Art of Prevention
Our mission is to decrease the prevalence of preventable injuries and athletes therein optimizing performance by decreasing the time that our athletes spend benched due to injury. We are going to distill information and practices from experts in the field of injury prevention. High level coaches and top performing athletes. We believe this information should be accessible to everyone so that we can reduce the rates of preventable injuries.
Art of Prevention
Nurturing Nordic Champions: Olaf Hedberg on Preventing Injuries and Enhancing Performance in Junior Skiing
Discover the delicate dance of pushing limits while preserving the body with Olaf Hedberg, the mentor behind the US junior national ski team's rising stars. As we chat with Olaf, we unearth the strategies that keep young skiers gliding injury-free toward the high performance. Olaf's narrative, from competitor to coach, reveals the intricacies of training regimens that allow for peak performance without crossing into the treacherous terrain of overtraining. Through his eyes, we gain a practitioner's insight into the art of nurturing resilience in athletes, where rest and nutrition play pivotal roles alongside rigorous practice.
Venture with us into the world of elite Nordic skiing, where communication and tech intertwine to forge champions. Olaf Hedberg unpacks the use of innovative wearable technology and baseline testing in shaping the training programs of his junior athletes. Tracking metrics like resting heart rate becomes a tool to maintain an athlete's health and prevent burnout. This episode peels back the layers on how individualized coaching strategies are calibrated to each skier's needs, ensuring that even within a team, each athlete receives the guidance necessary to propel forward, both in their career and on the snow.
Wrapping up our insightful discussion, we celebrate the holistic approach to athlete development, as exemplified by World Cup leader Jesse Diggins. From the intricate balance of fitness, technique, and mental fortitude to the tailored dietary plans fueling their endurance, we explore what makes a cross-country skier truly exceptional. Tune in for a comprehensive journey into the world of Nordic skiing where education, technique, and continuous improvement are the cornerstones of not just winning, but also thriving in the sport.
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All right, welcome everybody to another episode of the Art of Prevention. As always, I have an amazing and awesome guest. Today we're going to be talking about Nordic skiing. Who better to talk about Nordic skiing than the US junior national team coach, olaf Hedberg? Olaf grew up in Sweden and he's been cross-country skiing and he's been on skis since well before he even remembers, before he could even walk Throughout the process of becoming an extremely high-level Nordic skiing athlete, high-level Nordic skiing coach and now very high-level adventureracer. He's gleaned many insights and pearls of wisdom that we're going to try and extract today. Olaf, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to be on this podcast and share a bunch of information with everybody. Tell us a little bit more about yourself.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for having me One clarification I've been with the junior US ski team at the last couple of junior world championships and U23 world championships. I'm not year round with the US ski team. So just that small clarification. Yes, I am originally from Sweden. I was a cross-country skier in Sweden trying to make the World Cup team there. I was most of the time ranked between 10th and 15th in Sweden, which means I just missed it and I never made a World Cup team, unfortunately or fortunately, because now I'm here instead.
Speaker 2:I had some good conversations with Fredrik Landstedt, who is a four or five-time NCAA winning coach in cross-country skiing and was going to come over as an athlete skiing for him and I was like, no, I'm going to make the World Cup team. And then I didn't, and yeah. So then it was like oh, okay, now I'm coming to the US instead and I was fortunate to become his assistant coach and learn a lot from him, and I was coaching University of New Mexico to a second place in NCAA, I think, and a fourth place and something like that. And I have been in the US for almost 20 years now, even though my accent has not gone away at all. So, if you just interrupt me if something I'm saying doesn't make sense, I've also, like you mentioned, actually done some adventurising and I have been. I was third at World Championships in 2017 and been ranked second in the world on the team that was ranked second in the world.
Speaker 2:So, in terms of knowledge of the body compared to your other guests, I'm probably the least qualified guest you ever had on this podcast. You know, I'm like a small child, like I hand, hand, foot, foot. I got that but in terms, I have some experience of understanding what it takes to become internationally competitive or top towards the top of the world, in both cross country skiing and adventure racing. So that's I think I can add some perspective from that side, even though I can't, you know, define one muscle versus the other, right, that's not my skill set, and I am being a dad to a four year old guy who consumes a lot of my life at the moment. So that's me. Thank you so much for having me. Hopefully I can share some of my experience or wisdom or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, luckily this isn't an anatomy podcast, so we don't have to delve into the specifics of human anatomy, but I think that some of your insights I mean. So, if I'm someone who's trying to become a competitive athlete, would that be an endurance athlete, a strength athlete, whatever, and this goes beyond the sport of cross country or Nordic skiing can you become that athlete by getting injured every single year?
