Before the Snow Flies …

Editor’s Note: David Chamberlain grew up in Western Maine and started skiing when he was five. David spent 4 years competing at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, where he was an All-American at the NCAA Championships in his junior and senior years. After college, he spent 12 years chasing races around the world and skied in 3 FIS World Championships with the U.S. Ski Team. David moved to Minnesota in 2014 with his wife and now lives in Bloomington with his son, Lucas, another one on the way this October (Congratulations!), and cat Lucky. He works at Gear West in Long Lake Minnesota. Gearwest.com.

The adage goes: Skiers are made in the summer.
There’s a lot of truth to this as the offseason is certainly the best time to build a solid base, build and maintain strength, work on any weaknesses, and even work on ski-specific movements — all without the looming winter race weekend madness. But there is nothing magic about spring, summer, and fall for a skier. It still takes motivation and some know-how to execute your plan with confidence.
There are many specific ways to train for skiing in the offseason, such as rollerskiing, pole bounding, and pole walking. I hope this article can provide some good ideas and inspiration to help make dryland season a successful way to prepare for your winter race season.

Asking Directions

First priority: If you are looking to plan for the dryland season, find some coaching services. This can be as simple as a few one-off sessions with someone who can give technique instruction for whatever modalities you will be using in the off-season. Or it can be as complex as paying a fee to hire the weekly services of a professional coach to plan out your season.
Many coaches out there provide several levels of service. My advice would be to ask around your local club or ski shop to get some ideas for someone to work with. Coaching serves many different purposes, the first and most important probably being the motivation to get out the door. Technique feedback and instruction, training plans and race preparation, and strength training are all valuable reasons to seek a coach’s advice. Every athlete is unique with unique situations and needs, so it’s valuable to seek a one-on-one interaction with a coach who can take an outside look at those needs. Even a once-a-month touch point can help make the difference to provide some direction for the off-season and give more confidence going into the season.

Yes — Rollerski!

The second priority for those looking to make the most out of dryland training is to seriously consider rollerskiing in the off-season. Rollerskiing is the best way to keep training sessions specific to ski movements. Rollerskis are relatively inexpensive in the scope of outfitting yourself for racing in the winter and can provide years of use. Skate and classic rollerski options are available with a variety of shafts, from aluminum to fiberglass to carbon.
Skate rollerski shafts are generally shorter than classic, and skate wheels are narrower with a bigger diameter to allow for edging. Classic shafts can often be longer and the wheels are low and wide for stability and tracking. Regular winter ski bindings can be mounted on all brands of rollerskis, allowing for the use of winter boots. Winter poles can be converted to rollerski poles by simply adding a rollerski ferrule to the tip. Ferrules are stronger and more durable than regular winter baskets.

One of my favorite things to do on rollerskis is to double-pole, which also happens to be one of the simplest, safest, and most effective workouts to start with when new to rollerskiing. It doesn’t take much technical knowledge and it’s a good way to improve upper-body endurance and strength for the winter season. For these types of workouts, it’s best to choose slightly rolling terrain and then just double pole for a while — that’s it. The trick is to take whatever terrain comes at you and double-pole everything; don’t give up! It’s amazing how quickly the body will adapt after only a few of these types of workouts.
Even without detailed technique instruction or focus, the body will adapt by using the core more efficiently and moving the body into a more stacked position with the hips and body pushing forward. These are great workouts that will have a positive effect on your winter season.
Another way to make the most of rollerskiing sessions is to ski without poles. A no-pole workout for skate-skiing is a great way to focus on body position and leg-specific strength. Taking the poles away also forces the body to adapt to a stacked position and activates the core to engage for stability. The arms can be used to swing the body into place in time with weight shift (like a speedskater) or the arms can be used to mimic upper-body rhythm, as if you were holding poles in your hands.
One of my other favorite ways to do no-pole workouts is to hold the poles in the hands straight out in front of the body parallel to the ground. The poles can then be used as a barometer for body position, giving feedback on how level the shoulders and hips are.

Classic Caution

Classic rollerskiing is another dryland activity that can have a positive impact on your winter skiing. Since classic rollerskis are equipped with ratchets in the rear or front wheel, they will not allow the wheel to roll backward, which allows for the skis to kick. With an innovation like this comes some pitfalls, namely developing bad habits in technique.
Unlike on-snow skis, rollerskis provide perfect kick every time no matter what a person’s technique is doing, which can lead to bad habits that do not translate to an effective kick on snow. My advice is to develop a strong mental visualization while doing technique drills and no-pole work. If you can actively visualize setting the wax even as you’re on rollerskis, then your classic kick will be focused more down into the ski through the ball of the foot and less out the back through the heel of the foot.
Back to coaching: This is a place where the watchful eye of a coach for a few sessions can help to get some mental cues to use to keep the body in the right position.

In Addition to Rollerskis …

Running with poles during the summer and fall is another great way to use off-season training. Ski-bounding and ski-walking workouts can be varied and done at different intensities and different venues. There are plenty of instruction videos out there for how to bound, walk, or do moosehoofs with poles (it’s a Norwegian thing you can look up, such as explained and demonstrated by Zak Ketterson at youtube.com/watch?v=F6Dvu61rXWE).

To do these types of workouts, I recommend finding an old pair of poles with winter baskets and cutting them down to a smidge shorter than normal classic pole length. (After all, with hill-bounding, you’re not standing on boots, bindings, and skis!) Alpine ski hills in the off-season are great places to use for bounding. In the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, I often use the Hyland Hills ski area for this.
No matter what you do for a workout, running or walking with poles is a great way to get the upper body more involved in activities that can otherwise sometimes excessively load the legs in the summer.

Putting Fun in the Workout

My last piece of advice is to find some adventure in your summer and fall training sessions. The off-season is the time to build your endurance base, meaning long workouts whatever the activity. The good news is that the majority of these workouts do not necessarily need the specificity of the ideas above. Running, hiking, biking, rollerskiing, paddling — these are all part of an endless list of activities that can provide the right intensity to build the aerobic capacity to take on your winter races.
During the last two summers, I have participated in a few ultra trail running marathons. The training and the event itself provide long hours of base training. The adventure they provide also keeps me motivated. With family and work responsibilities, finding time to train is increasingly challenging. These events and the preparation for them at least keep me moving out the door in the summer. If running is not your thing, the silent sports world and all its offerings, such as swimming, biking, and paddling, provide a multitude of ways to cultivate your own spirit of adventure while building your aerobic and musculature power to help your Nordic on-snow ski season.

So, while the summertime/fall training adage is true, the motivation to train and prepare for the winter can still be a summertime/fall challenge. With all the modern-day things that compete for our attention and focus, it seems that breaking the inertia to simply get out the door is more difficult than it used to be. My hope is that this article provided a few simple thinking points to help you find that motivation that will lead you to a fun dryland-season training mix, and then a joyously successful Nordic ski season.