I’ve gotten a couple questions on our dryland routines in the summer, so I’ll give a bit of an overview here. The rationale behind this 4 month break from skiing was to give the team a longer strength training block in the summer so that everyone is recovered and in a stronger place than last year. The June-July workout blocks are mostly directed at building maximum strength and power, so lots of heavy lifting. This means a lot of big compound lifts like front/back squats and deadlifts, generally with 5-6 sets of 3-5 reps. This is interspersed with 2 types of bike workouts: some longer 2-3 hour easy rides (heart rate 130-150) to build basic endurance, and some interval sessions such as 30 sec on / 30 sec off to get our bodies used to clearing the lactice acid that builds up from this intensity. Then, once we get later into the summer and fall, we start focusing more on strength endurance, which means lots of circuits aimed at keeping a high heart rate and muscle fautigue for 2-3 minutes. Ideally as similar of demands as possible to a tough downhill race.

But enough gym talk, on to Ushuaia. We ended up doing mostly a GS and SG camp, with a couple days of slalom in there as well. Because if you’re a professional skier, you should be a good skier on any type of skis, not only the discipline that you compete in. Our first day training slalom, I realized that for some guys it had been about 3 years since their last slalom training sessions. This is crazy to me just because I’m still young and I’ll go home and train/race slalom in the spring after our World Cup season, just for fun. But I get it; after you’ve been doing this for long enough, it’s more valuable at the end of a long season to take a break and seperate from skiing a bit than it is to go grind some tech training.

We fly all the way down to the tip of South America for this camp because it’s probably the most consistent summer training in the world. It’s so far south that it’s constantly fairly cold and dark, allowing the snow to freeze well, but it’s also right on the coast, so the snow has a lot of moisture in it. This moisture combined with the cold temps makes for a World Cup-like icy surface almost every day. Lucky for us. And we took advantage of it, skiing every day except 2 for this entire three week camp. I always thought that once you’re on the World Cup team it’s only low volume, high intensity training, but boy was I wrong. We’re out there rain or shine, getting as much work in as possible so that we know we’re able to handle the long weeks that come in the midst of race season. I should’ve known; it’s the same lesson that everyone learns when they come into the US Team for the first time. Some people think they’ve made it once they get that jacket, but in reality that’s only where the real work begins. As soon as you think you’ve made it and you don’t need to outwork people anymore, that’s when you fall off.

But everyone is working really well together right now, and pushing in the same direction, which makes these long camps so much easier. With momentum building and a group of guys that are as fast and experienced as the guys I’m lucky enough to be on a team with, it’s a pleasure to show up and work every day. And that’s exactly what we’ll do, whether it’s here in the gym for the next couple weeks or in Chile next month at our next on-snow camp. Keep building.