American Birkebeiner

The Birkie Training Plan from CXC
www.cxcacademy.com

Introduction

We know what it’s like. You’ve got big-time passion for cross country skiing and the Birkie, but you’ve got little time for yourself. Every week, you’re pulled in so many different directions that you sometimes need a GPS system just to find your way back home. Sure, you’d love to make training for the Birkie a regular part of your life, but let’s face it, there’s nothing regular about your life. Maybe you’ve thought about joining your local training group or a gym many times, but since you can’t commit to a regular day and time, you obviously can’t do it.

We would like to introduce you to a new way to look at training, which was presented to us by Igor Badamshin. Igor assisted our Elite Team with his training philosophy, which has played a critical role in the success of our team and athletes. This success comes in the form of winning the Birkie to racing in the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Igor also was a distance specialist during his racing career, top 15 Olympic skier in the 50km, podium finisher at the World Cup and World Championships. On several occasions Igor finished in a group of ski legends like Bjorn Daehlie, Vegard Ulvang and Vladimir Smirnov. Igor is now giving advice to his fellow citizen skiers.

The Birkie Training Plan from CXC is designed with your busy schedule in mind. You make the schedule. You set the time. You train when it works for you. This training plan provides everything you need to be a good skier, built around your busy lifestyle. With The Birkie Training Plan from CXC, you can control everything—with the possible exception of your buddy's fitness level who will challenge you on the Birkie Trail this winter.

Now it’s up to you to look at your personal situation, and determine how much training time you will have during a week. Next, you’ll have to commit to following this plan. We’ll help you answer the question, “What workout is best for my time schedule?”

We have been putting the pieces of this puzzle together for the last four years by working with master/citizen skiers and by assisting our CXC Academy members. We came up with simple concept to help you make a training plan based on the time you have available, and assigning a value of importance to each workout that will help you get ready for your best Birkie yet!

This is a complex training plan made simple, tailored to your available time, eliminating the confusing terminology, and making complicated workouts easier to understand. Here is a simple list describing the order of importance for weekly workouts. We will get to more details on this in a little bit.

1. Endurance – Most Important
2. Specific Strength – Very Important
3. Speed Endurance – Very Important
4. Threshold Endurance - Important
5. General Strength - Important
6. Speed - Important

Enter this list in your outlook reoccurring every Monday at 7am, blackberry, i-phone or simply write it down on a yellow sticky note and put it in your wallet!

If you are looking for more structure than check out our on-line training website www.cxcacademy.com. It has variety of structured training plans, hours of technique and training videos.

1. Endurance - Easy pace 2-3.5 hour workout. Should feel like you can do it for the whole day. Do it on skis in the winter or rollerski, bike, run, walk with poles or mix it up with different activities if snow is not on the ground yet. This is what is going to get you past the lake and up Main Street in Hayward.

2. Specific Strength - Seems silly but you have to do it. Double pole and no-pole ski for 1.5 hours. If you can’t do it for that long, do it as long as you can. Mix it up again and double pole 50% and no-pole ski 50%. No snow on the ground, wipe the dust off your sliding board and bungee cords and get to work. Don’t have any equipment, be creative! Running or walking up the stairs will take care of you legs and pulling on an old bike tube cut in half will get you arms working.

3. Speed Endurance - This is a relatively short, but hard effort anywhere from 2 to 6 minutes and it should feel like you have climbed the Powerline or to the top of "OO". You should get 25 to 35 minutes of this feeling in order to do it right.

4. Threshold Endurance – Threshold Endurance are your longest intervals, and they are designed to increase your Lactate Threshold. These intervals will range from 6 to 30 minutes. We have plenty of these intervals in our training plan, so it’s important to stay away from this level of effort when you are doing some of your easy/recovery work.

5. General Strength – In order to make the most out of Specific Strength it is important to condition larger muscle groups in your body to work together with these smaller muscles. General Strength is often done in a weight facility with free-weight focus.

6. Speed – Speed work is something that is often overlooked by Masters, but it is a great place to gain an advantage over your competition. Speed work can sometimes be done during warm-up before your Threshold Endurance work or inserted into some of your medium distance ski days. Be ready to cover the attempted break-away of your competition by doing your speed work.