Welcome to the new 2022-2023 training year. In the cross-country ski world, we like to start the year with the week that contains May 1.
As we start the new ski year, our focus is on preparing the body for hard work down the road and putting down a foundation for the future. We are not looking to be getting after it with heavy doses of intensity and ski specificity. Those are things for later in the summer and fall. Remember, skiers are made in the summer, and then remember it is still spring. So, make sure the easy days are easy. Avoid junk training of medium-hard, not easy enough to be tolerated well, promoting recovery, and not hard enough to have the benefits of adequately stressing the body with true hard training.
Feel free to use your roller skis once in a while, but mainly leave them be for another month and enjoy some less ski-specific activities like biking and paddling at easy paces as we prepare for the future.
Starting the new year, evaluating your strengths and weaknesses and last year’s successes and struggles and adjusting based on your evaluation would be wise.
***
Each period, we will end with this advice since it is so important:
As you plan your weeks and evaluate your training, also give some thought to how you are using the training plan. It is written to be a blueprint and a guide for your training and is not written knowing in advance what conflicts you may have with training in any given week. Many weeks can be done as scheduled. However, if you have to swap days or weeks out on account of your non-training life, with good planning, it can be done with great success, provided you are giving thought to the swapping.
For example, let’s say you have a week at work where you are going to have heavy time demands and stress, and the schedule says it is the third week of the period, which is our big week. It may be best to hold off on the third week and swap it with Week 4 – our easy week to recover, and then maybe make a slight adjustment in Week 1 of the following period. You can also swap out days on account of life outside of your training plan. Just remember, as you do that, it is ideal to follow a pattern of hard followed by easy for the pattern of days.
– Cheers, see you next month
cxcacademy.wordpress.com 