🚧 Influences & Acknowledgments

Scott Semple -

Influences

Scott Johnston

Scott was my mentor and advisor during my skimo days—and my coach from October 2016 to March 2017. Scott pointed me toward the people below in addition to engaging in our 14-year dialog on endurance training. At last count, that exchange was 1,200 emails long.

My skimo training and research was book-ended with the publication of Scott's books: Training for the New Alpinism was published in March 2014, a month after my first skimo race; and Training for the Uphill Athlete in March 2019 , a month before my last.

After skimo racing, I worked with Scott as a coach at Uphill Athlete.

Jan Olbrecht

Principles

  • Distinguish between capacity and power
    • Anaerobic capacity (AnC)
    • Anaerobic power (AnP)
    • Aerobic power (AeP)
    • Aerobic capacity (AeC)
  • More is not more; development should be strategic. The best training prescriptions are often a "Goldilocks" recipe:
    • Aerobic capacity (AeC) should always be developed as high as possible.
    • The other three—AnC, AnP, and AeP—should only be developed as much as necessary. Having more than an event demands will decrease performance by handicapping the other three.
  • Accuracy is more important than precision
    • “It’s better to be roughly right than precisely wrong“ (Buffett)
    • Frequent testing that aids inference is better than infrequent testing with absolute answers.
    • Lactate testing is quick, simple, and can be done in the field. But it takes some interpretation;
    • Vo2 max testing may be more precise, but it's expensive, and requires a lab with an experienced technician.

Renato Canova

    • Start general, at the extremes, and move to specific
    • First duration, then work speed from both beginning and end
    • Use internal load to progress capacity and power
    • Use external load to stabilize and fine tune performance

Yuri Verkhoshansky

    • Broaden the available fiber pool by "waking up" fast-twitch fiber, then train them to work aerobically

Steve Magness

    • Training volume should increase for the Capacity phase, plateau for Power, and then decline for Performance;
    • Never leave anything behind; and
    • Read all of the above!

Acknowledgements

Coming soon