Sandown Park Ski Racing Club Fitness Training

SPSRC Website : Information : Fitness Training

Introduction to SPSRC Fitness Training

In short, your child's fitness will be integral to their ski success. The right fitness not only promotes better results, it also protects against injuries. Club fitness training follows the Sunday morning ski session & runs from around 9:45 to 11:00 with our expert fitness coach Steve Cooper. This fitness session is included in the cost of your membership.

Steve designs fitness sessions that work for skiers based around the necessary balance of aerobic fitness, agility training, core strength etc. But it's also a pretty good general fitness programme.

After Steve's seen your child train once or twice he'll be happy to talk to you about a specific fitness programme that he or she could undertake between SPSRC Sunday sessions. Steve recommends that your child should aim for three fitness sessions each week.

Steve also runs fitness sessions at the Kingsmeadow Athletics Stadium in Kingston on Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday evenings. These you have to pay Steve for directly. Parents are welcome to participate in these - and several do - which makes them quite good fun even when you can't keep up with your kids anymore!

However, it can't be stated too much - getting the fitness right is essential to avoid injuries & improve results. But the kids (and parents) can have a lot of fun with the fitness at the same time.

Importance

Fitness has a significant part to play in three areas of ski racing:

1. Safety - The physical demands on the body during high speed are enormous. The more technically able, the higher the speed, the greater the demand.
2. Enhanced Performance - Performance is directly proportional to fitness level.
3. Injury - Fit Racers will be less likely to injure themselves. If injured, fit racers will recover quicker.

Fitness training is one thing we should be able to do as well as anybody.

Past Experience

Imposing training regimes on racers does not work. Only a few will stick to training
programmes.

What we can do

1. Inform - Make everyone (Racers and Parents) aware of the importance of fitness
2. Provide Data - Publish benchmarking data to show how fit the racers should be
3. Simple Home Programmes - Develop simple home programmes for basic fitness
4. Where to Get Fit - Provide details of Clubs (e.g. athletics) racers can join
5. Regular Measurement - Conduct fitness tests, say, twice a year
6. Stimulate - Use Sunday training to stimulate desire to train in their own time
7. Divide the Racers into Teams / Houses - and make fitness a part of house competition

Summary

o Inform / Educate
o Stimulate / Encourage

Continued

The third reason why fitness is important, relates to injury.

Avoiding Injury

A fit athlete is less likely to sustain injury and will also recover faster from injury. It is important to realise that injuries do not just occur in falls, or other single traumatic events. Injury can also be the result of gradual damage over time.

Interest [at SPSRC] is heightened by the fact that our own group consists of young
people, who are growing and developing.

Unique Challenge

The limited time the coach is able to spend with our racers, dictates that most of it has to be devoted to technical matters. That is to say, spent with skis on.

The fact that the technical ability of our racers is so high, speaks for the quality of the foundation training and justifies the current approach in that respect.

The unique challenge of training for the sport without having the mountains constantly at our disposal, means we absolutely have to separate the technical from the physical. The benefit, in physical fitness terms, derived from training on a mountain, is not available to us at Sandown and so we must find other ways to deal with that issue.

Past Experience

Many of us are rich in personal experience from past attempts to impose physical fitness regimes on our racers.

Young racers usually have many other things occupying their lives. They simply do not want to get down to fitness training. Most of them do not have the desire to take it seriously and frankly prefer to be comfortable rather than driven.

Changing this has proved to be an impossibility in the past. Nothing has changed. It is not worth, as a generalism, asking our coaches and trainers to write specially tailored fitness programmes for each of the racers, for these are barely ever referred to.

Occasionally, we have had a racer with the inherent desire and the drive to knuckle down to physical fitness training. They do not need threats, reminders, or cajoling, for they organise themselves and fit their physical training in with everything else. They are the ones who make it to a higher level and will come and ask for tailored programmes of their own accord.

Characteristics of a Successful Alpine Racing Competitor

Characteristics of a Successful Alpine Racing Competitor

Various attributes help ski racers achieve success. Each athlete has a different mix of these attributes. They can be headed up mental, physical and environmental.

Mental

Intelligence
Mental toughness
Motivation (dedication, commitment)

Physical

Neurological fitness
Flexibility fitness
Strength fitness
Cardiovascular fitness
Pulmonary fitness

Environmental

Family support
Financial resources
Training facilities
Coaching

Motivation

Above everything else, the successful ski racers will be one who are able to motivate themselves.

The easiest way of all to get a child to motivate themselves to train is to lead by
example. Parents can play a big part here.

Acknowledgemends

SPSRC acknowledge the help from John Hubbell and Sport Performance in putting together this overview guide to fitness.

John is a former Olympic athlete and world level competitor, a fitness expert and
professional coach and the parent of a successful ski racer.

SPSRC Website : Information : Fitness Training