Speaker 2:Absolutely not Exactly Right. But at the same time, I don't know anyone who has been towards the top of the world in anything who hasn't been injured. So they go hand in hand. Like you will not become successful and most of careers end or comes to an end or declines due to injury. That's extremely common.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so having the ability to prevent or minimize that part is so so important, right, because you can literally end your career, or it's actually very, very common. I can have several examples on cross country skiing, right, just, we have had NCAA champions, world Cup skiers all of them getting injured by stopping, having to stop their career due to lower back pains and things like that which you have discussed in the link on your previous podcast. So injuries are extremely important to minimize, but at the same time, I don't know anyone who hasn't had to deal with it. Like, if you are at the top of the world, you have probably gone through a lot of things that, like it's not something you can take away from. If you are going to be an athlete, you are going to have to deal with these stuff, these type of issues, like even in a very non-contact sport as cross country skiing oh, yeah, I completely agree.
Speaker 1:I mean having optimal fitness and driving the adaptations for optimal fitness requires a high level of stress to the body and to the psychological system, et cetera, and you're really always riding that razor's edge of doing something that is an optimal training load, versus the other side of that fine edge, which is doing something that may lead to injury. And that's one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on, because you've obviously had a success in coaching and if you got all of your athletes injured then you probably wouldn't have that much success, right.
Speaker 2:Maybe most likely not.
Speaker 1:And if we think about this in a sort of backwards scenario, we know what we could do to injure athletes, right. So some people would say, oh, you can't prevent injuries, there's no way to prevent injuries. In some ways, we obviously can reduce the risk of injuries because we know what are the factors and variables that we could manipulate to cause injuries. If I had your athletes come in and I was their coach and I told them okay, we're going to do a significantly high amount of intensity, we're going to couple that with a lot of volume, and then we're not going to eat it all, and then you're not going to sleep it all either, and then I'm going to yell at you and make you hate the sport. And we know, if I did that, the risk of them all getting injured if they listened to me, which they probably wouldn't the risk of them getting injured would really escalate.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's exponential, almost it would be. You would have a very, very injured team. Absolutely, no doubt about that. And yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And what you talk about, right, this super also so important to have the adaptation of your training.
Speaker 2:It's not just tolerating your training, it is also adapting to your training.
Speaker 2:So, just like you're saying, even if we are reducing the risk of injury, but with the right nutrition, the right amount of sleep, the right amount of you know, all of these things taking care of your body, you can increase the adaptation to the training, which means that then you can increase your load and your volume and then you adapt better and then you tolerate, you know, like. So it's not just tolerating the training load or volume, it is adapting to the training load and volume. If I, yeah, like, and what you can do at, you know, with all everything with cross training, as you discussed in your previous podcast, and all of these things, it's important to look at those things because one body might be able to handle this volume on, you know, on skis, but then they make that transfer from skis to dry land and running and suddenly there is a whole different component to that right, Because in cross country skiing specifically right, you don't cross country ski 365 days a year. We have this thing called summer.
Speaker 2:There is you know there is a big training period and then there's, like this, race period. So it's, you know, just like you're saying, there is no way, I wouldn't say no, it's a very, very small chance of you making it to become internationally competitive if you don't take care of all these other things. I do not know of an example I'm sure there is one somewhere you know but from all my observations is you do not become internationally competitive unless you take care of your body and doing all of those things and trying to make sure that you can adapt to that training.
Speaker 1:Now what are some of the signs that you look out for as a coach with your athlete? That tells you that the athlete may be tolerating the training but not necessarily adapting to that training. They're not soaking up that stimulus and then having supercompensation in their physiological system.
Speaker 2:So we do so. It's very. This is very interesting, and here I think it's important to differentiate between top level World Cup athletes and high school athletes, because once you are internationally acceptable or internationally competitive, or whatever you want to call it, your life becomes much more centered around the sport. When you look at a high school athlete, or once you start getting to college as well, right, there's a lot, a lot of things to going on. We do baseline testing every month to make sure to see performance development over that over the last 30 days.
Speaker 2:The issue, the thing with a World Cup athlete, is that you can look like okay, what stress did you come from? You know like I was traveled. Did you travel to different continents? Jet lag there's. You know, training load. There are not that many inputs. Where you look at a high school athlete, well, you have your training load and training volume as an input. But then there's and I don't mean to minimize the stress of World Cup skiers, but their lives are much more sharper than the high school athlete who is more like oh yeah, this, you know, girl I liked, said she didn't like me back and I also ate goldfish for lunch and then.
