I spent last week in Italy with the British Development ski team. Initially there was a plan, I should have arrived just after their first races of the season with a view of spending the week on snow and getting some dryland work in wherever possible. Instead, those races were cancelled and a lack of snow meant the first 4 days were given over to strength and conditioning sessions. Great, a rare in season chance to get a solid few days training in before some on snow days later in the week and the first races of the season.

For me, one of the best parts of being a Strength and Conditioning coach is having to think on your feet and be adaptive with your session design. Our weights were in a dusty garage with no squat rack, no mats and limited number of plates. Our bikes and turbos weren’t accessible, there was snow/ice on the ground, it was drizzling rain and the temperature barely got above freezing during the day. This meant some new sessions for the guys and what ended up being four days of real quality training.

After this we headed to Champorcher. The hill wasn’t open to the public yet but they opened the lifts and a giant slalom course just for the team. The guys had zero distractions around resulting in some excellent technical training and video analysis throughout. For me it meant some more adaptation; warm ups in the car park, stretching sessions on a rug in the hotel lobby and a few inquisitive stares from other hotel guests…an excellent week.

I spent last week working with the British alpine development ski team in Italy. After 2 weeks technical training on the snow in Switzerland I met the guys at their base in San Sicario for a week of dryland training. After a little organisation including setting up a makeshift gym (see photo), we got down to work. The guys trained and tested really well all week and I’m happy with their progress as they move into the race season at the beginning of December.

The main benefit from the week for me was a clear demonstration that the difference even a small amount of education can make to how quickly a point is taken on board. The team won’t mind me saying too much that their diet was a little less than perfect and some of the culinary skills on display might have made a masterchef outtakes show. Meal times, instead of being a relaxed social gathering sometimes became a heated debate on the best way to prepare the food, in the same way A-level physics students might debate the intricacies of the latest quantum mechanics theories. Either way, food made its way onto the plates and everyone was fed, even if the fat content on offer was a little on the high side.

It got me thinking about the best way to elicit some change in habits, having tried the ‘not that way, this way’ approach in the past with limited success, I instead found a little education went a long way. First, a discussion on fat mass and lean muscle mass drew some attention and a chat on what constituted a high fat content in food in relation to what was in the cupboards also saw some interest. Then a reminder that it all starts at the supermarket, ‘if you don’t buy rubbish, you won’t eat rubbish’. By the end of the week porridge and poached eggs had made their way onto the breakfast menu, and the fat was trimmed from bacon when it was cooked. Progress indeed.

Sometimes it easy to forget that shopping for a household and preparing meals for a group is a skill in itself, especially for an elite athlete population and even more so for a younger set of athletes on the road for the majority of the season. It is definitely an area that shouldn’t be neglected as we all know the importance of good nutrition to support the needs of a full time athlete.