I don’t know much about XC skiing/biathlon but I’d say it is without question the NOR has produced far more successfull athletes in these disciplines. However, I don’t think this is due to the training system but due to culture. While Germany has a far larger population the potential recruitment pool for these sports is tiny. There are only a few villages where clubs discover/produce talent. I happen to live in one of these villages. You can only do winter sports in a few regions of the country. Compare this with Nordic sports in NOR.
On the comparision made by the German Sports Insititue. The first comparision was made in 2011. However, they reiterate this in every postion paper since then. I think the comparision is made between all athletes competing in the Olympics, not just the top athletes.
All I see in this is that there may not be one magical formula everyone employs.
Good couple of days back from off season, the tests yesterday were my first bit of intensity for 6 weeks so super pleased with the results! Backed it up with 5 hours today
Background . When it comes to discussions of elite athletic training systems, this meaning is highly applicable to the modern Norwegian cross-country skiers’ training system that secures their domination in the sport. The domination is so unchallengeable that the International Ski Federation (FIS; Fédération Internationale de Ski) has formally recognized it as a “problem”. Having recognized the problem, the FIS offered the Norwegian Ski Federation to hold an international workshop to share its experience under the motto we used as a title for the study.
Invited to the workshop that was held in Trondheim, Norway, were the leading coaches and managers of the national ski federations from all over the world. We should appreciate the open and friendly environment of the event and detailed reports by the hosts who spelled out every “secret” of the modern Norwegian cross-country skiers’ training system that could be reported and discussed for the two full days of the event.
Conclusion . An objective of the strength training of elite ski racers is to attain high efficiency of the key propulsive (push-off) phases in the ski stride with the whole movement system being designed in the most economical format. That means that the strength training is actually viewed as a tool to increase efficiency of the ski racing technique. It is the competitive fitness that is ranked the key constituent of the ski racers’ competitive functionality system efficiency, and it is the training intensity at the pre-season stage that determines the athlete’s competitive performance efficiency and success. An objective of the pre-season training is to make the athlete’s body highly fit for the highest-intensity loads in the regular season.
key points:
workload management. highly individualised training, they have figured out how much workload an athlete can tolerate/absorb (going by feel!)
high intensity in prep phase already (this is supposed to be the key ingredient … in combination with the previous point on individualised workload)
a lot of low intensity which (single sessions at least 3-4h in duration) helps with lactate clearance (see the nice comparision between NOR and RUS athletes in the text)
This podcast with the head coach of the Norwegian Triathlon team talks about their quality training at threshold intensity and a little below (2.5mmol). This is different to the distribution of the above article.
Importance of LIT is similar.
He mentions building to 75 mins of threshold in a workout and they do these sessions several times per week.
While it’s unlikely I can find 90 hours a month to train, on the upside, my wife has kindly offered to stand alongside while I ride the rollers and hit me with a stick.
I feel like having lifted a gold treasure with this German Sports Institue. So much information on elites training. Nations seem to eye each other very closely. There are so many white papers on how other nations develop talent and organise/conduct training. Of course, mainly for Olympic disciplines. This medals ranking (something I like about cycling, we tend to like the best. Nationality is not as important. Probably because cycling fans are often cyclists as well. And know what a suffering it is).
What’s really interesing, they’ve scanned in old coaching reports from East Germany. These read a little bit like Stasi reports. They really go into detail what they did with athletes and how these developed on the training regimes. These reports must have been exchanged between coaches.
And this old training system is still visible in German sports. Somehow dated but this is an interview with the leading speedskating coach 20 years ago. He coached Claudia Pechstein and so.
April till August it’s almost exclusively on the bike. He says this phase is all about building the base. How intense is this base riding?
Around 3 mmol/L !!! For 3-5hours. This is intense.
Base period switches to skating in August. Intensity stays the same, around 3 mmol. Sessions are shorter though.
This part is interesting:
The duration of these aerobic efforts correlate with the mental strength of an athlete. Meaning, these are super hard efforts. This is a theme in the interview: you have to be super tough mentally to survive this training. But you also develop this strength with this training.
