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Key Interval Workouts To Do Now
Published: Thu Oct 28, 2004 12:00 AM MDT Getting ready to race this season: 
Beckie Scott and Justin Wadsworth in a September interval workout A Common mistake for skiers making up their own training plan “as they go along” is that it’s usually too much distance training at one “medium hard pace”, usually 75-85% of max heart rate and that structured interval training is only occasionally used or not used at all. The chosen pace is usually what can be described at hard distance pace or gear 2-3. The disadvantage of always training in this zone and never easier or harder is that this becomes their race pace as well. If you are only training at one or two gears, that’s the gears you use and are stuck with in the races as well. A must for racing at the next gear/level is too include the 4th gear in training. The 4th gear or heart rate at 85-95% of max heart rate is scientifically proven to be best for developing a high O2. Get good at using 85-90% of max heart rate before you attempt going harder. Use 1st gear or heart rates of around 60-75% of maximum heart rates in your distance training on the “day after” or leading up to interval workouts to quicker recover from the intervals and to be physically ready to do them.. 
I’m suggesting that you include two or more (one is a bare minimum) weekly interval sessions using an interval length from 3-7 minutes and 3-6 repetitions. The recovery time should roughly be 3 minutes. Examples: 4 x 4 minutes with three minutes recovery, 4-5 x 3-6 minutes with 3-4 minutes recovery. The most common interval methods are: Running or running with poles in uphills (also called moose-hoofs or bounding with poles). You get extra upper body and O2 benefits from using your poles in this interval session, but it’s easy to go too hard. Hold back and make sure that you really use your arms as in diagonal skiing by moving your elbow and hands past your hip. Your heart rates will typically be plenty high enough even when you are holding back. You’ll learn that 4-minutes can be very long (!) and pacing yourself is important. A milestone is reached when you can do 4 x 4 minutes of these without slowing down or blowing up. 
Classic rollerskiing in uphills using a mix of double poling with kick and diagonal skiing. 
Skating on rollerskis in uphills using a mix of V2, V2 alternate and V1. I’ll discuss proper interval pacing in an upcoming article. 
Another article also covering interval training was posted on Fasterskier.com a few weeks ago. To check it out: http://www.fasterskier.com/training.php?id=1416 Note: Check out our personal coaching service if you are looking for specific and detailed training suggestions involving, distance, intervals, speed and strength training: http://www.torbjornsport.com/tbksports/personalcoaching.html
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