Speaker 2:I had this huge paper to the morning I decided to binge watch this Netflix thing and I went to bed at one am and you're, like nice, wonder why your baseline testing is worse. So there is those things that high school students do, or middle school. There is not that many on the World Cup level that do those things, so you have a more higher variance in results, even though maybe the training goes well here, right, versus when you're talking to elite groups. Elite groups they still do stupid stuff sometimes, right, it's not like they're perfect by any means, you know like, but they have a tendency to not have as high variance in this thing as there.
Speaker 2:But so we do a baseline test and then the thing that I think is absolutely key with high school students or high school and is to listen to the athletes, because all of those examples I just gave, they are not just theoretical examples that I came up with. These are things that actually happen. Like I didn't bring my running shoes to the running time trial, so I ran in sneakers again Totally happens. So you need to have an understanding from the coach to the athlete and have a good communication pattern. You respect the athlete, the athlete listens to you, you listen to the athlete. That they're like I did this silly thing, like I didn't have my shoes with me or I didn't I ate goldfish for lunch or whatever. Okay, don't be judgmental and be like you cannot do that because they are still just high school students. So they will do silly things, but understand what they're coming from, listen to them and see what you can adjust. And then don't demand perfection. Don't demand international perfection or level from high school students, but try to educate them on what it takes to get there. Right, and that's, I think, a key thing to listen.
Speaker 2:And then I have the training load for everyone of my athletes, or former athletes track their training, their tractor volume. They use heart rate monitors, they track their, so they get a load. And then are the load calculations exact, whatever? That is another podcast by itself, but you can then see their performance with monthly baseline testing versus the load they had. And are they adapting to this or are they not improving? Are they, you know, in terms of injury prevention? Prevention over training is a big thing in Nordic skiing, but for many, under training is also a thing. Right, yeah, where you are now in males producing very high levels of testosterone during puberty, right, and they are maybe not training enough to being able to utilize all this like extra free boost. It's free, I would say, because there's like a lot of hormones going on. You can definitely start increasing load and volume there.
Speaker 1:And what kind of baseline testing are you talking about? Like a time trial, or we do?
Speaker 2:running time trial, very simple, the best there are ski ergs, which mimics double polling. We also do time trial on roller skis. Roller skis outside is unfortunately not so exact because of wind and you know if you have rain or wet surface it changes the conditions enough. And this is where, compared to swimming and running, cross country skiing becomes a little bit more complex because there are so many other inputs, so the friction coefficient between the ski and the surface changes enough. So outside testing isn't great on that.
Speaker 2:So instead, if you can, the three things that I have found most beneficial is running and again you've got a measure running against yourself, not just because another. If you have a great runner, awesome, you're a great runner, great for running, but you also can have a slower person. You know like you have to compare it to yourself, not against others. Ski yard, extremely high usage in Scandinavia, not as much here, but concept two skier, a great tool and showing double pull capacity. And then lastly, for we do have the luxury to here in Summit have a roller ski treadmill, which is absolutely the best testing that we have available to us, and we have skis that don't change, so we have the same. You know like they are only used for the roller ski treadmill and you can do excellent testing there and see performance, because then you take out away the outside inputs like weather friction.
Speaker 1:And speaking of baselines, what are some of the physiological baselines that have become so readily available through the use of wearables and technology that you monitor on either yourself or some things that you maybe monitor on your athletes? I mean, we know that now we have so much data that we can look at, from heart rate, heart rate variability, O2 saturation, all these things. Some of these things matter a ton. Some of these may not matter as much. What sort of things do you look at? What variables do you look at amongst your athletes?
