In Form
1. Skiing
Learn to love the burn
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Joe McBride
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"A SINGLE RUN OF ALPINE skiing is predominantly anaerobic," says Andy Walsh, sports science director for the U.S. Ski Team. "You work at an intensity far greater than will allow oxygen into your muscles." Thus, anaerobic tolerance—the ability to endure high levels of lactate while say, skiing a steep bump run—is the factor when it comes to
on-slope performance. With that in mind, Walsh puts his skiers through the following early-season leg blaster every ten to fourteen days: Fill a backpack with 10 to 25 percent of your body weight (you can build up to as much as 70 to 80 pounds in your pack over time, but too much too soon will stress your knees and back). Use sandbags (they don't bounce),
jugs of water (drink up when you're finished), or anything else that doesn't make your pack too unwieldy. Find a long, snowless hill and hike it at an easy pace for 40 minutes, throwing in three six-second sprints. Next, find a 150-yard clearing steep enough—a 30 percent grade will do—to pose a challenging run, but not so steep that you have to
scramble. Using cones or branches, mark out a 15-turn, 25-foot-wide, 150-yard slalom course. Starting two-thirds of the way down the course, sprint full-bore up the hill. At the top of the course, turn and immediately begin a downhill shuffle through the markers. Keep it ski-like: knees bent, hands and weight forward, upper body facing downhill, lower body
rotating from side to side. Aim for 30 seconds of sprinting to build lactate, and 60 seconds of shuffling descent to increase lactate tolerance.
| ADVANCED COURSE: For a more plyometric exercise, you can—if the ground is dry—place some of the cones closer together and take them in lateral, one-legged hops. Don't worry about ski poles; they can become a liability in the event of a dry-land crash. Run the course three times, allowing ten
to fifteen minutes between each set to recover. "It's pretty miserable," says Walsh. "The team usually spends their break time throwing up." |
2. Swimming
Golf your way to a better stroke
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Scott Markewitz
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THE BEST SWIMMERS, says Terry Laughlin, are not characterized so much by how hard they swim, but by how little they fight the water in the process. Laughlin runs Total Immersion Swimming (www.totalimmersion.net), one of the most intensive masters and triathlete swimming clinics in the
country. The cornerstone of his approach is stroke length—how far your body travels with each pull—which is measured by counting your strokes for any given
distance. Generally, you want to take as few strokes as possible, conserving energy and reducing friction without compromising speed. So Laughlin invented a game called swimming golf. It goes like this: In a 25-yard pool, time yourself swimming one 50 (i.e. two lengths of the pool) while counting your strokes; an admirable score is 40 strokes and 40
seconds. Add the two numbers, and you get a PGA-like score of 80—your par. Golf can—and should—be folded into any swim set. For example, instead of huffing through a straight 1,750 yards (70 lengths), swim one 100, one 200, one 300, and one 400 with short rests in between, and then repeat in reverse, adding golf to the end of each set.
| ADVANCED COURSE: Challenge a partner to a 50-yard race while keeping a golf score. If you're thinking of going pro, here's the mark. At 49, Laughlin's best for a 50 is 57 (25 strokes in 32 seconds), and one of his swimmers did 50 yards in "a Tiger Woodslike score" of 39. |
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