Using First Beat Software to Guide Training

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been learning how to use the First Beat software system to analyze workout efforts and recovery.    It’s a very powerful, but complex system and I’ve been lucky to have the guidance of Jim Galanes  (see http://www.jimgalanes.com/).  I think any Masters athlete looking to improve their health and race results would find his coaching quite valuable and worth the money.

To use First Beat software I collect data with two different heart rate monitors.  The Suunto Ambit 2 is a traditional chest-strap and wristwatch combo.  However, the watch can be programmed via a computer program to have custom displays of data for up to ten different sports.   If you’re running on the treadmill then you can turn off the GPS, but when doing a rollerski it is fun to see how much distance you have covered.  The other monitor is the BodyGuard 2 from First Beat.  It uses two electrodes that you stick onto your chest and it hangs on a wire connecting the two electrodes.  It can store several days worth of data.  I thought it would be uncomfortable, but I barely noticed during the day or during overnight sleep. 

The First Beat software can analyze the BodyGuard data to show when you are in a stressed state, a recovering state, or recovered.  If worn after a hard workout you can see the many hours it takes for the body to recover.   One interesting thing I noticed is that driving a car is stressful no matter what the traffic is like.  No wonder I’m tired after a long drive to Craftsbury.   First Beat also can analyze the data from the Suunto and compute a Training Effect number from 1 to 5. Training is supposed to stress the body to enough to stimulate an adaptation response.  So both the duration and intensity of the workout and the duration and quality of the recovery must be carefully monitored and evaluated.

I’m still learning the tools, but it seems that they will let me guide the athletes that I coach to be sure that they work hard enough when they need to work hard, easy enough when they need to go long, and that they properly recover from the hard or long workouts.

Here is a successful interval workout with a training effect of 4.0:

 Here is my physiological state during a good night’s sleep when I completely recovered:

You can read some very clear explanations of the details of using the system by Zach Caldwell here: http://www.caldwellsport.com/2014/07/firstbeat-epoc/

This past weekend I attended my 35th reunion at Harvard College.  While the parties were fun, the best part of the event were the sessions where classmates recounted their life stories with a special emphasis on overcoming setbacks and being resilient when life took a sudden wrong turn.  Several people had known the ultimate pain of losing a child.  How do you recover from something so traumatizing?  Jody told us of her loss, and how her father's experience as a Holocaust survivor informed her recovery.  She had learned that to be a survivor you must work to create other survivors.  Cornelia told us that she recovered from an abusive marriage with three key tools: first, a great support system of caring people, second, engaging her creativity in rebuilding her own life, and third, giving back to others.  In the area of support she told us about the four kinds of support that people can offer.  The best is Active Positive support where you say "That's great what you did, tell me more about it".  The next is Passive Positive where you just say "That's great that you succeeded".  But, some are Passive Negative where they might say "Great that you did well, but isn't it pretty easy and there are others doing better?".  Ouch.  Worst of course is Active Negative where someone says "You didn't really do anything good and you are not worth much".  To succeed we need to be very careful about who we surround ourselves with.

What does this have to do with ski coaching?  I feel that one of the great benefits of ski racing is that it gives us many chances to learn resiliency in a safe and not debilitating way.  Some day we will face a real trauma and perhaps the skills that we learned bouncing back from bad races will help us rebuild our broken lives.  As coaches we can teach our athletes to learn to get Active Positive support, to be creative in building their own lives, and to support others in their efforts to reach their own goals.

Measuring Talent

Simi, Jessie, and Sophie doing skits at REG.  Acting is a good measure of performance under pressure.

The latest post from the satirical blog, Nordic Tribune, has some arch comments about the difficulty of using dryland tests to determine on-snow skiing talent:  http://thenordictribune.blogspot.com/2014/05/usst-identifies-future-olympic.html

I've coached many times at the Eastern REG camp and was there as the USST developed their testing and selection process for NEG.  I know what a challenge it was to come up with some sort of standardized testing program. Is it a perfect system?  No, far from it.   It does have the advantage of setting up some objective measures that can give coaches some performance numbers to attach to athletes.  Athletes who win ski races are the sort of people who rise to any challenge and figure out a way to do well.  As a measure of competitive fire they are useful tests.  The satirical blog makes fun of having a 180 degree jump in the agility test and it makes fun of Newell because he didn't win on the World Cup last year.  But, I've watched Andy do the agility test and I think being of the top ten fastest skiers in the world is amazing.  I can see that his speed and coordination on the agility test correlates directly to his ability to mix it up with the skiers from the Nordic powerhouse countries.   He is great on rollerskis and even better on snow.

