Many of us know how to train, what to eat, and which equipment works best. Despite this, we always want to know more and are often ready to try new things. Naturally, ski training is one of those things we aim to maximize and change as needed. The principles of endurance sports and the basic elements of cross-country skiing training, however, remain the same. For example, Gustaf Korsgren, the former Pro Team Director of Team Ramudden and the husband of Lina Korsgren, a former Pro Team athlete and current Pro Team Director, acknowledges that training for endurance sports hasn’t changed much in 60 years.

It goes without saying that mastering double poling is the core of long-distance skiing, and of course, it should be practiced as much as possible if one wants to succeed in mass start races. If you’ve listened to Ski Classics podcasts or read articles on Proxcskiing.com, you know that the top athletes in the circuit primarily train double poling in both summer and winter.

Maastohiihto.com wrote an article exploring the basic elements of ski training. Many of these are already familiar, but mastering the terms is always useful.

Endurance training for Cross-Country Skiing

The basic elements of endurance sports training, including skiing, are long aerobic workouts (long slow training), pace/tempo training, interval or interval training, fartlek (also a Swedish term used in English), long fast workouts (especially important for long-distance skiers), and strength training.

Long aerobic workouts at a calm pace are the foundation of training. As the name suggests, the purpose is to train for several hours at and below the aerobic threshold. For professional skiers, this often means over five-hour workouts. For fitness and competitive athletes, the duration can vary between 2-4 hours. In summer, training forms can include roller skiing, Nordic walking and running, hiking, running (though it’s often quite strenuous), road or mountain biking, or other forms like swimming or rowing/kayaking.

As you build your endurance base and gain experience, you can add short high-speed sprints to your long workouts to break the monotony and develop speed. This can also prevent the worst setback in training – the point of diminishing returns. In other words, training no longer develops, no matter how much you do it. In too one-sided training, you hit a “wall,” and further development does not occur.

Therefore, pace endurance and interval training are also needed. Pace endurance training is simply training at a level where the body can remove lactate (a by-product of carbohydrate combustion) as much as it produces it. In other words, lactate removal is at the same level as lactate production, so there are no “wooden” arm or leg phenomena.

The difference between pace endurance and competition speed in cross-country skiing, especially long-distance skiing, is that during competition, this threshold is exceeded, and the body starts to tire as the race progresses. In pace endurance workouts, the same speed can be maintained for a longer time, even several hours for top skiers. The workout is done at or depending on the athlete’s condition, experience, and abilities.

Interval or interval training is a workout where different intervals are performed in short series, varying speeds, followed by recovery. The intervals are often done at or above the anaerobic threshold, and the recovery is significantly low-intensity. The length of the intervals varies depending on the aim of the workout.

In speed training, intervals can be 20-30 seconds, and recovery can be the same or longer. Longer intervals, which can be uphill or in varying terrain, aim to increase speed reserve or capacity. Typical longer intervals are 3-6 minutes, and even short recovery can be enough if the goal is a competition-like workout. For example, Morten Eide Pedersen, who has had a long career, prefers one-minute recovery between intervals.

Training with varying resistance and tempo increases heart capacity, raises training thresholds, and increases competition speed tolerance, enabling faster skiing speed. Interval training raises lactate thresholds and, of course, increases VO2 max, thus increasing speed reserve. This teaches the body to use lactate as energy without feeling the “burning” lactic acids in the muscles.

The aforementioned speed training is a close relative of interval training. These workouts improve the body’s ability to ski fast and make breaks in the race, thus affecting the nervous system by teaching muscles to ski quickly. These types of workouts are, therefore, 20-30 second sprints, followed by recovery. The sprints can be up to a minute long, especially if the terrain is favorable and skied, for example, on fast rollers in summer or in fast conditions in winter.

Recovery is important in these workouts because the goal is to develop speed. Intervals can be done in series, e.g., 5 x 20-30 sec, with the same length of recovery, but such workouts can easily become too strenuous, turning them more into interval training that develops performance. Especially in winter, it’s good to have longer recovery between speed intervals so that the muscles and nervous system are ready to receive just speed training. In summer, it’s also good to do short sprint intervals even during long aerobic workouts to break the monotony and maintain speed properties.

One method that combines both interval and speed training is fartlek. In this workout, the speed varies freely from slow to fast intervals. The fast parts are either at pace endurance level or slightly above, and the recovery between speed variations should be sufficiently long and restorative. This is a good workout form, especially for fitness skiers, for whom actual interval training can be mentally challenging.

Long, fast skiing or long-duration pace endurance is a workout where the skier trains for a long time at high speed, simulating competition skiing. The speed, of course, depends on the skier’s level and weekly program. This is a typical workout for long-distance skiers. This workout often includes various intervals and fast sections, and the whole workout can be over five hours, including hard intervals and pace endurance sections. This is the so-called Vasaloppet-pass workout, used by every Ski Classics series professional team. This requires both a solid fitness base and mental toughness, and sufficient rest is necessary after this workout.

Strength training for Cross-Country Skiing

Finally, we move on to strength training, which can be done at the gym, at home as a circuit, or sport-specifically, e.g., double poling up steep hills. For long-distance skiers, it’s extremely important to also strengthen the core to keep the double poling technique clean despite creeping fatigue. Strength training or resistance training is a physical activity aimed at increasing muscle strength in a specific muscle group or individual muscle, with the resistance being either external weights or body weight. There are two types of resistance training; isometric and isotonic.

In isometric training, the athlete’s muscles work against an immovable object, such as the floor in push-ups or a bar in pull-ups. In isotonic, muscles work against a moving resistance, like in weightlifting. The importance of strength training has grown in modern skiing with the increase in performance and changes in technique. Strength training can also be done in cycles, i.e., block training, focusing on strength acquisition for a certain period.

Here, the basic elements of ski training and terms every athlete needs, regardless of age, condition, and abilities, are briefly presented. The skill of training is to combine these forms into a functioning whole in weekly and monthly training to extract the best condition during the competition season. This, of course, varies according to the skier’s background and personal characteristics, but generally, endurance training should be 70-90% of the total training, 10-20% high-intensity training, i.e., intervals and speed workouts, and 5-10% strength training.

Of course, this also varies with the athlete’s age and experience, and many long-career veteran skiers already have such a solid aerobic base that their basic training is quite effective, and training speeds are quite high. Then they often have a much lower training volume, i.e., hours, than, for example, younger skiers, for whom still strengthening the aerobic base is the cornerstone of training. A good example of this is the Norwegian Anders Aukland, who competed at a top level until his fifties, and his training in the later years was quite effective, utilizing all the basic elements of ski training mentioned above.

Watch Here: Improve your classic cross-country skiing – here are five technique videos

Are you interested in long-distance and traditional cross-country skiing training? Click HERE and read more.