X-Country skiing: 8 week plan

For all those cross-country skiers needing a plan to get you into racing fitness here is a plan to get you in shape. For all those triathletes that want to keep the motivation and fitness over the winter here is a plan to get you started.

This is a basic 8-week plan to prepare for a series of cross-country ski races at the end of the program. This would best be suited to people that have skied before and have a good general fitness, training 3-5 times per week in the summer and autumn. The program is not classic or skate specific however balancing the different techniques equally throughout the plan will prevent over use in any one technique while giving variety. If your racing is one type of technique, then weight the sessions 70 -30% toward the technique style you will be racing in.

All session start with a warm up (WU) and warm down (WD). Recovery within a session is shown as (Rec). MHR = Maximum Heart Rate and is a percentage of your maximum heart rate, used to gauge how hard a session is. All session finish with a jog and mobility to aid recovery, this time is not shown, 10-15min is a good starting place.

Remember working on technique is always better than just going flat out with poor technique. Work on the areas you feel can improve your overall racing speed.

Remember to work at the right intensity at the right time, if you work too hard when you should be going easy, you will not be able to work hard enough when you need too!

Key: WU = Warm Up, WD = Warm Down, Rec = Recovery, MHR = Max Heart Rate, LT = Lactate Threshold (approximate 85% of MHR).

Total 1hr

Race

Race