Given that the current testing system isn't perfect, what would be better?  In an ideal world (and please note this is just a fantasy of an ideal world), I would have all skiers on matched rollerskis and have them do two tests.  First, an uphill double-pole test.  In our testing at CSU we have found that this test has an excellent correlation to on-snow race performance.  Comparison between results of different regions would not be possible, but within each region you would have an excellent measure.  Second, I'd like to see a 5K skate rollerski time-trial.  With matched skis you would have an excellent measure of fitness and technique.  Again, terrain difference would make region to region comparison poor, but within each region you would see who can ski fast.

Hope to see some of you in Lake Placid for Eastern REG.

Back to Blogging (The Power of Goals)

Hi Coaches (et al.),

After an 18 month hiatus, I'm coming back for regular blogging.  I have no good excuse for not writing.  But, I've set a goal of weekly posts.  Hold me to it.

This brings up the subject of the power of goals.  Spring is the season when we CSU coaches meeting with our athletes to review the results of the past season and to set goals for the coming season.  We set outcome goals (i.e. race results) and also detailed process goals (i.e. the work we need to do) to help us reach the outcome goals.  I met on Sunday with a second year J2 skier.  He had a solid season this past winter and raced well at the NENSA J2 Championships.  For the coming year he set the goal for himself of making the NENSA Junior Nationals team.  I told him that he will need to lower his Double Pole Test time from 14:45 to 12:30 (among other improvements) to have the fitness to make the team.  One tool to achieve this goal will be using his homemade ski erg (the Robolina - directions on www.csuski.com) each week to build his specific power.  In the middle of the day on Monday I received an email from the skier with a copy of his training log showing that he had gotten up early that morning to use the Robolina before school.  Setting the outcome goal of making JNs and the process goal of improved double-pole power motivated the young man to put in the extra effort that it takes to reach the top levels of the sport.

East Yellowstone

The Craftsbury Outdoor Center has changed skiing in New England.  This year instead of going to West Yellowstone, I skied at Craftsbury on their 1.3K loop of manmade snow.  I know that sounds short, but with a rolling loop through the woods with a couple of good hills it was fast, fun, and challenging.  How does that compare to a trip to West Yellowstone?  It's hard to beat the scenic beauty of the west. When the snow is good the skiing is wonderful, and the crowds of elite skiers are inspiring.  On the other hand, there is the long and expensive flight to get there, the lung-burning thin air, some years with bad snow and trips to the plateau, and being away from family for the holiday. 

In years past I have taken the trip out west, and enjoyed myself.  The highlight of trips there came in 2003 when I skied for 90 minutes with Thomas Alsgaard.   But in terms of improving fitness and getting ready for ski racing I've always felt that the trip was a wash at best.  Sure I'd get some great time on snow, but the stress of the travel and time-change left me more tired than fit at the end of my trips. This year's experience at Craftsbury was so easy and so satisfying.  I could drive there, stay on my normal schedule, and ski as many kilometers as I could handle.

Next year CSU will be skiing at Craftsbury for Thanksgiving weekend!

Banging out a few K's at Craftsbury. (Fabio Schiantarelli Photo)

The Fantastic Race

"Chance favors the prepared mind" - Louis Pasteur

All Nordic skiers dream of having great races.  We want that transcendent experience where everything flows smoothly, we ski our very best, and have an exceptional result.  How do we get there?

I watched a good TED talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html) by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the best-selling novel "Eat, Pray, Love".   She ponders why so many artists are self-destructive or suicidal.  To find an explanation she examined how ancient Greek and Roman artists differed in how they viewed the creative process.  In those times artists credited their creative vision to a Genius, an external spirit,  that would possess them and provide the creative material that they merely had to record with pen, paint, or carving.  This took a lot of pressure off the artist.  Bad work?  It's just that the Genius didn't show up.  Great work? Can't take too much credit for it and get a swelled head.   Ms. Gilbert suggests that modern artists swing between narcissism after a triumph to despair after a subpar performance.  The ancients kept a more level keel since they viewed an external force as the source of both success and failure.  She suggested that modern artists can take the same attitude by just showing up every day to do their work and to not worry about forcing creativity.  They can wait "for a muse of fire to descend".  Sometimes it will and sometimes it won't.

I thought how this idea might apply to ski racers.  Think about your best results.  Did you know ahead of time that you were going to have a great race?  Or did it take you by surprise?  I know in my experience there is no correlation between my feeling before a race and its outcome.  Days where I felt sick or ill-prepared I've had dream results while on days where I thought I'd have a great day I have seen it all fall apart.  Often things outside of my control such as weather, wax, equipment, or competitors  have determined the outcome.  I think we can follow Ms. Gilbert's advice to artists: just show up every day, do your best work, be patient, and the Genius will appear on some days with the inspiration for an exceptional performance.   If you fall flat don't beat yourself up.  When you really shine enjoy the moment, but don't get full of yourself.  We need to complete our part of the bargain by being as well-prepared as possible.  When your good Genius inspires you then you be ready for that fantastic race.

