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Reprints From The Professional Skier

Spring 1994 - "Cross-Country Conditioning: A Matter of Principles" by John Morton

This article is reprinted from The Professional Skier. All copyrights apply. Please see our copyright and disclaimer notice page.

If you were to do an oxygen uptake reading on the average international nordic racer, the test would likely indicate an impressive level of aerobic fitness. Though success in cross-country racing requires excellence in the areas of technique, waxing, nutrition, and psychology, fitness tends to receive the most attention from athletes and coaches alike. As a result, more has been written about conditioning for cross-country skiing than any other aspect of the sport, much of it confusing and contradictory. This article will help you make sense of the nordic fitness formula. It's really just a matter of getting acquainted with a few principles of conditioning.

Stress And Rest

At its most basic level, physical conditioning (or training) is simply stress and rest. Long ago, it was discovered that if a muscle was stressed (given more work to do than it could comfortably accomplish), then rested; the muscle would grow stronger. Debate surrounds how much and what type of stress, and how much rest, but no one doubts that improvement results from judicious applications of both stress and rest.

The key to success is a delicate balance of stress and rest-so delicate, in fact, that it has to be carefully monitored. Training is best monitored through a program consisting of a plan, a record of activity, and evaluations of training and competition results. Many people try to stay active by exercising every day, but it's not really training unless you have a plan with specific goals and you record what you accomplish.

Train Hard, Train Smart

Nordic skiers have earned a reputation for dedicating a lot of time to physical training. Back in the 1970s, Swedish world champion Thomas Magnusson was legendary for training more than 1,000 hours a year. He trained more than half the weekly hours that most Americans work.

Everyone jumped on the "more is better" bandwagon, until a breakthrough was celebrated in the remote South Tyrolean village of Anteselva, Italy, at the 1975 World Biathlon Championships. For the first time in World Championship or Olympic competition, the Finnish team had taken both individual and relay gold medals. This was no small accomplishment since the Soviet Union had won the relay seven of the previous nine times. The Finns were ecstatic with their double victory since it validated their approach to training - a scientific blend of stress and rest. For the first time, doctors and sports medicine people were not just observing and analyzing the athletes' training - they were actually telling the coaches and athletes how to train!

It became clear that the victory would no longer go to the athlete who trained hardest, but to the one who trained smartest.

Physical conditioning can be divided into three major categories: endurance (also called distance), strength, and speed. Although there are limitless variations and combinations of these three categories, it is important to know, in advance, whether the goal of a given workout is to improve endurance, strength, or speed.

Endurance Training

The backbone of any conditioning plan for cross-country skiing should be endurance training - long, slow distance work. Elite athletes are aware of two components in every workout: duration and intensity. The duration of distance workouts will vary, but should probably be at least an hour. (Hikes or bike rides could be several hours). A good guideline for intensity is the ability to carry on a conversation with a training partner. If you can't talk during a distance workout, you're going too hard. Endurance work should comprise at least 60 percent of a cross-country skier's annual training volume because it provides the base for everything else.

Strength Training

Another component of a successful conditioning program is strength training. The old expression, "Whatever your sport, you'll do it better if you are stronger," appears to be true. Depending upon the demands of the sport, most athletes tailor their strength program toward power or endurance, but not both. Football players, hockey players, gymnasts, and boxers all want explosive power and increased muscle bulk. This is achieved by lifting heavy weights, with relatively few repetitions. A football lineman might bench press a 250-pound barbell to increase the size and strength of his chest, shoulders, and arms, but he might lift that weight only three times before exhausting his muscles.

Endurance strength training favors lighter weights, but more repetitions. A runner who wants to add more power to his or her stride might do leg presses on a weight machine, but rather than doing the repetitions of the football player, the runner would complete 20 or 25 repetitions with lighter weights. Like other forms of conditioning, strength training is effective only if the body is allowed to recover for a day or so following the workout. Most strength programs prescribe workouts three times per week.

A second discussion concerning strength training centers on the issue of general versus specific strength. Generalists maintain that an athlete who is stronger overall will perform better in any sport while the proponents of specific strength training believe that only increased power specific to the movements of the particular sport is of any significant value.

