Thursday and Friday

Yesterday was our last day of the Prep/Devo summer program so we did a traditional mtn bike ride up at the University where we cruise around the trails for a bit while we make our way over to Hot Licks for some ice cream to celebrate a good session and a good summer.  It was a relatively uneventful ride (except for the older boys and Chris getting separated), and we all got to enjoy a nice cold scoop at the end.  No photos unfortunately - tough to ride over roots and take pictures simultaneously (at least for me!).

For the Comp Team athletes we had a good specific strength session last night.  It was kept a surprise, and we told Kyle it was a gift to him as he's off to Michigan Tech today, so this would be his final session.  All upper body, with the goal of giving the legs a rest and building up our upper body strength on skis.  We haven't done a session this extreme yet this year, so I wasn't sure how the group would handle it.  It turned out that everyone was in high spirits and quite energetic, so it seemed to go quite well.  The session included 15 minutes of double poling, then about 20 minutes of single sticking, and then an uphill double pole that is pretty extreme - gaining about 900 ft in elevation over 6 km with sections that are quite steep for a road - V1 pitches when we do intervals up this hill.  Everyone got in a good challenge, getting at least 2.5km of uphill double poling in and some even going onto the rolling terrain along the ridge at the top. 

The moment of the evening was when we stopped to pick up Max, one of our J2s.  We kind of figured it was implied that he would get in for a ride and want to finish the session so we kept chatting in the van.  Max walks over to the van, opens up the back like he's going to put his skis in, but instead just grabs his water bottle, takes a swig of water and then he walks back out onto the road and skis off for more!  Gotta love that attitude!

Single stickin'

And up the hill!

A smile for the van at the end of the ski!

This morning we met at Birch Hill for some plyos, moosehoofing intervals up South Tower, before finishing with some strength.  After a bit of a break in the second half of the summer, we will be hitting the JN courses with some regularity in the next couple of months and making the sessions more and more race specific in terms of both output (higher intensity now than earlier this summer) and tactics (how we want the athlete to approach the hills given their location on the course, etc.).  Should be fun!

Moose-hoofin'

We started a new strength phase this week, which involves a focus on high-force movements with added proprioceptive demand, with the idea being this should help us link our strength better to while we're out skiing.  The goal is always to help our skiing, not simply to be really good at a few strength exercises.  We'll probably feel the greatest soreness in some of our stabilizing muscles at first.  

Here are a few of the exercises we'll be using this month:

Forehead push-ups

Doing dips on the Jungle Gym gives you new appreciation for what Olympic gymnasts do!