Different Skiing Intensity, Different Fitness Demands: Improving MTI’s Dryland Ski Programming to Scale to the Individual Skier

By Emmett Shaul, MTI Strength & Conditioning Coach

We recently received an email from a 66-year-old athlete who highlighted a potential improvement opportunity in our Pre-Season Skiing Training Plans, and all mountain sport-pre-season plans.

This athlete reported that the programming was simply intense for him—specifically the Leg Blasters. Currently, weaker athletes often need to stop, rest, and/or break up the leg blaster sets, while stronger athletes can complete them unbroken and may not be sufficiently pushed. Also, the leg blasters, with their deep lunges, can be challenging or impossible for older athletes to get the full range of motion.

MTI’s sport-specific training plans are purposely designed as “peak” training plans to be deployed directly before the season. The goal is to have the athlete as sport-specifically fit as possible when the season starts. This achieves two things.

First, durability. Sport-specific fitness is the best think we can do to make an athlete durable for his/her sport. Many skiing injuries, especially at the beginning of the season, come on afternoon the third of fourth day of skiing in a row, when the athlete is fatigued. That “one more run” turns into a fall and a season-ending knee injury.

Second, every skier’s technique is rusty at the beginning of the ski season – most haven’t skied in over 6 months. An athlete who comes in sport-specifically fit is able to ski longer and harder in the early season, and as a result, more quickly kick out the rust. This is especially important for skiing professionals (instructors, patrol) and professional free-skiers and snowboarders. Essentially, early in the season, better fitness results in faster technique improvement.

Unlike a specific mountain plan to climb a specific peak, like the Grand Teton, how hard the individual skier actually skis can differ by athlete to athlete. The summit of the Grand Teton is the same for everyone – no matter the age or the incoming fitness of the athlete, and thus the fitness demands to summit (12 miles, 16K vertical gain/loss total) are the same for every climber.. There is no “special” summit of the Grand Teton for 66 year olds. The objective does not change regardless of the athlete’s age or fitness level – and neither do the absolute fitness demands to reach it.

However, the intensity skiing, and other mountain sports, can differ by athlete. A 26-year-old professional freeskier will ski at a higher intensity, and on more difficult terrain than a 66-year-old who sticks to the groomers. The 66 year old simply doesn’t need to be as fit before the season starts. It became clear that our ski pre-season training plans needs to better scaled for each individual athlete.

Current Scaling Approach

Until this year, for our dryland ski programming specifically, when asked by older athletes about modifications we’d advise them to reduce the range of motion for the leg blasters and touch/jump/touch to box intervals (smaller box) and take more rest days as needed. Not to skip training sessions if they needed additional rest days, but to plan on the programming to take longer and push the calendar to the right. So it might take them 7 or 8 weeks to complete the prescribed 6 week programming.

MTI’s dryland ski programming is dominated by two exercises/events:

(1) A Leg Blaster Progression to buiild eccentric strength and strength endurance, and …

(2) Touch/Jump/Touch Intervals to a Box – to build leg lactate tolerance.

The best way to scale training to individual athletes is throug assessment-based progressions, where the training prescription adapts to an athlete’s current fitness and progresses from there.

Beginning this year, we started to implement this methodology into our dryland ski programming with a Touch/Jump/Touch to box assessment and follow-on progressions based on the assessment results. In this way the touch/jump/touch to box programming automatically scales to the incoming fitness of the athlete and continues to push them as their fitness improves.

However, this year the Leg Blaster progression remained static – the same for everyone. This is the flaw. A 26-year-old pro freeskier should and can complete a more intense progression than a 66-year-old groomer skier, not just due to age but because their in-season skiing intensity is higher. The current progression doesn’t account for this difference.

Developing An Eccentric Leg Strength Assessment and Progression

Our goal is to convert the Leg Blaster progression into an assessment-based model. The key question: how?