Speaker 2:So what do you do versus what do you do for yourself? This is, I am of the belief that the process needs to be enjoyable. If you are at a too early of an age telling a kid you need to do this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this, don't treat kids like you treat elite athletes. They are two different groups. So I, my top level junior athletes, do you know training, low training volume, resting, heart rate, maybe heart rate variability when it sleep might go in there too, but there is just for the top. If you want to take that step and if you want to become you know like, looking at internationally, but for a lot of the juniors we are looking at, are you training enough? Are you training you know like? Or are you training and are you having fun? Because if you are going to have fun, you are going to train more. If you enjoy going to practice, you are going to go to practice more often. If you don't like going to practice, it will be harder for you to go to practice. So are you making the process enjoyable? Is it possible? Once we come up, if we look at those that are on an international level. We track resting heart rate first of all. Training volume, training low time in different zones. You know how much percentage of your training time is in the zones four or five, how much is in zone three, how much is? Are you having the right polarization, are you doing the right periodization, etc. And then so that's all. During training, and then for passive, we're looking at heart rate variability. Resting heart rate, body temperature and sleep would be say. Actually, I have not tracked oxygen saturation in any athlete, but it's something that's you know, those resting inputs, and if we look at, you know, I think, more and more people. It becomes so easy to track these things now that more and more people are going to be tracking these things and we're going to be able to build better and better models and better and better models, and we're going to be able to build better and better models and better and better training programs with help of all of these inputs and AI here in over the next 10 years. I see like a revolution in this.
Speaker 2:The key thing to remember, though we can track all of these things. These are great things to track. Your goal is to be as fast as possible, usually Like there is nothing better than speed right and in running and swimming, relatively easy, because it's like in skiing it's a little bit trickier to know. But the overall goal is to be as fast it's not to be as well rested as possible, it's not to be at. You know, and just you mentioned that, right, you go and have to train down so you can get a super compensation very basic, but like that's. You cannot go out and expect to feel good every single day. But you should also not dig yourself too far down the hole because if you go on the other side it will be over training it's much easier to dig a hole than to get out of the hole.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that also goes to the nuance of like between athletes. So I'm sure that you've noticed this, where some athletes kind of need that motivation and need that pep talk, like hey, you need to go out and you need to train really hard today. And then some athletes it's like hey, you're training a little bit too hard, you're working out a little bit too much and your intensity is a little bit too high. You need to back off a little bit.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and the answer exactly is it always depend on the individual athlete, and we see this now, with all of this Data becoming easily available. We can see that taper periods for athletes can vary between like two weeks to four weeks, just in how they to get an optimal performance. You have a very different taper period between two different things and and that's where the individual coaching can start matter a lot instead of just like this is how we do it boom stamp it. This is work for you know. So so it's, it's a very, very interesting part of sport. I think all endurance sports over the next 10 years will be. You know, we'll get a lot, lot more data and we are going to see a lot, lot more changes in individualization and, you know, get a much better understanding of what's required for each different individual.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and that brings up an interesting point between the sort of team based approach and the individualized approach, because I went to, you know, very, very high level High school running program and very, very high level college running program. But it was largely that team approach where it's like, well, this is what everybody's got to do, you know, and some people just soaked up and absorb that training so well. I mean, when I was in high school we had a winner of the NXN and Gatorade athlete of the year. We had all of these extremely amazing runners and it's like some people just absorbed that training exquisitely and then absorb that taper period perfectly. And then some people got super injured.
Speaker 1:You know, like when I went to college, I was injured all the time and so having that difference in approach based on that individual and having wearable wearables and technology that we didn't have when I was in high school and college, sometimes I sometimes make a big difference. I mean, I know I didn't always respond super great to taper periods because I was unable to sleep, because I had so much energy. I was just bouncing off the walls, you know, and I didn't feel like eating and all this stuff, and sometimes my best efforts, my best running times came from those times where I was in really high training loads. That's super interesting, right?
Speaker 2:Because there is no doubt in my mind that it's beneficial to be a part of a good team. It makes you want to go, it makes you have fun, it makes you be a group that all strives for the best things. You know like you all drive each other to be better. But there's also the best team, and like you all drive each other to be better. But there's also that important thing for the coach to listen to their athletes there and be like, huh, I'm start noticing a pattern, I start noticing a trend. Our team is super successful, we are doing great, but this athlete here underperforms there. You know like. Or this athlete here underperforms at those start.
Speaker 2:And now before we were sort of just especially in skiing right Guessing because we don't have that exact data as runners have where you're like oh, you run this fast, now you're running slower right, and skiing was like well, I had this race or whatever. But now we're starting to get all of this data input into the sport where we can see that like, oh, this is going great, but I need to do this like modification for this athlete for a big race or whatever. Right, I need to do this because they can. And again, this is often at the higher level, where at the high school level, you're more seeing all these random things that teenagers do. And it's okay, it's totally fine, like teenagers should do random things but they have to learn from themselves.
Speaker 2:Like that, goldfish isn't the best you know lunch before race, or you know it sounds like I'm totally down on goldfish, but I'm just you know example that's maybe not the most fully nutrition.
