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Sprint Philosophy!
SPRINT PHILOSOPHY!
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\r\nBy Vidar Loefshus
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\r\nVidar is the new sprint coach for the USST. He has been with the team since July
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\r\nSprinting is a relatively new event within cross-country skiing. We had the first World Championships in 2001 in Lahti, Finland. Since then the sprinting has evolved a lot. In 2001 it seems like the skiers dominating sprint also were top 10 in distances races, especially on the men’s side. Today athletes on the podium in sprint have problems placing top 30 in distance races. I think there is a slight difference between women and men. One of the reasons could be that the sprint distance is not too different from some of the shorter races the women do. We do however see skiers doing well in both distance and sprint, for instance the Marit Bjoergen, Rene Sommerfeld, Mathias Fredrikson and Kristina Smigun.
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\r\nWhy are the differences between sprint results and distance results bigger now? For one, more skiers have recognized that their talent is not distance-skiing, rather sprint. These athletes with their coaches have developed methods of training that focus purely on developing great sprint skills and not distance skills. This does not mean that it is right for everyone to specialize, nothing beats being the best in both disciplines. As times goes on and sprinting evolves I think that it will become harder for people to balance being good in both. This is evident in sports like swimming and track. One does not see the same guys on the podium for the 10 000 meter and the 800 meter.
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\r\nWe know that the US Cross-Country Ski Team has some really talented athletes in sprinting. Just look at Andrew Newell, he is one of the fastest guys in the world on 100 hundred meters. Skills like that are extremely important if you want to be the next Olympic Champion. However you need to combine these skills with endurance, to make sure you can qualify and do all the heats till you reach the finale. Speed is crucial to qualify and endurance is crucial to survive the heats.
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\r\nOur record in World Cup sprint shows that we had some trouble qualifying for the heats, despite having some of the fastest guys in the world on cross-country skis. That is why our focus this year is to make sure we qualify for the heats in the WC. We like to think that as soon as we are in the heats, anything can happen.
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Time in the weight room is imperative for any succesful training program.
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\r\nThe skills needed to qualify are: capacity and lactate tolerance. To improve in these two areas we will be focusing on level 4 intervals, to improve the athlete’s capacity, and level 5 workouts, to make the body ready for working with lactic acids. In addition to these workouts we also keep focus on strength, speed workouts and a share of endurance sessions. A good balance of all of these workouts will ensure that our skiers make it through a day with qualification and heats on the way to the finale.
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\r\nConfused? Does this seem like a mess of everything? In order for us to make sense of it all we have created a sprint system that is somewhat different than that of a traditional distance skier. The most significant distinction is in number of hours trained. A sprinter does not have the same need to spend hour after hour distance training. We limit the distance sessions for our sprinters to less than 1 hour 45 minutes. We have experienced that long distance sessions can tire the athletes and then they have trouble doing the level 4, level 5 or speed training fast enough to improve their sprinting. In periods with lots of high intensity the distance sessions are used as a recovery tool and a way to get ready for the challenging intensity sessions. In order to go extremely fast the muscles must be clean for lactic acid and rested.
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\r\nOur philosophy is simple. If you want to be good at something, you have to train it. Hence, to be a good sprinter one must also learn to go fast in training.
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\r\nJunior skiers and young senior skiers should do a great variety of training in order to build a solid foundation for being either a good sprinter or a good distance skier. It is crucial to have a great foundation and years of variety in the training before one choose a discipline. It is important to not that distance skiers should also do some sprint training to get ready to race fast. Cross-country skiing is changing which dictates a different type of skill set to become good. The new race formats with mass starts and pursuit will require the skier to be able to fight shoulder to shoulder and react to what is going on in the pack of racers. A skier today do different races than those skiers did 10 years ago, hence it is crucial that the training is tailored to the new needs of a skier. We will see a lot more sprints in the end of races and lots of tactical tempo changes in the middle of the race. It might be time for distance racers to strike a good balance between distance training and training directed at increasing lactate tolerance and speed
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Written By: VLoefshusDate Posted: 10/8/2004Number of Views: 290
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