Pre-competition Phase - Physical Training

Spring and Summer are a distant, happy blur, but now the leaves have changed colour and fallen from the trees in a rain of red and gold.  Hopefully you've enjoyed some productive training over the warm months - long bike rides in the country, trail running, or overnight hiking trips.  Hopefully you've also been doing a lot of dry firing so that taking your rifle off your back has become a fluid motion, and you have become more and more conscious of your breathing during shooting.  Maybe all of those lower intensity, long workouts have made you impatient, and you are now curious to test how fit you really are.  It's now time to enter the next part of your Biathlon training journey: the Pre-competition Phase.

The Preparation Phase is characterized by the development of strength and a high volume of lower intensity cardiovascular exercise.  Hopefully this phase has also allowed you to get a sense of how much time you can actually devote to training, and to develop a regular weekly schedule.  This is the phase that sets the groundwork for the more intense training in the Pre-competition Phase.

The Pre-competition Phase is characterized by higher intensity and more sport specific exercises. Ideally you have access to roller skis.  If you do, most of your cardio training should be done on roller skis, and all of your high intensity workouts should be on roller skis.  If you do not have roller skis, than ski striding with poles is the next most desirable activity.

Strength

With strength, the emphasis is also more on power.  This means that instead of completing an exercise for 10-12 repetitions, you will increase the weight so that you are only able to complete 5-8 repetitions. Because it is not advisable to jump into a strength program and start lifting heavy weight, it is important that you are not only familiar with the exercise, but also your body is used to completing the exercise. In the Preparation Phase, you have hopefully developed this physical and mental familiarity, and are ready to challenge your body further.

As always, focus on whole body exercises such as the bench press, the squat or leg press, and the lat pull down.  It goes without saying that a focus on core strength should also be primary with every strength workout.  One of my favourite exercises is the straight arm pull down, as I feel this develops those muscles that are critical to poling strength.  This exercise can be completed with the machine shown in the video, or with resistance bands:

You can complete this great exercise with a focus on power by using a weight that only enables you to complete 5-8 repetitions.  However, I also like to transform this exercise into a strength-endurance exercise by completing many back-to-back sets with minimal rest.  For example, I will start with a warm-up set of 15 repetitions.  I will then increase the weight and then complete another 15 repetitions. I will keep on increasing the weight until I can only complete 5 repetitions, and then will work backwards by decreasing the weight every set.  The less of a break you take between sets, the more you develop muscular endurance, which is essential to Biathlon and cross country skiing.  To make this exercise even more challenging and sport-specific, one can complete the straight arm pull down while standing on a bosu ball:

Cardiovascular Training

With your aerobic workouts, you will want to maintain your base fitness by continuing to do longer, less intense cardio sessions where your heart rate is in the 55-70% range.  However, in the Pre-competition Phase you will want to introduce more and more physical challenge through speed work and intervals.  That is, you will want your mind and body to know what it means to work very hard, and you will also want to learn how to complete sport-specific motions quickly and with maximum attention to correct form.  

One way to complete your intervals is with ski striding.  If possible, find terrain that is hilly, and also in an environment that is safe and where you will not be interrupted.  After a warm-up of 10-20 minutes, include ski striding sprints up a hill as fast as possible.  At first, maybe 10 seconds of sprinting in this form may be challenging.  That's okay!  It is not where you start, but how you develop that is important.  After a sprint, take a rest of at least one 1-3 minutes.  Maybe in the beginning you will want to alternate a ten second sprint with a one minute rest.  By "rest" I mean you will continue ski striding, but at a slow pace.  

There are many different variations in interval workouts that you can complete by adjusting the period that you sprint for, the period you "rest" for, and how many interval sessions you complete.  Your workouts can also be adjusted by using hills, or completing your sprints on flat ground.

Attempt to create order for your workouts by creating a steady progression where the first and second week are increasingly more challenging, the third week is the most challenging, and the fourth week is the least challenging.  Your first week may include a 10-30 minute warm-up, 10 sprint intervals, and a 10-20 minute cool down.  Your most difficult week may include the same workout, but with your sprint periods lasting several minutes instead of 10 seconds.

Roller Skis

Roller skis are the best way to complete your workouts during the Pre-competition Phase.  Cross country skiing places unique demands on your cardio-pulmonary system in that many different muscles are demanding blood and oxygen all at once.  If you do most of your training with cycling, which uses 40% of your total muscle mass, or running, which uses around 60% of your total muscle mass, you will be very ill-prepared for cross country skiing, which uses over 80% of your total muscle mass. Therefore, ski striding and roller skiing should be your primary forms of exercise during the Pre-competition Phase.

All roller ski sessions should begin with a 10-30 minute warm-up.  As a general rule, the longer your exercise sessions are, the longer your warm-ups and cool-downs should be.  The purpose of a warm-up is not only to supply blood to the muscles you will use and warm up your joints, but also to get you in the mood for your workout.  This means that during a warm-up, you should be thinking about what your goals are.  Do NOT think things like, it's cold out or I'm tired.  Be present in every single workout you do and you will achieve maximum results.  Go through the structure of your workout in your head:  I will start with a warm-up, then focus on poling for ten minutes, and then focus on balance for ten minutes, etc.  Pay close attention to your form and your balance.  Are you planting your poles in the correct position?  Are you landing on a flat roller ski?  Are you pushing off with the full range of motion?  Are you gliding as long as possible?  How is your breathing?  Do you have any aches and pains that you should attend to with focused stretching afterwards?  

There are many important things you should be thinking about during a training session, and negative self-talk is not one of the things that will make you a better Biathlete.  

Stay positive, give yourself constructive feedback you can work with, and be present!  

While ski striding is a great off season training method, roller skiing is the most sport-specific exercise you can do without actually being on snow!  With roller skiing, you can work on balance and double poling in a way you cannot with ski striding.  You can practice proper weight shift, cornering while descending, and many other techniques that will be useful to you in your Biathlon races.

If you have a heart rate monitor, your heart rate should be in the 80% HR max and above during the sprint periods.  However, these workouts can still be completed without a heart rate monitor by using rate of perceived exertion.

How should you feel during these sprint periods?  According to the rating in the link above for the Borg scale, you should rate your exertion between 15 and 16.  Your breath will be quite laboured, your muscles will feel the discomfort of the effort, however this will be a pace you will be able to maintain for 30 minutes.  If the effort is too easy, you will not obtain the full benefits of these interval sessions; if the effort is too difficult, you may not be able to recover in time for the next sprint period.

It may take you some time to figure out how to rate your effort, but this is okay!  In fact, it is very important!  Why?  Because during a race, you should always know how much more you have to give. You do not want to go so hard during the start of a race that you "blow up" and are unable to finish, or you slow down dramatically.  For Biathlon, it is especially important because you want to know how hard you can exert yourself while still shooting accurately.  For example, if you know you've come into the range too hard during a race, you can take an extra couple of seconds to reach a point of steadiness where you can shoot accurately.  I will discuss this in more detail during on the Pre-competition Shooting post.

Some other points to remember:

• The focus should always be on correct form
• Monitor and keep track of how you feel in a workout diary or journal.  Hopefully you will notice that you continue to feel better and better!
• Take time to rest if you need it!  Training too hard will burn you out, compromise your form, and will not optimally prepare you for the race season.  Train smarter, not harder.

Alright, now it's time for me to hit the range for some shooting practice, but I'll leave you with a great shot of Veronika Vítková from Östersund where she was practising with her team for today's mixed relay.  I can't wait to get home and watch this race!