Speaker 1:Oh I'll touch it out. They're made with real cheese. I mean, come on.
Speaker 2:What more could you ask for? It should be fine, right.
Speaker 1:Goldfish, maybe an espresso before the race, and you'll be ready to go. So some of those variables can give us good input on the variables that can be a measure of how that athlete is adapting to the training, but some variables that we can modify. You brought up nutrition a couple of times already with the goldfish and stuff like that. But what are some of the nutritional advice that you would give to some of your athletes? Would that be for fueling during races, after races, things like that?
Speaker 2:So first of all I have to say I am not a nutritionist. My nutritional understanding is about the same as my understanding of anatomy. So we've got to you know, start with that. But I have lived some decades around top level performers and there are some rule of thumbs that's used in the world of, you know, the best skiers in the world. It's a very interesting. There's one, especially from Norway, that I love. I think it's so we've got to realize, like the top cross-country skiers and this is covered many times right have a training volume 900 to 1100 hours, ish 800 probably, maybe a little bit if you're more sprinter focused. But we're talking relatively high training volume in generally, in just measured in hours, slightly less than a professional road biker because they're in a closed chain environment with no impact. But we have very low impact but we're not in a closed chain environment. And then we have runners, who is probably a little bit less because you know everyone at the top tries to train as much as you can your body can adapt to Like no one is. Like you know I'm going to leave 100 hours on the table. Yes, that's what I want to do, right? So that's my advice for today To be able to handle that training load.
Speaker 2:Norwegian, this was five, seven years ago. Whatever juniors had a rule, it might be a decade now. I'm getting old quick. After every workout I eat within three minutes of my finishing workout. They have a drink belt with a snack in the drink belt and they try to eat within three minutes of the finished workout. I'm not saying they're having a complete meal, but they try to get some sort of energy within three minutes. That's a little bit extreme maybe, but if you get into that habit you're not going to go two hours and be like let me sit back in the van and not do it.
Speaker 2:I see that if I look at the juniors that are internationally competitive, there's no one who doesn't eat right after the workout. Personally, I dislike the term. There's that window, the nutrition window, within 30 minutes after the workout. As a youth coach, I don't like to use the word window because it signals something that closes and now you can miss it or whatever. I like to frame it as an opportunity. You have an ability to decrease your recovery period and recovery hours and increase adaptation. It's an opportunity to me that you should eat within 30 minutes of finishing, if you go to Norwegian a little bit more extreme style eat within five minutes and then eat at least something every half hour until you get a proper meal.
Speaker 1:I think that's really important to not have these set in stone windows of opportunity for carbohydrate intake or protein intake and things like that, because then you get that athlete who, oh, it's been 35 minutes since my workout. I might as well just wait two or three hours. We know physiologically, if we begin fueling very quickly after about an exercise, we can replenish glycogen stores much more quickly than if we waited two or three hours and then had the same amount of nutrient intake. There is an opportunity and we should be fueling as quickly as possible. Typically it should be a carbohydrate heavy refueling. I know a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Carbohydrates are really not in vogue anymore. They've become demonized in the health circles. No, no carbohydrates at all. There are people that are even saying carbohydrates are not a necessary nutrient and stuff like that. It's like if you want to perform at a very high level in endurance sports, carbohydrates sure are an unnecessary nutrient. There is nobody that is really performing at super high levels in these high intensity endurance sports. That isn't in taking a lot of carbohydrates. I think a lot of the research that is being done in very high level cyclists and cross country skiers and runners etc is actually trending more towards even higher amounts and literally training the gastrointestinal system to absorb more carbohydrates during training, so that you get more fueling even during training as opposed to just after or before and things like that.
Speaker 2:But that's more for a lot of people. If we look at if we would take the amount of carbs, throw cross country skier looks and put that on a normal person, they would probably think it's insane.
