Sunday, February 28, 2016

Try Something New With 3x Olympian, Jim Galanes



Try Something New - Cross Country Skiing
Interview Date: February 26, 2016
Frisco, CO

Rich: 

Jim Galanes is a three time Olympian competing in cross country skiing events in each 1976 (Innsbruck), 1980 (Lake Placid), and 1984 (Sarajevo) Olympics.  Jim, welcome to the show.  Would you tell the audience about your athletic career?

Jim:
I've been a coach and an athlete all my life.  I started out as a Nordic skier in southern Vermont.  I made the US Nationals team when I was fifteen or sixteen years old.  I spent the next 15 years of my life competing at the international level for the US Olympic Team in the Cross Country event.  After retiring from competition, I went into the coaching field and spent the next 25 years of my life coaching and developing high level athletes.

Alongside coaching high level athletes, we did a lot of work over the years with masters athletes, age group athletes and juniors athletes.  As we were working with these groups, we learned a lot about training monitoring and monitoring response to dosing of training.   We learned that you can take what you do in terms of training with elite skiers and apply it to a masters athlete or a juniors athlete.  In a nutshell, my life has been training and coaching since I was 16 years old.

Rich:
What a fun career.  It would be great to hear a special story from your time as an Olympic competitor.  Can you tell us more about that?

Jim: 
It's really hard to synthesize twelve years down to a couple of great stories.  I competed at the international level from the mid-70s to the mid-80s.  I grew up in Brattleboro, VT.  Within that community there were 3 or 4 of us that were competing at the international level.  During that time, we brought the performance of the men's and women's cross country teams to a very high level.   To a point where Bill Koch, who was a peer of mine, won the world cup twice.  With a season-long series of international ski races.  As a team we won international relays.  We had 2-3 women and 3-4 men who were consistently in the top 10 of the world cup races. 

I think the hallmark of what we did was really elevate the quality of the training at a time that there wasn’t a lot of sophistication about training.  We learned a lot from research and really by trial and error.  We had some creative coaches that were not satisfied with the status quo and looked for ways to improve our performance.  I think we had a remarkable level of success despite the lack of technology, and lack of understanding physiology, and then relating that physiology back to the effect of training.  I've really carried that over to my coaching.  While I don’t have a bachelors or a master's degree in exercise physiology, I feel my knowledge base is comparable to that of a master's degree in exercise physiology because of the work I've done in laboratory settings, working with well-established medical professionals and conducting a lot of research.  I think that's key to us creating our current coaching paradigms.  The last decade or so specifically, the training science has made huge advances, yet the training of athletes is stuck in old paradigms.

Rich: 
As an age grouper, I feel like I'm guessing a lot about my training and recovery.  I, as many of my listeners, am probably familiar with terms like chronic training load and acute training load.   I'm curious to learn more about how you've taken the learning you've done as a coach and applied it to your software platform that you and your company are developing.  Maybe you can tell us more and perhaps introduce some new ideas for folks.

Jim: 
Our company, EPT (EPOC Performance Training), distributes Firstbeat in the United States.  We have a very close relationship, and personal friendships, with the people who develop it in Finland.  One of the big advantages that this software is going to bring to endurance athletes is, it's going to change how you look at training.  When you talk about acute training loads,  usually that’s referencing hours of training or miles of training, but there's usually no reference to what the actual training load is.  I can do an hour of training at a certain intensity and have X load, or I can do another hour of training at a much higher intensity and that load could be double or triple, and therefore the stress on the body is double or triple.  There's no way to quantify that with heart rate alone, with time, with mileage, pace, wattage, or whatever you are trying to do. 

We need to separate out pace and watts output measurements in the discussion - they don't measure the physiological stress of that output.  I know runners and cyclists don't like it when I say this, but those are outcomes of performance, they are not measures of load or stress on the body.  For example, if you are pedaling at 200 watts for an endurance ride.  One day that could be a very low physiological load.  The next day it could be a substantially higher physiological load because our body is always in flux, depending on the load we have applied over the previous days and weeks and how we've adapted to that load.  The body is an ever changing organism, and it's always changing based on where we are in that moment in time, what we've done and how we've adapted to it.  So, just going out and prescribing training loads and these training zones for periods of time is not terribly precise.

Rich:
So the way I'm interpreting this is that training to pace and power, while they may be good measurements of work, they are only one dimension of the work and they don't take into account all of the load on the body or the body's response. 

Jim:
They are great measures of what you did.  There are a lot of people that I respect who have used those same measures of pace and power to derive training zones.  With Firstbeat software, we are better able to get people to the correct training loads on a daily basis rather than just using watts or pace to assign training zones.  Using those measures (watts and pace) to assign training zones is variable from day to day.