CSU girls were well-prepared to take advantage of conditions to be named number 1 club team in the U.S. at SoHo JNs.

Teach Your Children Well

“Teach your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success” by Madeline Levine

I recommend reading it.  I found that it had many good insights about the developing teenager.  One thing that is clear is that we coaches can play a vital role as trusted advisers at a time when children need to achieve independence from their parents, but are still not ready (are we ever?) to be completely autonomous.

One of my big goals for our program is that we produce young adults with excellent RESILIENCE.  Many kids arrive at college in what college administrators call a “failure-deprived state”.  They have been so coddled and supported that they have never experienced failure and learned good coping skills.  Ski racing is wonderfully complicated and gives our kids plenty of chances for “successful failures”. 

Resilience is not a character trait but a learned skill.  It’s what we teach.   Ms. Levine suggests seven important coping skills that teens need to learn over the four or five years of adolescence when we are coaching them.  I’ve listed them below with some ideas about how we can help develop these skills.  As always, I’ll be interested in your ideas and suggestions.

1)      Resourcefulness

2)      Enthusiasm

3)      Creativity

4)      Work-ethic

5)      Self-control

6)      Self-esteem

7)      Self-efficacy

RESOURCEFULNESS

Can the teen solve problems in an ethical (no cheating) and healthy way without his or her parents?  Can the teen self-soothe, calm down, and stay focused when things go wrong?

We can develop this by having kids be responsible for their own equipment and training.  The J2s do not have the ability to plan their own training and need to be told exactly what to do.  But, by the time they are second year J1s they can think about their training, and figure out how to get their workouts done despite obstacles like school work, family parties, and transportation.  We can teach psychological skills like visualization and meditation.

ENTHUSIASM

Junior cross-country skiers tend to be an enthusiastic group. That’s good because zest is the internal driver of accomplishment.  However, it’s important for us to always remember the joy of skiing, to have fun, and to demonstrate and encourage love of the sport.

CREATIVITY

Most people think of creativity as only meaning the arts, but in fact it is the ability to come up with original and useful ideas.  Business leaders value it more than any other quality.  And creativity is the opposite of boredom.  Ski training requires a structured program, but it can have  much room for creative work.  How can a teen arrange his or her schedule to get in workouts?  What training can he or she do to address a weakness?  How do we ski a piece of terrain for optimal speed?  I think all of us coaches enjoy coaching because it gives us the chance to be so creative, but we need to not solve all the juicy problems ourselves, but give our athletes the chance to solve problems,  and enjoy and develop their creativity.

WORK-ETHIC

We coach only two kinds of kids: crazy or lazy.  The lazy ones are easier to deal with.  Just keep nudging them to do the work.   The crazy ones are sometimes more of a challenge. They want to work too hard and we need to rein them in and show the difference between hard-work and obsessive-compulsive disorder.  The team is especially important for both types of athletes as they will gravitate to the group norm and do what the other kids are doing.

SELF-CONTROL

We all know that it takes many years to develop self-control.  How do we help?  First, we must demonstrate it ourselves.  Second, we make the rules clear.  We suggest how to follow them.  In the famous Marshmallow Test four year-olds could resist eating a marshmallow (to get a delayed but bigger reward) if they didn’t think about it and focused on other things.  We can teach how to focus on long-term rewards (e.g. trip to Alaska in March!) and remind kids how today’s decision to work will pay off later.  After a really bad race we can say “Go for a ski. You have ten minutes to mourn this bad day.  Then, you need to come back and be ready to move forward” (credit to Donna Smyth for this idea).

SELF-ESTEEM

We want our kids to feel good about themselves.  How?  Self-esteem comes from the combination of competence and confidence.  Our kids are driven to be competent.  We can help them gain confidence by being honest with them about what they are good at and what they are bad at. We push them out of their comfort zones to try new things when we know they can handle it, and praise them when they really do achieve something.  One of our most important jobs is helping them break big goals down into very small, short-term goals so that they get constant feedback that they are acquiring new competence that will build their confidence for additional effort.

SELF-EFFICACY

Kids need to feel “What I do makes a difference”.  We can show them that if they work harder, eat better, sleep well, and are organized then they will ski faster.  They need to be actively involved in their own development so they grow their sense of personal power.  We coaches can make clear the consequences of decisions, let them try, let them fail, and help them learn from their failures.  We can also help them develop efficacy in relationships by emphasizing the importance of supporting their teammates.