Both opinions have merit. In my years as men's ski coach at Dartmouth, I observed scores of incoming freshmen (some of them accomplished skiers) who were physically weak. They were several generations removed from stacking hay bales all summer and splitting cordwood all winter. A straightforward, general strength program was just what they needed.

By the time many of these athletes were seniors they were significantly stronger. At that point, additional hours in the weight room would have done them little good in terms of improved skiing results, but ski-specific strength training continued to produce benefits. By specific strength work I mean rollerboard workouts, pulling on rubber bands or an exergenie, and even ski striding with poles up a steep hill with a backpack full of sand.

Speed Training

A crucial element of training is speed. Although cross-country skiing requires strength and endurance, the victory still goes to the fastest competitor. To put it another way, we are in the business of building race horses, not work horses!

One of the reasons for those long hours of endurance training is to provide an aerobic base for speed work. Speed training is of shorter duration but higher intensity than distance training. When training for speed, workouts may encompass intervals, pace training, speed play (or "fartlek"), and races (or time trials).

Intervals are probably the most widely used form of speed training. The idea behind intervals is simply to go as fast or faster than you could in a race, but to do so only for relatively short distances (or intervals). Each workout is a series of physically stressful segments of hard work, followed by a rest. The most common mistake with interval training is shortchanging yourself on the rest segment. If the aim is to go faster than is comfortable during the work segments, it is essential that the rest between intervals is long enough to provide adequate recovery. With a well-trained endurance athlete, the break between intervals is usually adequate when his or her pulse drops back to 120 beats per minute.

How do you know when you've done enough intervals? There is no fixed number that represents the correct volume of interval work. It varies with the athlete, the conditions, the difficulty of the interval, time of year, etc. One good guideline, however, is that when consistent interval times begin to "drop off," it's time to quit.

Pace training is a variation of interval training. The gist is this: If you know how fast you need to ski a certain distance to achieve your goals but are unable to ski that fast for a full race, then reduce the distance to where you can perform at the desired rate. The procedure is much like conventional intervals: work alternating with rest. The major difference is that, with pacing, you have a specific target for each work interval. It is not a successful pacing workout if your first kilometer is skied at 2:53 and your eighth kilometer is 3:15. If the target is 3 minutes per kilometer, then you strive to hit 3 minutes each time. When your time drops off noticeably, you've had enough.

"Fartlek" is a Swedish word that translates as "speed play." Unlike running a marathon or 10 kilometer race on foot (where the level of exertion is relatively constant, uphill and down, start to finish), skiing can be considered a series of sprints and recoveries. And because ski trails through the woods often have dramatic climbs and descents, this sense of sprint and recovery is even more pronounced.

The Swedes (who have a tradition of success in cross-country skiing), theorized that rather than train at a steady state all summer, a skier should be able to "turn on the jets" frequently, thus learning to be comfortable with varying paces. The resulting off-season workout might go like this: 10 minutes of stretching and a 45-minute run on trails where one would cruise easily on the flats and downhills, but blast hard on the uphills.

Finally, when doing speed work, don't forget racing. Racing both in season and off season can be very beneficial to your training program. Racing provides benchmarks to let you know how your training plan is working and whether any areas need additional attention. There is nothing quite like putting a number on, moving up to the line, waiting for the starting command, and competing against the clock or other competitors. In some ways, racing is the most specific form of training there is, since nothing else elicits the same rush of adrenaline, concentration, and intensity.

You are now familiar with the three building blocks of a Nordic skiing training schedule - endurance, strength, and speed. But before we begin filling in the blanks on the training schedule, some training principles deserve attention. In fact, things get tricky here as several of these concepts appear contradictory.

Consistently

If you want to get good at something, do it consistently. In terms of physical conditioning, this means it is better to do something every day (even in small doses), than to rest all week and beat yourself to a pulp on the weekend. But to avoid overtraining and ensure the rest necessary for proper recovery, elite athletes will arrange their training plans so that successive workouts complement, rather than conflict, with each other.

If you are committed to a daily workout schedule, try to ensure that a hard day is followed by an easy day. In almost any workout, you are dealing with duration and intensity, so it is possible to modify activities to fit a hard day/easy day schedule.

