Pre Season Conditioning

[GrimSurfer]

this past summer I moved to Montana and live at about 6,000ft and train at 7,000-10,000ft. its not a perfect setup since "live low, train high" is not the preferred protocol. most altitude adaptation occurs when living above 2500meters. that said, I am always amazed now how easy running is at sea level...so some adaptation has happened...even if its less about red blood cell density and more about breathing muscle fitness .

I train all year for some kind of racing or other. when its not winter, I train for trail running races( sky running mainly). in winter I race Skimo. But this winter I decided to also train and race nordic skiing. it had been 34 years since my high school nordic racing days....hadn't set foot on nordic skis since then. I'll tell you what: my fitness for marching up mountains on skimo gear is very good, my fitness for skating and classic skiing is not good. its a massive economy problem right now with nordic skiing. the amount of oxygen I require to move with any sort of velocity sends my HR up very quickly. I cannot skate in Z1, only in Z2/AeT. my technique is a B+ due to muscle memory from learning correctly when young, but the coordination of major muscle groups to skate is very taxing for me right now, but is improving weekly.

as a side benefit, my tele skiing fitness is very good right now. I spent xmas day chasing my 20yo son all around Big Sky resort. he was on alpine skis...I ski slower because I am not willing to take any risks, but I did not require any "fitness breaks" to catch my breath....

My skating is trash. Ha ha.

It’s likely more of an economy issue as you say. Likely not fitness, as trail running is massively taxing.

I go back a few notches each pre-season. It comes back quickly, provided I spend the hours rebuilding effective muscle memory (my muscles are apparently quite good at remembering all of my bad habits. Not so good at remembering good ones. Like a teenaged brain. Certainly not teenaged muscles though.).

I find that staying on the same set of skis and doing circuits works best in the early part of the season. If I went from skate to classic to BC to Tele over a 2-3 week period, I’d be rubbish in all four. Getting dialled in on BC first allows me to go back and forth a bit…

Except for skating. I’m trash at that and no longer bother.

[bauerb]

I also started using the SkiErg in my local gym. first day I tried it I was wasted after 3 mins, and barely completed 5 mins. now when I find myself in the gym I crank out 30 mins....took less than a month to improve that fast on the Erg...using it once/week( when its -50F outside) and of course skiing multiple days per week. I train in many ways, but the rapid improvement on the Erg is something I've not seen before.

btw, skating is some space alien type of movement where success is or failure is binary: effortless efficiency or thrashing your poor technique against the snow and trying to brute force velocity using general fitness . there is very little middle ground

[GrimSurfer]

I also started using the SkiErg in my local gym. first day I tried it I was wasted after 3 mins, and barely completed 5 mins. now when I find myself in the gym I crank out 30 mins....took less than a month to improve that fast on the Erg...using it once/week( when its -50F outside) and of course skiing multiple days per week. I train in many ways, but the rapid improvement on the Erg is something I've not seen before.

btw, skating is some space alien type of movement where success is or failure is binary: effortless efficiency or thrashing your poor technique against the snow and trying to brute force velocity using general fitness . there is very little middle ground

Never tried SkiErg, Have a gym quality elliptical at home… though tbh my treadmill gets way more use because I started out as a runner… so gravitate to what I know best. Typical training bias/weakness. Something to work on.

I find skate skiing quite curious though. Lots of fashion and form. Like spending one’s whole life doing katas in a starched gi… but only in a dojo that looks like something out of a James Clavell novel. Snowflakes? Can’t skate on that. Terrain? Nope, that’s out too. -20C? Latte time.

Not talking about the more serious skate skiers here. I see one or two amazing ones for every 200-300 ones focused more on Lululemon accessories than sweat.

Saw one fellow two years ago absolutely giving it… with one pole (his other arm was in plaster). Impressive athletic ability and would have been very inspiring except for the part where I’m horrible at it. Ha ha.

[bauerb]

"lulomon accessories " lol, dude where do you live? I live in the middle of nowhere Montana, I think there might be a lulomon over in Bozeman...the thing about skiing is that the only thing that will improve skiing economy is skiing. vaguely reminiscent analogues don't help. roller skiing , yes. ski erg, yes. hiking with poles? nope, not really. stairclimber with arms, better. I am the first to admit that I got a shock when I strapped on the XC skis and hit the trails this winter. I was in very good running shape and skimo shape...but XC skiing? dude, I got as serious wakeup call and have been working on XC economy all month( and raced 2 xc races). there is a huuuuuge diff between skinning straight up a hill and XC classic or skate skiing.

[GrimSurfer]

Ha ha.

I’d recommend a roadblock outside Bozeman to screen travellers for skis, spandex, and spanx, like Medfly checks along the Pacific Coast Highway.

We didn’t do that between Toronto and here in Ottawa, so our only hope is a hard winter and an unshakable belief that all season tires are great in a blizzard.

There’s definitely a need to get onto the sticks to relearn technique and get skiing economy back. Easier doing that with a good base of aerobic fitness and anaerobic conditioning, than swearing off smokes in November and breaking out the waxing iron in December.

