Learn how to practice skiing correctly, we will also tell you about skiing techniques and why it is worth doing this sport. This article will be useful for novice skiers, as well as athletes who decide to return to classes after a long break. We will try to tell you in as much detail as possible how ski training should be structured and how beginner athletes should proceed.
Given the target audience of the article, we will not talk about complex training methods, backing them up with the results of scientific research. If you have a lot of training experience, then this article is also not for you. Today we will pay attention only to the basic concepts and principles of organizing ski training for beginners.
Basic principles of organizing ski training
The main quality that an athlete must have in cross-country skiing is endurance. To develop this quality, an athlete needs to perform large amounts of work over a long period of time with a heart rate of 120 to 130 beats per minute. Such measured work should last about one and a half or two hours.
In this case, it is important not to feel strong muscle tension and shortness of breath. If a person runs at a low pace for a long time, or, say, takes a bike ride, then various processes are activated in the muscles and heart, which lead to certain changes. Do not forget that the heart is also a muscle. As a result, the body adapts to such long-term work.
The heart muscle is stretched, as it were, which leads to an increase in its internal volume. For professional skiers, cyclists or marathon runners, the heart muscle can be up to three times its original size over the course of their training! Thanks to this, the heart is able to pump more blood in one contraction, which leads to a decrease in the number of beats within a minute.
Moreover, this is typical not only for those situations when the athlete is active, but also in moments of rest. If the average heart rate of an ordinary person at rest is from 60 to 70 beats, then a trained athlete has no more than 50. For example, a famous cyclist like Miguel Indurain had a resting heart rate of only about 26-30 beats per minute. …
The situation is similar during ski training. If for beginner skiers the heart muscle under the influence of physical exertion makes about 190 contractions per minute, then for an experienced athlete the pulse does not exceed 150 beats.
No less significant changes occur in the muscles of the athlete. They become stronger and more resilient. It also increases the number of blood vessels in the muscle tissue to improve oxygen supply. As a result, the muscles of a trained skier can work actively for several hours without getting tired. Since the lungs also take an active part in the work, which leads to an increase in their size. Thus, the skier can breathe in more air in order to fully supply the body. Also, when organizing skiing training, you need to pay attention to the development of strength endurance, so that you can move your arms and legs for a long time without getting tired.
How to increase your skiing speed?
You need to understand that there are many ways to achieve your task. Moreover, the ski training methods you use may differ significantly from each other, but with their help you will achieve similar results. Some athletes prefer to use multiple interval sessions, covering a large number of distances in each workout. In turn, other skiers enjoy spending time in the gym.
If we talk about the classic scheme on which ski training is built, then first you need to increase endurance, and then move on to increasing speed qualities. Thus, at first you need to cover long distances at a low pace. Under the concept of "low pace", one should understand overcoming, for example, ten kilometers in 60 minutes. This is due to the fact that you can only improve your endurance by working with a heart rate that is in the range of 120 to 130 beats.
When you do your run, don't pay attention to other joggers. Each has its own goals and objectives, which involves the use of a different speed of movement. It is quite obvious that you will need a heart rate monitor or a special application for your smartphone to conduct classes.
During the first four months of training (May-August), your workout should include measured jogging, cycling, and walking imitation of climbing with poles. In July, you can replace the bike with roller skis. All this will allow you to lay the foundation of endurance during the summer, and in the autumn to begin to develop speed qualities.
Ski training for beginners: features
Now you can tell in more detail directly about the training process of the skier. We will proceed from the assumption that our readers not only go in for sports, but work or study. As a result, they can only train in the evenings and on weekends.
Starting in April, when the snow has melted and the ski season is over, the transition period begins. After the end of the season, most athletes in this period of time prefer to rest, which is quite understandable. We recommend that you also take a break from training at this time, and two to three weeks will be quite enough for the body to recover. The training process should be resumed in May, doing five times a week. Schedule a 2-hour cross on Tuesday and Friday. Wednesday and Saturday are for all the same cross-country, plus physical training classes. On Sunday, do a 120-minute step-up cross. Older athletes are much more able to assess their physical condition in comparison with young athletes, full of energy. We said above that the duration of training is two hours, but if you feel that this is a lot for you, then you can train for an hour and a half or even an hour.
These are only approximate figures and you should monitor the state of your body in order to find the optimal training regimen. Probably, someone thought that the proposed ski workout was extremely simple and not very effective. However, this is not the case, and in practice you will have the opportunity to work out all the abilities that a skier needs.
On Monday you should have a good rest, and on Thursday you should visit the sauna (bathhouse) and pool. This is not only a great way to give the body rest, but also active recovery. Throughout May and June, you get about ten hours of training per week. For your runs, you should also choose tracks on which there are no very rugged terrain. While running, you do not need to accelerate when climbing, but try to maintain one theme throughout the entire track.
The situation is similar with cycling, for which it is also worth choosing flat trails. A couple of additional words should be said about cross with imitation of lifts. On flat terrain, you need to move with a regular run, but you overcome each rise with a step, while actively working with your hands with sticks. At this time, you need to simulate a ski two-step ski run. To get moral satisfaction from your studies, we recommend changing the tracks as often as possible. Also note that the kilometers of your crosses does not matter and you need to cover the distance in one and a half or two hours at a given heart rate.
General physical training for skiers is also of great importance. When you ski on the trail in winter, you need to actively engage your arms and shoulder girdle. It should be noted that in modern skiing, the importance of these muscle groups has increased dramatically. You need to pay special attention to training your back muscles, abs, and triceps. They are the ones who are most active while skiing.
You can choose any strength movement designed to pump the above muscles. There are a lot of them, and it will be extremely easy to choose the ones you like the most. It is also worth including in the training program for general physical training and work on simulators that can simulate the movement of hands while skiing. In each of the exercises you choose, you should do five to six sets of 10 or 15 repetitions each.
Also, remember that the goal of your GP training is not to gain muscle mass, although it will also increase, but to increase the strength endurance of the muscles. For beginner skiers, it will be quite enough to conduct two physical training sessions with a duration of about half an hour.
In July, you should start roller-skiing instead of cycling or jogging, doing two of them a week. Put them on the days when you have training in general physical training. Starting in September, you need to bring the total time of your classes during the week to 12-13 hours. For example, you can schedule a bike ride for Thursday. We also recommend running crosses on tracks with medium and high climbs. However, you should make sure that the leg muscles do not become too acidic. Here is a rough training plan we offer you for the preparatory period.
Watch ski training in this video:
