Martys Tips  Strength Training Study - (french)

Gosh, do I ever like this piece of writing, it's a study out of Norway, published in 1998. Back when I started the Sports Science and Medicine Committee for the US XC Team in the earlier 70's I enlisted the help of a weight lifting specialist, as in comparing our skiers, especially the women to the Europeans, you could see a big difference in the strength of the upperbody of the Euros to our skiers. In assessment, after talking about the parameters of the sport and the training, the

pecialist felt the direction to take with this program was to focus towards building strength, as all of our other training definitely covered the endurance aspect of the sport.

My sister, who has access to all of these studies because of her sport physiology background, sends these papers on to me and this one, "Maximal Strength Training Improves Work Economy in Trained Female Cross Country Skiers" hits this nail on the head again, thirty years after the US program took this step!

Two study groups of regional level skiers (ages 17-18 years) were randomly picked, tested, then put into a nine week program where both groups trained essentially the same programs (8-9 hrs/week), except the one group performed a single weight training exercise, specifically related to the double poling motion, 3 sets of 6 repetitions, maximum resistance, 3 times a week. When they could complete the 3 sets of 6 reps., then the resistance was increased by 2.2 lb. in the next session. The other control group was allowed to do it's usual strength work which consisted of strength exercises at intensities below 60%, incorporating 20 repetitions.

Well, I can tell you there were some dramatic differences in these groups in the short period of time, in comparison to their own tests against themselves and of course against the other endurance focused group. The testing was done on a double poling ski ergometer that has just shown up in Norwegian testing protocol the last couple of years.

Here you go, the control group improved it's time of exhaustion by 59%, while the strength group improved it's time to exhaustion by 136%. The study goes on to talk aboutanother study done with well trained men, where the differences weren't so big, but the men only completed 75% of the planned strength program, while the women were more diligent and completed 88% of their plan.

One conclusion, and I believed this for a long time, was that increased maximal strength may have a more pronounced effect on female cross country skiers than men. I have always said that any woman in this sport has to have weight lifting in their program.

The study, as do most studies, goes on to examine all kinds of results from the testing--but I think you get the idea.