Questions and Answers

I had an interesting comment on yesterday's post, and since I think my reply will be a lot of my usual babbling fairly lengthy, I'm going to respond in a post instead of in the comments.

Inlinepaceline wrote:

Kaari, what does crossfit add to your skate training? This is a loaded question, but when considering what qualifies as your hard workout, it is worth considering what crossfit adds to skate training. I started doing a lot of weight training at the start of the inline off-season with the hope of building base strength that will help my power base in my push. This proved to be more accessible than converting to ice since I am far enough away from the Roseville Oval to prevent regular trips, and I am a total newbie to ice (on inexpensive factory direct Bont LT skates that probably have dull blades). A lot of what I do for power and base is similar to the kinds of lifts that are done in crossfit, like rear squats, power cleans with front squats, over head presses, and dead lifts. A lot of my plyo training is similar to, as I recently started doing box jumps. Lately, I am working on base cardio, something I have neglected for the last couple of years. My "hard" day in this build phase include my weights/plyo routine (bigger weight with lower rep and lots of jumping) and my long skates on a route that involves a lot of hills. Every other day is a base cardio day on the stationary bike or light skate. Is it worth considering your overall training goals directed at skating versus getting volume? Can you tailor crossfit to focus on skating? Would a sport specific focus help you reach your goals on skates? I am interested in your planning process. It isn't something I am very good at.

So, starting at the top with the questions: what does CrossFit add to my skate training?

That's an interesting question, because I actually didn't start CrossFit to have an impact on my skating.  I started it because I was approaching 50 and I realized that, despite being in great cardio and leg shape from skating, I was neglecting my core and upper body--and that rather than being the strong person I always thought of myself as, I was now weak in every body part that wasn't involved in skating and, worse, imbalanced (all those counter-clockwise ovals lead to some nice asymmetry) in every muscle that was.  I wanted to find something that would rectify these problems but that wouldn't be detrimental to my skating. It would be a bonus if it would actually have some positive benefits for skating--but the most important factor was that I had to like it. I knew myself well enough to know that if I couldn't find something for a core/upper body workout that I genuinely liked, I simply wouldn't continue doing it.

So I tried CrossFit, and I didn't like it...I fell in love with it.

So now I find myself in the position of trying to juggle two athletic activities that I'm obsessed with.  One of my CrossFit coaches asked me the other day which I liked better, skating or CrossFit.  I had to pause for a bit before I answered "skating"--it's that close.  Which makes the answers to inlinepaceline's questions both more complicated and more simple.  More complicated because I'm not doing CrossFit specifically to aid my skating...but more simple because bottom line, I'm just doing both sports because I love them.

Back to the questions, then. What does CrossFit add to my skate training?  It does have some skating-specific effects; as evidenced by these photos, I can get a lot lower now...

Trust me, this is not my usual position for dryland or short track.

Interestingly enough, I think most of the "lower" is due to hip flexibility improvements rather than strength.  Coach TieGuy told me that the reason most masters skaters are not low enough is not (as I thought) back issues, but is due to inflexibility in their hips.  I tried to work on this a couple years ago, using some techniques I found on Mobility WOD, (a website which is CrossFit based--which I didn't realize at the time).  I didn't get very far, and by the time I started CrossFit my hips were so tight that I couldn't even get to parallel in a CrossFit-style squat.  Now I can not only get below parallel, I can even do some of the mobility stuff that I tried from the website a couple years ago and couldn't do.  So that's one thing CrossFit adds--by doing squats and other lower-body exercises, and focusing on mobilizing the body parts used in those exercises, it helps with mobility that affects skating.

Another thing is core strength. I hate core work and really haven't done any for oh, about 10 years now.  This is probably why TieGuy had to continually yell at me "Tighten your abs!  Engage your core!" I was trying--it's just that nothing was moving.  Now, when I remember to engage my core (which is critical to transferring the power from your push to the ice instead of having it dissipated through your wobbling core)--something actually moves  and I feel a nice stable base to push off.  Cool.

I guess this doesn't really answer inline's question, though.  Certainly some of the CrossFit exercises use the same muscles that skating does, and thus these workouts need to be evaluated in terms of their impact on my skating workouts.  It's not really possible to tailor CrossFit workouts--they're pre-planned and posted the night before and you get what you get (although I have been known, after seeing the next day's WOD,  to skip an intense squat WOD when I knew I had a hard skating workout coming up).  In terms of deciding hard/easy workouts, it's not a question of what CrossFit does for skating, but rather a question of what each workout takes out of my body--as my friend Sprinter Boy said, it all comes out of the same physical "bank."  I'm not so much trying to use CrossFit to optimize skating (or vice versa; skating has given me some nice cardio fitness that really helps me out in rowing or running WOD's) as trying to maximize my time spent with each of my obsessions (those of you who grew up in the 70's, as I did, can now enjoy an earworm of Mary MacGregor's "Torn Between Two Lovers."  You're welcome).  I'm increasing CrossFit to three times a week, and trying to keep hard skating workouts at three times a week, not because I think that's necessarily the optimum number--but simply because I want to do both as much as possible.  My attempts at periodization are nothing more than trying to find a way to do everything I want to do without melting into a little puddle of overtrained goo.

Well, actually I do have a reason for the "three hard skating workouts a week."  That's how TieGuy set up my skating weeks--an endurance skate, a tempo skate, and an interval skate, followed by a recovery skate or a race on the weekends.  I'm used to that, I like it, and it's worked...so that's what I'm doing.  Which answers inline's question about how my planning process works.  At the end of a month I simply look back in my workout logs at the next month's workouts from a previous year (I'm currently using 2007; the workouts ramped up a bit each year and I think the volume from 2010, the last year TieGuy wrote my program, might be a bit much for me now).  I adjust the dates, tweak for vacations or other special circumstances, and then that's what I use as my workout template for the next month.

As for my skating goals, I really think that (despite being lower and actually having abs now and all that), my biggest gains will come from my technique improvements rather than from fitness improvements.  Sprinter Boy taught me a fundamental and life-changing aspect of skating last January and it's revolutionizing my skating. I can only execute it at about 80% effort right now, which means that it hasn't yet affected my race times...but I'm hoping that diligent practice on the technique on inlines this summer will enable me to employ it at 100% effort by next long track season.  That, I think, is where I'll get my biggest bang for my buck in next year's PB pursuit.

So that's it.  My desire to fit 7 workouts and one day off into 7 days is not a quest for a pre-determined workout volume, nor a carefully-planned integration of skating and dryland and CrossFit designed to produce maximum results next season.  It's simply the best way my skating-and-CrossFit obsessed brain can come up with to feed my obsessions while hopefully avoiding overtraining.

Inline, I hope you're not sorry you asked!