[GrimSurfer]

Just did a tally with the assistance of Polar Flow, which analyzes workout data distance, time, speed, heart rate, calorie burn). Over the past week, I’ve skied five times (6.5 hrs). My cardio loading now calls for 22 days of rest. This is a theoretical figure based on Heart Association health targets, which are pretty modest.

Fortunately, the weather will be well above freezing for the next five days. So the snowpack, such as it is atm, will be destroyed. It will take some snow after that to recover. So two weeks without skiing due to Mother Nature.

Saturday will be a treadmill workout. Probably an inclined power walk for 60 minutes. Pretty low load… maybe 8 hrs recovery time (I’ll take 24 hrs). Two weeks of this sort of thing will allow me to rest without losing endurance or conditioning (I’ll throw in 1-2 HIITs a week into the mix to keep the top end conditioned).

Then it’s off to big snow country to ski with my son in law. That will knacker me out through to late January. Feb will be steady state skis… longer duration at lower intensities in much colder weather (-20C to -30C). By the end of Feb, I’ll be at peak performance (such as that is at my age) and primed for some good late season skiing as the weather warms and the snow turns softer and more granular.

[lowangle al]

Your app actually calls for a 22 day recovery period, what will you do for fun?

I don't usually ski at high intensity, but I do go often. I'm often out there for fun when I know I should be taking a day off to recover.

[GrimSurfer]

The app calls for recovery periods of 2-8 days. It does this by looking at the number of minutes of exercise in zones 2 to 5. (In reality, it’s more complex than this because a Polar H10 measures and records heart rate in 2 sec increments).

The collected data is compared against American Heart Association recommendations. For example, the AHA recommends 70-75 minutes of exercise at or above 80% age heart rate per week… or 140 minutes of exercise at 60-80% of maximum age heart rate.

In very simple terms, a very vigorous 1 hr ski would provide enough conditioning training for the heart for a ~six day period.

But it’s not quite that simple…

Various studies have drawn conclusions about recovery time for muscles (regrowing micro tears in muscle fibre from vigorous exercise), perfusion of O2, restoration of glycogen stores in blood and muscle, and a variety of other things. Real world observation supports the general theory that recovery time is actually needed in order for exercise to actually have a beneficial effect. Conversely, repeated exertion (particularly at high levels) can lead to a variety of injuries.

The exact calculations used by Polar aren’t published, but they’ve been in the biometrics game a long time and use measurements of heart rate variability to determine the point at which cardiac muscle is no longer stressed.

Adding up recommended rest days after a successive period of exercise is by no means accurate either. It ignores all kinds of things, like the rest interval between each workout, general conditioning etc.

Exercise science indicates that a full week of non-running “rest” is required after a marathon. And as much as three weeks is needed for tissues to fully recover. So, in very general terms, my cardiac conditioning will not suffer if I take some time off vigorous exercise. That this coincides with a melt makes it convenient.

As for fun? Dunno. Maybe post a bit, listen to music, tune up my skis, do low intensity exercise (which isn’t much fun for me)…

[bauerb]

I would never trust a watch to tell me anything about my overall fitness. how many times has my Garmin told me that a big workout was "unproductive"...even worse is Whoop. "your recovery score is -20, better sleep-in today"

I do use HRM for monitoring workouts in real time.

yesterdays Z3 intervals, 6x4min with 3 min rest in between. not exactly flat, but only climbed 750ft over the full session on skate skis. low altitude of 5700ft.

[GrimSurfer]

Devices can provide useful measurements and data. Some of the better ones offer the quality of data that would have been more than acceptable for medical use just a few years ago.

I agree that they don’t provide “answers” but are indicative. As such, they are far better at identifying trends than anything else outside of a fully instrumented VO2 Max treadmill test (the ones that measure actual respiration volume and rate).

To be fair, some rigour is needed. I perform a monthly calibrating run on my treadmill. It’s a commercial quality treadmill, located indoors so the temperature and humidity is consistent.

My calibrating run is one hour long. Five minute warm up at 6.7 kmh, 50 minute run at 9 kmh, 5 min cool down (3 min @ 5 kmh, 2 min at 3.5 kmh). Heart rate is captured every 2 seconds (1800 data points).

While there is a certain amount of variability (depending on previous activity during the week, how I slept, etc), clear trends have emerged over a four year period.

When doing HIIT, the data collected by my monitor indicates that my heart rate smooths out over 140 bpm… all the way up to 160-164 bpm. This is something that a VO2 Max test three years ago revealed.

I can easily zip past my age heart rate of 160. 164 is easy. At 168, I’m feeling it. At 170-172, I start to observe some physiological irregularities. So I no longer get excited about breaking the general “speed limit” of age heart rate. No big deal if I’m having a good run or HIIT and go over 160. But I do ease the throttles back as I reach 164.

The really big take away is just how much structured exercise one needs to do to log meaningful time in Zone 4 & 5. HIIT is great for dynamic loading of muscles etc, but it doesn’t come close to an intense continuous workout.

So these devices can provide very useful, and at times, even critical insights. They never lie (as long as I replace the batteries and even the strap on a regular basis). People often hate them because of this… but they’re just machines. They don’t carry any ill will.