Are they aiming to develop those vo2max values with the bike sessions, or is that what they’re supposed to do during those sessions? Surely you wouldn’t be able to sustain that for 3-5 hours?
The former, they try to develop these values with the bike sessions.
vo2max appears to be one of the control parameters for them:
Training is driven by the
spiroergometry
running speed at 4mmol
Table 2 shows the values of Claudia Pechstein in September right before season starts. The two base period cycles (bike cycle, roller skating) have the aim to get to these values. It is a little surprising that they use riding around at 3mmol develops the vo2max component.
The roller skating cycle uses a split of 60:40 for extensive to intensive trainining. Extensive is 3mmol again. And then intensity on top of this. Tough. Really tough. But it is said in the text several times, mental strength is a key ingredient here.
I know Chad McNeese was publicly recognised for all his work in the forum in general
Can I say that I think Sryke deserves similar; his efforts on this thread are currently the best thing on the internet !
I’m not really familiar with IF. I stopped using IF, FTP, TSS many years ago. And these metrices aren’t really used in the relevant literature either.
I think it is difficult to transfer 3mmol of a ice speed skater to 3mmol of a cyclist. Well, perhaps to a track cyclist. ISSs compete in races up to 10 min or so. These efforts are highly glycolytic, e.g. they have to be good at producing a ton of lactate. Take a look at the La curves for different running disciplines:
I would assume that ISSs produce more La at lower work loads as well. So we can’t really make a direct comparision. However, they speak repeatedly about how hard these sessions are. When is a 3 to 5h session really hard for a well trained athlete? When they spend a lot of time in tempo/SST territory.
This would be in line with what we’ve heard about the German biathletes. This threshold model have its origins in the former East German model. And it is the complete opposite to the Norwegian model.
Not sure you want to hear my voice, I have this lovely German accent that always sounds like a Wehrmacht officer in those movies.
Follow up to the speed skaters. All I have posted so far refert to the 90s. Afterwards Germany sucked big time, not even a single medal in 2014. Couple of white papers dealing with this (not just ISS, other disciplines as well).
What happened? They switched to a more technique ortiented training model. Reduced endurance training. They corrected this in 2008 but they did not reach the same level again (not sure how much the pharmaceutical component had a role here).
And their threshold model reached a ceiling probably. Lets take a look at the Norwegeans of ISS: the Dutch. The dominant nation since 2014.
Like in many other glycolytic sports this shift toward more LIT. However, not entirely polarised as the strong muscular endurance component requires a significant amount of medio intensity.
And then the Dutch did not stop there. They used all the training information they had on their athletes and applied data mining algorithms on it. With that they devised highly individual training programs to their athletes. The great success in 2018 is atrributed to this approach. This is very similar to what NOR did. Use the existing data, build training modules, apply to athletes.
Germany hasn’t been a xc skiing powerhouse in the last 30 years. But compared to other nations results got worse and worse over the years. A couple of factors were identified. One key factor is that their traditional threshold training concept did not prepare well for the change in xc skiing race character. Races seem to have changed from steady efforts to a more dynamic character. Other nations adapted their training, the Germans did not:
not a whole lot high intensity. Other nations did more intensity and had to reduce basic endurance accordingly.
What is also stressed, switching to POL is a long term process which has to be started in early years. And this is something NOR perfected. Progression of volume seems to be important and has to start early. It is difficult to catch up when late in the game.
after all this POL stuff, back to good old road cycling. Different demands, different training style. A 2019 paper on Polish elite riders (vo2max ~70):
Athlete A - Tobias Angerer - retired in 2014. All these comparisons could be countered by other observations. Northug changed the game by acting like a sprinter in road cycling, but on the other side you had a skier like Martin Johnsrud Sundby who was infamous for his volume and tempo riding (and very successful as well). Especially the Norwegians always followed different routes to success: Daehlie vs Ulvang, etc.
What is even more important and the reason why you should read these studies with a grain of salt: a lot of the top level athletes in Scandinavia do not train under national programs for the entire season. They are usually looked after by their personal coaches (comparable to national XCO programs in cycling; you wouldn’t take these programs serious because athletes don’t follow these regimes in the real world).