The primary goal of the Leg Blaster is to build eccentric strength. We broke the movement down and identified the in-place lunge and jumping lunge as the primary eccentric drivers — each requiring the athlete to decelerate (“brake”) before the knee hits the ground. Of the two, the jumping lunge is the more demanding eccentric movement. Therefore, the assessment and progression should revolve around jumping lunges.

A simple way to assess jumping lunge capacity is through a max-rep-in-time test — but what time duration is ideal? Two minutes? Four? Six? We don’t yet know — testing will determine it.

At the top of our current Leg Blaster progression, athletes complete seven full rounds, equating to 70 in-place lunges (each leg) and 70 jumping lunges (each leg) — or 140 total eccentric efforts per leg. Because jumping lunges are harder than in-place lunges, we estimate 100 jumping lunges per leg as a suitable top-end goal for a fit, young athlete (like the 26-year-old freeskier).

Working backward, we want that same young, fit athlete performing roughly 10 jumping lunges per leg per round near the end of the cycle/top of the progression. If they complete 10 rounds, that’s 100 total reps. For 10 rounds, working sets should be around 25% of max reps, which implies that a fit athlete should reach roughly 40 jumping lunges per leg in the assessment. The ideal assessment duration should be long enough to allow for this — the next step is determining that time.

Integrating Assessments and Progressions

There’s another element to MTI’s assessment-based progression that’s important here. Our standard model includes three assessments — at the beginning (Week 1), midpoint (Week 4), and end (Week 7) of the dryland cycle.

So for this case, we need to determine how long it takes a fit athlete, after three hard weeks of ski-specific training, to reach 40 jumping lunges per leg at the mid-cycle assessment. The mid-cycle assessment will determine the reps per each round of the 10 Round intervals.

Our assessment-based bodyweight exercise progressions typically follow a set density interval format like Every Minute on the Minute (EMOM). However the strict interval may not be the best solution for Jumping lunges in this case because of the added intensity. A fixed period of rest, or sets broken up with Scotty Bobs as a “rest” exercise—as we currently have implemented—may be more appropriate.

Why? Overall cycle inensity might be too high.

This week is the final week of our current dryland ski cycle for our Jackson Lab Rats — myself included. Next week, I’ll conduct testing with myself and others to determine the optimal assessment duration for jumping lunges. Hopefully, I guess right and only have to do it once. I suspect three minutes might be the sweet spot.

Combining assessment-based Touch Jump Touch to Box and jumping lunge density intervals within the same training plan may drive intensity too high. The current Touch/Jump/Touch intervals are very intense – so much so that Rob believes they are the most intense work capacity programming he’s ever designed.

We closely monitor the intensity of our programming. Again, this plan like all our pre-season and event-specific plans is designed as a “peak” plan. We push intensity as high as we can, with the understanding that doing this level of intensity is unsustainable. Our Base Fitness programming is less inense for this reason.

Training at high intensity too long and too frequently can make sessions feel stale, non-motivating, and dreadful. I just completed the Dryland Skiing Training Plan and can attest to the intensity of the Touch Jump Touch intervals: 7 weeks of these was no joke and I wouldn’t add density jumping lunge intervals to the plan. It would result in too much intensity.

Final Thoughts

If our goal is for fit, young athletes to complete the equivalent of seven full Leg Blasters by the end of the cycle, the jumping lunge assessment must support that objective. If it’s too short, athletes won’t develop the required capacity. If it’s too long, the cycle may become excessively fatiguing and stale. Striking the right balance in assessment duration and progression design is key to matching the varied intensity demands of real-world skiing. Avoiding density intervals to progress the jumping lunges will help athletes mentally and physically complete the 7 weeks of progressions.

This approach provides a clear target rep scheme while allowing individual scaling. Both the 26-year-old pro freeskier and the 66-year-old groomer skier can complete the same MTI Dryland Ski Training Plan side by side — each appropriately challenged, and each prepared for the unique demands of their personal ski intensity when the snow flies.

Questions, Comments, Feedback? Email emmett@mtntactical.com