When training becomes as much a part of your daily routine as eating, then you have established consistency in your program and you will see positive results.

Volume

Very closely tied to the worth of consistency is the need for volume. Simply stated, those who succeed at cross-country skiing train a lot. This does not contradict what was mentioned earlier about training smarter, it is just the acknowledgment that among the world's foremost athletes, cross-country skiers (and biathletes), probably amass more hours actually training than almost anyone else. There is a very strong correlation between putting in years of training and subsequently winning international performances. If you want to succeed in Nordic skiing, you must be prepared to put in the volume time and effort. There are no shortcuts.

Capability

The concept of training volume leads to the related topic of capability. If this training is to be productive, it must be progressive and systematic. Just because we know that the world's best skiers train more than 1,000 hours per year does not mean that everyone in America with aspirations for the Olympic Team should train 1,000 hours next year. Massive volumes of training must be developed gradually, over several years.

Most experts will agree that a training volume increase of 15 percent per year is a reasonable limit for promising young racers. With younger skiers it's important not to encourage dramatic increases in volume, especially if they are still growing or are up to their ears in academic obligations. Any training schedule must be within the capability of the athlete.

Variety And Specificity

The next two principles of training appear, at least on the surface, to be at odds with each other. Specificity suggests that the best way to become a great ski racer is to do a lot of ski racing. All other forms of training are substitutes that, to varying degrees, fall short.

Unlike world-class swimmers who can be in the pool 365 days a year, even the world's best skiers are forced, by lack of snow, to spend considerable parts of the year in alternate forms of training. For this reason, roller skiing has become an increasingly important aspect of training. In terms of specificity it is the closest thing to actually skiing that you can do, without the benefit of snow.

But to balance the principle of specificity, consider variety. This strategy suggests that mentally, as well as physically, there is great value to a varied training schedule. Nordic racers are certainly a training-crazy bunch, but summer triathletes, who compete in swimming, cycling, and running, are even more training-intensive. These competitors can put in unbelievable volumes of training because their sport demands variety. It seems more likely that an athlete could enjoy 1,500 hours a year if that training were divided between running, swimming, and cycling.

Although the inability to ski on snow may be considered a liability in terms of specificity, it forces skiers to include a variety of training methods in their programs. And variety in training ensures the development of broader athletic ability. A training schedule that permits a wide selection of activities will promote spontaneity, generate enthusiasm, and establish a strong base for more specific ski training later in the season.

The challenge, of course, is to successfully balance these seemingly conflicting concepts of variety and specificity. There are no hard and fast rules. It makes sense to emphasize variety for young skiers or those just getting into racing. At the same time, there is an increased need for specificity in training as the competitive season draws near. For example, rollerskiing once or twice a week in July may be adequate, but by November the frequency may need to be stepped up to three or four times a week.

Working On Weaknesses

It's human nature that we prefer to do what we do well. Success breeds success. To be successful in cross-country skiing, however, an athlete really has to balance endurance, strength, and speed. Everyone tends to have a weak link somewhere. Rather than avoiding the weakness, the successful competitor acknowledges the area that needs work, and focuses on improvement in that area.

Uphills

Not long ago, the guidelines for laying out a cross-country racing trail suggested that the loop should be roughly one-third uphill, one-third downhill, and one-third flat. With the advent of skating, the tendency has been to increase the climb component of newly designed courses. A fact of Nordic life is this - races are won on the uphills. And, of course, this has bearing on your training plan.

A competent racer can ski a typical 15-kilometer course in 45 minutes. At first glance, we might assume the skier spent 15 minutes on the flats, 15 minutes on the climbs, and 15 minutes tucking the downhills. But obviously, more time ticks by when the skier is laboring up the hills than when he or she is zooming down the descents. In fact, it is likely that 15 minutes were spent on the flats, five minutes on the downhills, and 25 on the climbs. You could take it a step further and state than more than 50 percent of your training should be oriented toward vertical power and endurance. It may be possible to lose a race on the downhills (by failing or riding slow skis), but to win, an athlete must be strong and confident on the uphills.