Speaker 1:Probably throw up too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is more likely. I think you talked about it on the previous podcast, but Kikchoge obviously eat oatmeal before every marathon and I would say 90% of good cross country skiers do that. If we go back 20 years, it was probably 99.5%, so it might have gone down a little. But yeah, it's the diet again, not nutritionist. But and there are people who can talk way more about this and way more exact level than I can but we see a very what's suitable for one person right is not. Or a normal, normal person is not what's suitable for a high level athlete and just what you're saying. The carb intake is pretty absurd compared to you, compared to a normal person. But you also are spending an absurd amount of time at extremely elevated heart rates doing something you know race or sharp or whatever right. So so it's yeah. The answer is it depends what are you doing? Yeah, then, compared to what you're doing, it depends on what you're going to eat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this goes to that factor of nuance. You know, if we're talking about general population person who's trying to just go out and have a fun cross country ski, like you shouldn't be pounding as many carbohydrates as someone who's really trying to perform at the highest level or at their highest level, and that scenario what we're saying is, you know, commensurate to the amount of load, commensurate to the amount of volume and intensity of your training, you need to have macronutrient intake in the form of carbohydrates as well as fats and proteins. If you're general population and you're going out for a half hour leisurely cross country ski, then that's a totally different ball game, you know. So that's one thing that I really like to. That, I think, is one of the interesting things that I love to feature and talk about on this podcast, is nuance, and that's one of the reasons it's called the art of prevention and not the, the black and white science of prevention, because they're going to be differences between individuals and how they absorb nutrients, how they utilize nutrients and their overall nutrient needs to.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and you know, that's the answer is almost always it depends, and it is not at all as sexy as being like. This is what you need to do. Do this and you will become nationally or internationally competitive. That's, that's it. And I mean, that's very nice to sell books or to get you know ears and eyes on on your videos, but it's often not reflecting reality, right? Because reality is much more nuanced than if we could all just follow this Boom. Do this and you will become internationally. You know, you know, on the podium in a world championships, I would guess a lot of people who want to follow that, right? But it all depends. Humans are very, very complex, with very, very complex lives, and therefore the answer is almost always it depends, because it has to do with the individual.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree, and that's something that is definitely lost, and sometimes you even see you know someone who performed at a really high level, and then they go Well, this is what I did. So now this is what's going to help you, and it's like no, you're a freak.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, there could be a person with extremely good fitness or very easy to adapt, to adapt to, you know, this type of cardiovascular training, but was lacking in this or whatever and the other things. That's extremely good max speed, but it's lacking in this, this thing, and then they're like this work for me. I'm going to push everyone through the same method forward and because I became, you know, internationally competitive on this recipe and therefore everyone should just do that. And it's like you are not taking into account the differences between all these individuals and as we're now getting a lot of data, I think we see that it much more differences than might one might have expected, you know, in terms of how people respond to different Now, one thing that you kind of just mentioned is some people are born with certain gifts, certain natural talents and certain natural strengths in cross country skiing.
Speaker 1:it might be their sprint ability, their ability to produce power quickly, their endurance ability, their overall like fitness, or maybe they have a natural talent for their biomechanics and their actual technique in skiing. But one thing that we mentioned or talked about in our kind of pre recording call was the development of very well rounded athletes, and that's how you go to the next level. Is you know you? I think that you said what training the weak points, but then racing your strengths, right, what can you? Tell me about the whole well rounded athlete.
Speaker 2:This, this I could talk for another hour and it will be along. There will be a specific podcast just about me talking about well rounded athletes, as as cross country skiers, because in this season I think we have the perfect example, because it is it is so fascinating to me the best female skier in the world right now is Jesse Diggins. She is American. She is leading the World Cup with like 200 points over Lin Svann or something like 200 close to. And then you know, there's a Sweden second place. So it's like for me, with dual citizenship Sweden in US I'm like, hey, no, and she has been. She's such an amazing, amazing role model for an imposter, you know, athlete for cross country skiing in the US. And if we look at her abilities and her you know capacities, athletic profile or however you want to want to see it, it is very, very fascinating because she's the best in the world.
Speaker 2:On me be one thing, maybe two like her downhill, technical, downhill capacity. So a very, very high technical downhills fallen comes to mind, which has she is probably faster than anyone else, but that would be it, you know like. And then her mental game is super strong, but if we look at her overall fitness she's not best in the world. There is Laucle, claudel, daphne, heidi Vang. Abba Andersson probably has a higher VU2 capacity at any. You know, like in better fitness. And if we look at technique, she does not have the best in the world. There was I mean, she's very open about this there was a full page article in Sweden how much she was lagging behind the Swedish gear. And you know, if we look at max speed she's not the best in the world, but she doesn't have a weakness. She can do literally everything at the top five level in the world, top 10,. You know she has great fitness, the acceptable technique and just good speed and her ability to sprint at the end of a race is unbelievable. Like she can dig so deep. But she has all the components and it's taken years to get there. But she is by far the best here in the world by not being best at anything but not having a problem, like not having weakness. And there, like, all I can see is like congrats, you're, you're amazing. Like you don't have these big deficiencies that the other your opponents or competitors or friends or whatever you want to call them can take advantage of. Like you're good, like you don't have a weak spot that someone can go and kill on, and that's so fascinating, so cool to me and I think this is something that you know when you develop high school gears and when you develop the, you need to look at the whole component. What is your technique? And I Like technique, I love talking about this and biomechanics a lot, because Basic physics, you are trying to move a mass around the course right, and we can just do force vectors and see where your biomechanics goes and if it goes the wrong like it's a relatively black and white area of skiing like this is a less effective force vector than this.
