Fitness Primer
We mean dedicating yourself to a year-round fitness regimen that will benifit your health, athletic ability, mood and general "what's it."
Check with your physician before beginning this or any other fitness program.
Bergmueller's Approach
He advocates long, slow endurance sessions on the reclining bike in order to stress the heart and circulatory system, not the body.
Although this may seem old-fashioned, the proof is in the pudding. His best "client" is Hermann Maier, who may be the fitest athlete on the World Cup.
The upside to this program is that it works. Many WC skiers now do almost all their training the Bergmueller way.
The downside to this program is that it is time instensive. That is why Bergmuller recommend organizing your day-today routine around your workout time.
He also emphasizes that the workout should be fun, with people able to read, watch TV or listen to their favorite music while doing it.
1) Compensation, with lactate levels between 0-2. The "bread & butter" workout of Bergmueller's system.
2) Stabilization, with lactate levels 2-4.
3) Development, with lactate levels 4-6.
Never forget that the core of the program, that is 90% or more of your exercise time, is at the Compensation Level.
Both the Stabilization and Development workouts are quite demanding and, if even one is used more than once a week, if that. That is why we only give a light Stabilization Workout below.
Bergmueller warns that you can damage your fitness, health and the capacity to sustain the long-term nature of this program.
If anything, you can simply do the Compensation Workout as a day-to-day, month-to-month, year-round program. As friend of ours, a noted WC coach says, "The thing about this program is that it works."
Bergmueller explains that endurance training is long neglected on the World Cup. He continues that his system adds to an athlete's endurance, power, speed and coordination.
Its benefits include burning fat, increasing stamina, lessening stress, boosting the immune system, lowering the blood pressure and improving the quality of one's sleep.
Plus, its low impact, low stress and insistence on workout out at a relatively low pulse rate means that it is sustainable 5-6 days a week over the course of an entir year.
Begin this program by doing only 2 twenty minute sessions on the bike each day for the first week to ten days of the program.
Once you are doing 50-60 minutes per day, you can vary how you break up the amount:
2 X 30 minutes
4X 15 minutes
1 X 30, 2 X 15 minutes
The key to this program is to never let your lactic acid levels build to the point that it causes you fatigue or prevents you from doing the rountine the next day. Always monitor your pulse and keep it in the proper range!
You can increase load levels every 4-5 weeks to keep your heart rate in the target zone. Just crank the resistence on your bike up a notch or so.
If you want to do a Stabilization Workout, simply do your first peddling session for 15 minutes with a pulse of 100, then immediately do five minutes with your pulse at 135. Rest five minutes and do another five at 135. Then, complete the rest of your workout as a Compensation Workout, with 2 remaining fifteen minute sessions with your pulse at 95. But don't do this more than once a week.
On the Reclining Bike
5-6 days per week
20 minutes with pulse at 100 using 60-70 rpms
5 minute rest with walking and light stretching
20 minutes with pulse at 105 using 60-70 rpms
5 minute rest with walking and light stretching
20 minutes with pulse at 110 using 60-70 rpms
5 minutes rest with walking and light stretching.
Total reclining bike time: 60 minutes
You will:
* Get stronger
* Have much more endurance
* Become healthier
* Enjoy life more
However, if you feel that you are not strong enough or have problems with movements common to either skiing or boarding, you could interupt your work on the Bergmueller routine and do the following program beginning about two months prior to getting on the snow.
Our Strength Program incorporates endurance, strength and range of movement exercises.
Its advantage is that only two of the following exercises must be done with weights. The rest rely on your own body weight, which is the weight you use when playing any sport. By balancing and moving your own weight, you actually develop muscles, not in isolation, but as part of your whole person in a way that you can coordinate your percpetion, reactions and mvoements with confidence and fluidity.
We have based this program, in part, on the teachings in three indispensible books on fitness & movement skills:
1) Gray Cook's Athletic Body in Balance and
2) Michael Boyle's Functional Training for Sports
3) Tiemann, Buskies and Brehm's Rueckentraining, Sanft und Effektive
We also cite these books as the sources for the images of the exercises.
We have designed this program as a three day exercise cycle.
That means you exercise three days in a row, then rest one day, and repeat the cycle.
After doing the cycle three times, you should take a three days rest, and then begin the cycle again, resting for three days after every three cycles.
Do not do this any longer than 6 weeks, as it will become tiring both mentally and physically.
Remember, the key here is not big muscles or body sculpting, but functional movement patterns.
Day One, Two and Three:
!0 minutes: Reclining bike, pulse 110-115.
20-25 minutes: Select the corresponding routine from below.
20 minutes: Reclining bike, pulse 95.
Day Four: Rest.
Begin to repeat cycle on Day Five.
After three cycles, rest three days. Begin cycles again.
Do not do this any longer than 6 weeks, as it will become tiring both mentally and physically.
When you are finished with this program, return to doing the Bergmueller Workouts, which you can do throughout your winter season.
Again, with the Bergmueller routine, it is not necessary to lift weights.
Day One: Two Legged Work
Day Two: One Leg Work
Day Three: Balance and Movement