by Hans and
Franz;
Section 4: Early Season 1
December begins the cross-country skier's early season.
During this time of year the skier is concerned with increasing
energy fitness by including some anaerobic training. Cross-country
skiing is essentially a sport that requires endurance,
but there are plenty of situations during the course of
a normal ski outing that will require sufficiently intensive
effort that some anaerobic training will be of benefit.
Specifically, these situations are likely to include hills,
fun sprints with friends and citizen races, should you
try them.
In addition to maintaining the anaerobic benefits of
your pre-season training, you will want to add one or
two sessions a week during the early season in which you
push yourself beyond your anaerobic threshold. The purpose
of this extra effort is to develop additional short-term
energy stores and pathways in the fast glycotic muscle
fibers. As you add anaerobic exercise to your schedule,
remember to cut back your other training and get more
rest once you begin to actually get out and ski.
The way to train aerobically is simple. Basically, you
want to work at high intensity (e.g., 95% of maximum heart
rate) for a short duration, take a short, active rest,
and then start working at high intensity again. This type
of training is usually called interval training. The intervals
can be as long as 1 minute or as short as 30 seconds.
A typical workout might consist of eight work intervals
after you get used to this kind of training. You want
to quit when your heart rate does not drop back down into
to your normal training effect zone a couple of minutes
after completing the last interval. Also, remember that
you don't want to start your intervals until you are completely
warmed up.
Intervals can be structured or natural. Structured intervals
are useful because they can provide a way to check progress.
Structured intervals consist of performing a specific
exercise over a set course, such as running on a track,
for a given amount of time. The distance you cover per
interval and the number of intervals you complete before
your body doesn't sufficiently recover from the last interval
can be used as measures of the effectiveness of your conditioning
program.
Natural intervals are considered by some to be more fun.
Natural intervals occur when you have to periodically
exercise more intensively as part of the activity in which
you are engaged. One good way of doing natural interval
training is simply to go for a jog in a hilly area. Then,
when you come to a hill, run hard up it, making sure that
you push past the crest of the hill. Then, lope down the
other side, recovering as you go. Another way to use hills
for interval training is to go for an easy jog, find a
good hill and run up it several times. Running up hills
with ski poles is an especially effective form of this
type of interval training, with the added benefit that
it simulates skiing as the same time.