Speaker 2:Right, this is more correctly going to accelerate the mass around the course. But as a coach for younger athletes, it's so important that you don't stare yourself blind on one of these things. Just like you say, someone might have great feel for the ski and putting good pressure on it and skis really big, but but to be perfectly honest, this is often Alpine skiers coming to Nordic. They often have a very, very good feel for the ski but they're lacking enormous in fitness and they don't have the cardiovascular capacity to be competitive in on if they want to go up to a college or international level. Again, high school, different things. And if you take a runner, probably very good fitness, really really good, but can't Biomechanically move. You know that ski and putting the same pressure on the ski often Not saying this is applicable to everyone all the time, generalizing slightly here but very good fitness but might not have the technique that's required.
Speaker 2:And I think, or then we see someone who has like an enormous, you know, ability to have speed at threshold and do very, very well at these hour races or hour or longer and they have a really good speed at threshold but they have no ability to have a speed reserve or speed capacity that when someone decides to ski away from us in the group they can't do that search or acceleration and what they can have. And I think is so important, where she's showcasing right now and it's beautiful, is that you don't need to be the best at everything. But you can't have these weaknesses and ask high school, when we teach our high school athletes or middle school athletes or younger athletes, we need to recognize that, ok, you are great at this, but for you to become internationally, you need to work on this area, or you need to work on this area, right, and we can't. You say that, oh, fitness person wins, because it's not true. Fitness person doesn't always win. They, you know, very it happens to. You get Seaman Hicks like you get one Olympics and could arguably be one of the fittest you know.
Speaker 2:But US ski team has stopped about five, six years ago to do the two max tests on their World Cup skiers because there is no correlation between their view to Max and their place in the World Cup. Once, if you have 85 or 95 as a male, and it doesn't really make that difference for your World Cup, if you have 65 or 75 as a female, it's. You know, that's not what's going to make that last thing. There's. There's so many other other things. Granted, all of them are very high numbers. There's no one who is there and has a really low number, right. So that's the thing you need to have that whole package to become internationally competitive or towards the top in the country. And that's something that I think is so interesting in this sport, because it means that you always, always, always have things to work on. And you know, like best skier in the world still has best female skier in the world, like still has a ton of things that she can improve and get even better at, and it's super, super cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think you brought up some really interesting points, because as a coach it's probably really easy to take that high school athlete and say, oh, you have great endurance, we're going to work on your endurance more and we're just going to put you in really long races. You know, we're just going to let you excel and we're going to build on that strength. And sometimes it's tough when you only have a short amount of training time and all these other variables. With these high school athletes it's tough to say, ok, well, today we're going to work on your technical ability or today we're going to work on your turnover and your sprint speed. I see this, you know.
Speaker 1:You see this with running all the time too. You know you get some kid who you know maybe didn't play soccer, didn't play football or things where you have to have a lot of foot speed, and you're like, oh, you just have a good engine, so you're going to be a two-miler and that's all you're going to do. You know, and sometimes like you should work on that kid's foot speed because you never know what could happen as they go through those developmental changes like puberty and things like that. That person could change and they could develop that foot speed and then be a really great 800 or 400 meter runner. And the same thing goes for in the two mile or when they go to college, like in the 5K and things like that. At the end of those races, you know you have to be able to run a 50 second quarter in in college in order to be a contender for a 3000 meter or a 5000 meter national title. You know that's just what it is now you have. You can't have these weak points. You know it's if you're.
Speaker 2:Go ahead, you're absolutely right, unless the athlete is like this is my last year. I just after this, I am not racing anymore and what I want from you as a coach is to optimize my performance this year. So when I sit back and I'm a retired college kid, you know, I can look back and be happy that I crushed out the most I could during my senior year in high school or whatever, right, that's one other case. But otherwise it's hard, just like you're saying, to become nationally competitive you need to finish with a 50 to 52, whatever 400, something like that. I again not not an expert on track and field like that, but I'm not an expert anymore either.