Arms And Legs Together

Workouts where arms and legs are stressed simultaneously seem to have a significantly greater aerobic benefit than workouts where either arms or legs are stressed alone. This is not to say that you should eliminate any workout that isolates either arms or legs. However, when designing a plan, put a star next to those workouts where both arms and legs are stressed together, such as rollerskiing, hill striding with poles, rowing (in a shell with a moveable seat), or hard physical labor. You get more out of these workouts.

Technique

Besides enhancing fitness, one goal of dryland training should be improvement of ski technique. Skiing-specific workouts are important because they offer the opportunity not only to become physically stronger, but to improve skiing form at the same time. Whether rollerskiing down a country road or bounding with poles up a grassy pasture, skiers can imagine themselves on snow and quite literally improve skiing technique where there is no snow within a thousand miles.

Visualization

It has been proven beyond a doubt that visualization (or mental imagery), if practiced correctly, enhances performance. Examples of visualization can be observed throughout the sports world: Ingemar Stenmark leaning on his ski poles at the top of a slalom course as he mentally runs through the gates again and again; Greg Louganis poised on the edge of a 10-meter platform picturing his convoluted twists, turns, and flawless entry into the water; or Michael Jordan on the foul line, eyes riveted to the rim, imagining the "swish" of the net before he ever raises the ball for the shot.

If confidence on fast icy downhills is a problem for you, visualization during the summer is a great time to work on it. Every time you rollerski, run, or bike down a hill, visualize yourself on skis being confident and assertive, displaying excellent technique, and gaining time on your opponents.

Warm Up, Stretching, And Warm Down

I am part of a generation that, by and large, considered warm up and stretching superfluous. I can remember many workouts, back in the days of wooden skis, when we blasted off on runs or hikes as if shot from cannons.

Much has been learned since then about warming and stretching the muscles before and after strenuous exercise. Not only do you perform better if properly warmed up, you dramatically reduce the chance of injury due to strained or torn muscles. The ideal formula calls for five to 10 minutes of light exercise (i.e., jogging, hiking, cycling, or skiing), followed by a stretching session. It's always better to stretch after the muscles have been warmed up slightly.

After a challenging workout or competition, it is equally important to warm down for a few minutes. Strenuous effort, especially in endurance events lasting an hour or more, or anaerobic effort (such as sprinting to the finish line), generates lactic acid that accumulates in the muscles. Light, aerobic exercise (i.e., easily jogging or skiing a warm down loop in dry clothes) stimulates the circulatory system to begin purging the muscles of lactate. Even after an exhausting competition, a gentle warm down will significantly speed recovery. Watch any major endurance event and you will see the top athletes finish, put on their warmups, and walk, jog, or ski for 10 to 20 minutes before they call it a day.

Rest

As mentioned earlier, physical conditioning in its most basic form is stress followed by rest and regeneration. Without the rest, you don't achieve any long-term improvement. It is interesting to note that we Nordic skiers have become experts at the "stress" part of the equation but have largely ignored the "rest" aspect. If we could improve the quality of our rest, recovery might be quicker, thereby allowing an increased level of training volume and intensity.

I once regarded massage as being useless and self-indulgent but have since learned that massage helps flush the lactic acid from the muscles, thus speeding recovery. Likewise, I now also value the rejuvenative effects of whirlpool baths and saunas. Don't underestimate the training benefit of rest.

Keep It Fun

I've saved the most important training consideration for last - keep it fun! Success in Nordic racing is a long-term investment, requiring years rather than weeks or months. The only way to ensure such longevity is to make certain your training is fun.

If your training becomes a vital and enjoyable part of your daily routine and instills in you a sense of accomplishment and feeling of self worth, you can probably look forward to a long and distinguished Nordic career. An added benefit is that it will keep you physically fit and put you in touch with motivated, energetic people who share your enthusiasm for the sport.

John Morton competed on the U.S. Biathlon Team from 1968 to 1976 and was head coach of men's skiing at Dartmouth College from 1978 to 1989. The Lillehammer Games are his sixth Winter Olympics as an athlete, coach, or team leader. This article is excerpted from his book, Don't Look Back, published by Stackpole.