Hey everyone!
As winter looms and the first Super Tours are less than a month away, the team is busy translating a summer’s worth of cross training and fitness building into our ultimate goal of moving fast on skis. We were lucky to get our first skiable snow in Bozeman on October 26th, and had some good sessions on snow up at Crosscut before we left for our Frozen Thunder training block in Canmore, Alberta last week. Amidst the excitement of transitioning to snow skiing (although unfortunately maybe back to rollerskis this week) there’s a lot of important things to keep in mind, as going from rollerskiing to snow skiing is a significant adaptation. I’m going to discuss a few of the things that have been turning over in my mind the last two weeks as we make this transition.
1) Snow skiing is hard! Make sure you’re not pushing it.
This is always a harsh reminder when winter rolls around. After one or two workouts on snow my legs were feeling much more tired than usual and a little bit like bricks. Furthermore, I found that in order to keep my heart rate in an appropriate zone for easy distance training, I repeatedly had to force myself to slow down the pace. Here’s why:
- Typically, rollerskis glide faster than our normal snow skis, especially on new natural snow in early season conditions when trails are less even and we’re on rock skis. Accordingly, the pace for each HR zone must be adapted to be slower.
- Ski tracks also typically cover more hilly, technical terrain than most roads we rollerski on, especially here in Bozeman. Skiing steeper, curvier, more undulating terrain takes work.
- Skiing on snow is more technically demanding than rollerskiing, and our stabilizers and balance muscles, and everything else that got lazy during summer rollersking, are suddenly working overtime as we navigate bumpy, thin, early season skiing.
I noticed many times in Canmore that simply striding up a hill would jack my HR up into L2 as I worked to put my klister down and not slide backward down the steep hills. All of this is important to keep in mind because if we go into an early season on-snow training camp and attempt to crank out some big hours but a lot of that skiing is actually in L2, our bodies and energy levels can take a serious hit. A Norwegian coach once told me that he’s seen more athletes overtrained in November and December than any other time of year – for that exact reason. Don’t be afraid to walk up the steeper, longer hills on easy distance workouts; there’s a lot to be said for working on technique during those first days on snow, but not at the cost of digging yourself into a hole. (On that note, remember that hours aren’t everything!)
2) Revisit technique fundamentals.
While rollerskiing is a big part of what we do as skiers (I generally log more hours rollerskiing in a year than Nordic skiing), it’s important to remember that while it’s great cross training, it is just that, and not a perfect substitute for snow skiing. When we do finally get on snow, it’s a great time to take a few steps back and revisit the technique fundamentals like body position and timing so that we’re re-engraining those good habits for the rest of the season. Snow is a different beast and reveals our technique flaws much more aggressively than rollerskiing. Work 20-30 minutes of no pole and one pole skiing into your easy distance skis or a warmup for intensity. Have a teammate or coach film you skiing a certain stretch of trail a couple times, keeping one or two technique cues in mind.
3) Fitness is only one element of racing fast.
Andy loves to remind us of this. Fitness can only get you so far on skis; the exaggerated example would be an Olympic runner or cyclist hopping into a ski race and stumbling their way to last place, despite their word class endurance capacity. Using the engine you’ve been building all year, ski racing comes down to applying every bit of energy you put out toward moving around the course faster.
As I discussed above, technique is a major element of this: converting your energy most efficiently into speed down the trail, and not losing energy out the back, to the sides, or bobbing up and down. Good technique involves using all your muscle groups to their potential, creating forward momentum in your leg swing and pole return, setting your kick with minimum effort from the legs, and gliding on a flat ski.
Technically advanced skiers are faster skiers, but there’s even more to moving quickly around a track than just being fit and applying power efficiently. Logan went in to depth about the concepts of flow and course speed in his blog post titled Critical Thinking Methodology. Essentially, the best skiers in the world separate themselves from the rest by skiing a course to its absolute potential: taking the best line through each corner and hill, choosing where to apply power and effort, and having a big picture sense of how the course flows. A former teammate and friend of mine eloquently coined this concept “race craft”. Check out Logan’s article for more on that methodology.
Finally, there’s mental training, but that’s a topic that deserves its own blog post!
Snow means racing season is coming soon, which is exciting but can be stressful too. Remember all the hard work you’ve already put in– it’s all in the bank, and not going anywhere! Don’t stress out and overdo your first days and weeks back on snow. With these tips in mind, keep training smart and the good feelings will come!
Cheers,
Willson