Speaker 2:so Like and the speed that is required to be competitive at. If we're talking about, to use the pure engine guy person. Right, they need to develop their speed because the amount, the high speed that is required at the international level or NCAA level is used to be competitive, so high comparatively. And as a coach, I think one of the biggest mistakes we can do is to look at the individuals and be like I want you to maximize your performance here right now and not be like, hey, I want to build you as an athlete over the next 10 years.
Speaker 2:So when you leave me or what if you're a junior coach or whatever senior, you have a face so you can become, you know, having the athletic career you want over the next 10 years, because hopefully your career is, you know, if that's what you want to have a long, successful career, it's impossible to become a competitive runner without a high max speed. It's impossible to become a competitive runner without a high engine or decent. It's impossible to become a competitive runner without the correct biomechanics Same things, you know. You can't be a skier without max speed, without the correct biomechanics, without these things. So as a coach for younger athlete juniors, it's really a lot about making sure that they don't have these deficiencies, then trying to optimize their capacity in this one part of the sport where they will do really well right now. Right so, completely agree, or that's, you know, fits in with what I have seen over the last 10 years or so.
Speaker 1:And so, olaf, we're coming up to about an hour of interviewing here and I always like to finish these podcasts kind of the same way and I like to think about. You know this famous saying from this guy, benjamin Franklin, and what he said was an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So we've talked about a ton of different things today. We talked about fueling, we talked about wearables, we talked about the progression of the US and cross country skiing and all this great stuff. But if we had to synthesize that information into a couple of minutes or a couple of, as you could say, ounces of prevention, what would we distill that information into? What are your ounces of prevention for any athletes or coaches or clinicians that may be listening, for you know the cross country skiing or endurance sports in general?
Speaker 2:Well, don't minimize the complexity of the individual. That would be my, my short answer to that. I would like to to. I'm going to put you on the spot to do a little test here For a boy. Any listener here can can try to answer as well. So what country has two, two techniques? Right, it has classic and skate. Within each there is sub techniques. On the total, how many techniques do across country ski or have to learn, didn't you?
Speaker 1:say, there are like nine different sub disciplines.
Speaker 2:Maybe I told you correct you can. We can respect any answer between nine and eleven, so it depends on if you're up striding into striding in clay bow and and a V1 to V1 and V1 hop. But so we have nine to eleven different biomechanical movements you have to learn very, very compared to I. You know, if we're swimming and they're all three-dimensional has four plus the underwater, so there's a couple there, but it's a very high task, very high demand on the cardiovascular system on top that very complex biomechanics. So if you were a coach or you know someone who works with the cross-country skier, don't understand the complexity of it and view it from the An overall and it sounds so cliche but like you got to look at the whole picture.
Speaker 1:That was the force of the truth.
Speaker 2:Right, you have to look at the whole pictures because if you don't do the correct, you know, like, the injury risk and the burnout risk and the things.
Speaker 2:If you're just pressing on one single issue in this sport, it will I can't say it well but the risk of you burning out athletes or having getting them injured, or you know, like, if you're an athlete just like that, you want to stop and not do the sport anymore. Take into the complexity of this sport and understand that there's always something that can be improved. Or, and with building that whole thing, you will become much more resilient to To injury. And then, if you're just looking at one or for two things, and Especially juniors, but it goes, that's like the one thing I say from juniors to you know, world Cup skiers, that like the whole picture and understanding the complexity of it is, you know, the key thing to To injury prevention, I would say in cross-country skiing, yeah so the biggest things are Look out for those nuances, those individual variances that make everybody so special and unique, and then Kind of look at variability as a means to train without over-training.
Speaker 1:You said that's a pretty good exactly awesome. Well, olaf, this was super fun and We'll be talking later, but we'll definitely have to have you on to talk more about coaching and all of these specific things again in the future. So thank you so much again and We'll be talking again soon.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me, nick.
Speaker 1:I hope that you enjoyed this episode of the Art of Prevention podcast. If you did enjoy and or benefit from some of the information in this podcast, please be sure to like, subscribe and share this podcast, or Please give us a five-star review on any platform that you find podcasts. One thing to note that this podcast is for education and entertainment purposes only. No patient is formed and If you are having any difficulty, pain, discomfort, etc. With any of the movements or ideas described within this podcast, please seek the help of a Qualified and board certified medical professional, such as your medical doctor or a sports chiropractor, physical therapist, etc. I