When you first get into skimo, it’s easy to see how much of a difference fitness makes to your results. As you move up in fitness and race courses become harder, the skills become a huge part of racing. If you want to progress into harder courses and faster races, or are already in that place, then practicing these skills will result in HUGE gains in most races.
So, what are those skills, why are they important, and how do you practice them best?
Uphill Skills
Gliding on Skis:
- Why: Skimo isn’t walking on skis. You should be able to kick and glide like a nordic skier. As terrain changes, you need to be able to adapt your skinning technique to the grade.
- How: Rollerski in the summer and fall, and then make sure you’re skiing low-angle slippery single-track in the winter.
Kick-Turns:
- Why: A good skimo course keeps the grade lower (and thus more efficient) by using kick-turns. Without good skills, kick-turn sections can be very frustrating as you spend a lot of extra energy and lose time to those who are good at it.
- How: In the summer and fall, practice kick-turns on grass or carpet. In the winter, find a hill and build a course with many kickturns. You can do this on terrain that’s not steep enough to need kickturns. And then occasionally do intervals on that course!
Pole Timing:
- Why: Different slope angles and terrain favor different poling styles and timings. If you watch a world cup video they use all sorts of poling techniques. Sure, some of the time they use the traditional “diagonal” (opposite arm, opposite leg) that we use when walking. However, sometimes you will need to push more with the poles and sometimes you need to save your arms, etc.
- How: Practice the different timing patterns in the summer during hikes and runs. After you get comfortable, start working the different patterns into intensity sessions. In the winter, make sure you’re consciously switching things up during distance and intensity sessions. Eventually, you’ll start to feel yourself intuitively changing gears during races.
Skinning on Slippery Terrain:
- Why: If you race in Europe, or New England, or the Rockies in the spring, you will find some ice. It might be steep ice, it might be side angle ice, or it might just be a really steep skintrack without much traction.
- How: Not much you can do in the summer here except make sure your arms are STRONG. In the winter, occasionally do workouts with skins that are worn out, do occasional distance and intensity sessions in steep slippery terrain, and practice moving not just straight up, but also ACROSS slippery terrain.
Eating:
- Why: If your race is longer than 60 minutes, you should be eating 60-100g of carbohydrate per hour. Are you able to take in that much food without practicing? If you can’t, then you’re losing time!
- How: In the summer, practice eating during races and hard workouts. Figure out what food you like and what your stomach can handle. In the winter, start being very intentional about practicing eating while you’re doing race-pace efforts. Even if the session isn’t really long enough to need calories, being able to eat while you’re going hard will have large effects on race day.
Transitions Skills
Transitions:
- Why: An average person can lose 30-60 seconds per transition on someone who has good skills. And that person with good skills can lose 5-15 seconds per transition to the best. The average skimo race includes 6-8 transitions. Someone without good practiced transitions skills could easily lose contact with their fitness pals at the top of the first climb, and never see them again.
- How: In the summer, learn a good process. We recommend a couple pretty specific ways to do each transition, but there are others. Figure out the best sequence for your transitions, and practice them in the summer indoors or on grass. Once you can do transitions slowly, but with the correct sequence without thinking, start to speed them up. In the winter, assuming you already have a good sequence and can do it fast without stress, it’s time to ADD stress. Add race-speed transitions into your hard workouts, and practice continuous motion during all workouts, eating/futzing/changing layers while skinning so that you can transition FAST every time.
Downhill Skills
Skiing Groomers:
- Why: At some point, in some race, there’s going to be a steep groomer descent. If you’re hesitant on that terrain, you can lose significant time.
- How: Work on strength (heavy weights in the gym) and agility in the summer, and in the winter make sure you’re skiing resort laps with INTENTION. It can be easy to just drift back down after a hard lap uphill, but it’s key to consider that skiing down that groomer is also a skill to work on.
Skiing Bumps:
- Why: Almost every true skimo race will have some hard skiing in it, and some kind of bumps, especially if there are multiple laps.
- How: Again, strength and agility in the summer. In the winter, go ski the lifts on your skimo gear! As with any skill, the amount of times you can practice a skill matters. Riding the lifts will get you MANY more turns and more vert than just skinning.
Skiing Powder:
- Why: It’ll happen in a race. Trust me.
- How: I know it will sound sacreligious to some, but take your race skis out on a powder day! Ski in the backcountry, ski on the resorts, but go practice! On steeper terrain race skis ski surprisingly well in deep snow and it’s really fun!
Skiing HARD:
- Why: Once you’re fit enough, skiing isn’t rest, it’s a part of the race where you can gain time. If you’re someone who’s naturally a restful downhill skier, working on this skill will gain you a lot of time!
- How: Be intentional about pushing the speed a little. This doesn’t necessarily mean taking more risks, it means being intentional about picking faster lines and being a little more aggressive. A great drill for this is to go ride the lifts and pick a line that you ski 5-10 times in a row, working on getting faster on that section with each repetition.
Skating:
- Why: Even if you don’t have a huge amount of skating on a course (you’ll often have SOME), you should be skating HARD out of every skin to ski transition. If you aren’t a confident skater, those first few steps out of the transition will lose you a few seconds every time.
- How: Go to a nordic center and get some lessons if you don’t know how. If you DO know how, work skating into your distance days and intensity days.
Double Poling:
- Why: Strong arms will pay off and being able to double-pole hard will help your skinning, your skating, and just double-poling down a narrow gradual downhill.
- How: In the summer do pull-ups and dips, rollerski, use a ski-erg, etc. In the winter, add double-poling to your distance days and sometimes to your intensity workouts.
