic Development squad in Washington.
Kieran Jones, head coach of the Nakkertok Ski Club in Ottawa, gives some advice for developing a strong baseline and widening the range between easy and max efforts. "Skiers like pain. Skiers like feeling exhausted," Jones says. "But sometimes, to get to the hurt, you need to lay out a strong baseline."
Before leaving for Germany for a three-week camp in Ruhpolding and Oberhof, US Biathlon's Hannah Dreissigacker talks about how she's made strides in her sport -- specifically in shooting -- and why combo workouts are some of the best ones biathletes can do.
Matt Liebsch, like any pro skier, is all about hammering the rollerski training, but this year, he's taken a slightly different approach. "It is important to keep training fun and diverse at times," he writes. That means 2 1/2-mile swims once a week, indoor cycling training and more. Liebsch explains why it works.
In this edition of the Wednesday Workout, we talk about tapering and present some conventional wisdom along with endurance-specific tips. Zach Caldwell explains what some of his professional skiers do to rest up for a big event, and explains why there's no sure-fire method of peaking.
The North American Women's Training Alliance camp began in Alaska this week, and on Tuesday they did a rollerski workout that U.S. Ski Team women's coach Matt Whitcomb called "the best threshold workout I’ve seen out of this group of women since I’ve been working with the team." Presenting this week's workout, with video.
Mikey Sinnott takes stretching seriously, doing so at least 30 minutes six times a week. "For years, I pretended stretching was an overly silly, old man ritual," he says. Now, the Sun Valley skier has a special room for it to help ward off tightness and injuries.