Rich:
What advice would you give to the age grouper to re-examine what they are doing?

Jim:
The number one thing I feel when someone has shifted to being an athlete with a professional career and family is, look at the recovery and adaptation of training.   There's probably a range of time periods, you ought to be able to measure and see improvements in performance potential on a regular basis.   For some athletes that will be every 5-10 days, for others that will be every two to three weeks.  I don't think you can go for a very long time, if your training is working, and not see measurable performance improvement.

Rich:
That is fantastic advice and certainly is a new paradigm.  I'm going to shift gears on you and switch to a segment of the show I call "Try Something New.”  Every month I introduce activities and sports that enhance training as a triathlete and make training interesting and fun.  The objective is to prepare them to try something new just as they did years ago when they first jumped into a pool or strapped on running shoes.  This might be the first time our listeners try cross country skiing.  Would you help me unpack what cross country skiing is and the varieties?

Jim:
There are basically two disciplines of cross country skiing. There's skating and what we call classic skiing.  The technical challenges of both are very stimulating for people.  Once a level of proficiency is reached in either of those techniques, they become good cross training for just about any endurance sport because they are whole body movements and the physiological load of cross country skiing is perhaps the largest of any endurance sport.  It's pretty well documented that cross country skiers have the highest max VO2s in the world, with athletes regularly recording mid to upper 80 mils/kg of oxygen consumption at the world class level.  There were certainly even higher values than that during the doping era, which hopefully we are beyond now.  I think a lot of those readings that we saw in the upper 80s and lower 90s of the kg range were doping aided and not real genetic potential.  The physiological demands and the potential to increase your oxygen delivery in other sports would be enhanced through either skate or classic cross country skiing.

To kind of step back in time a bit:  In the early 80s when I was emerging as a world class cross country skier, I also did a lot of bike racing and I was quite good at it.  At some point I was forced to make a choice to pursue one or the other.  The capacities and strength I developed in cycling carried over into skiing, as did a lot of the running and running races that I did.  Cross country skiers come from a background of it being really hard to ski year round.  Certainly these days more and more skiers can travel to the southern hemisphere during the summer or ski glaciers, but the reality is that cross country skiers need to train year round.   The same goes for swimmers, bikers and runners.  Having an element of cross training throughout the year is not only mentally refreshing, but also serves to develop certain strengths and other physiological capacities.

Rich:
I can tell you from my experience that not only do I get the cardiovascular stress benefit from cross country skiing, but I also feel like there is a benefit from a proprioception perspective as well.  Form and body alignment being key to efficiency as a swimmer, cyclist or runner is key.  It seems that the same applies here for cross country skiing.

Jim:
In any endurance sport, the key is producing power efficiently.  I like the physics formula of power, which is force applied over time divided by the distance covered.  In endurance sport, we don't want to be at the force end of the spectrum.  We want to be at the time or the quickness end.  We need to apply that force very quickly to have a net increase in power and that is where efficiency is found.  You can see it in cyclists, runners and skiers, in particular the skiers that are using a lot of muscular force.  They feel strong and they are making strong and aggressive movements, but that is neither efficient nor powerful, so the speed is always limited.  Whether I coach runners, cyclists or skiers, learning the techniques and learning to produce power efficiently is the goal.  Developing adequate strength in the muscles to produce power efficiently is on an equal footing with the physiological aspects of training, because they both go hand in hand.  If we are not training in an environment where we produce power efficiently, we're never going to be able to do it in a race.  What people misunderstand about training is that the heart and lungs don't create the load.  The heart and lungs are responding to the load we are putting on the muscles.  The muscles are triggering our physiology to respond.  If we get them to respond in the right way by producing higher levels of power more efficiently, we're going to get a better physiological response than if we're just out there producing a lot of force.

Rich:
That's probably a good reminder all around, regardless of the sport.  We had talked about maintaining momentum or a higher pace with lighter effort.  We had used the example of a fly wheel and the approach for keeping that flywheel going being different when it is at speed versus spinning up.  Can you talk a little more about that?

Jim:
I wish I could claim credit for this analogy, but it came from an old coach who I have a lot of respect for.  He did a lot of research into the biomechanics of movement in running and skiing in particular.  We all as kids turned the bike upside down and started spinning the wheels.  You can imagine getting that wheel up to 20 mph with a couple of hard pushes.  Once it's going 20 mph, all we have to do is flick that wheel to maintain speed.  In any endurance sport, whether it's skiing, running or cycling, we have a speed over the ground that we have to work with to maintain or enhance that speed.  If we're on the force end of the spectrum, you can imagine having that wheel turning at 20 mph and trying to speed it up by grabbing it and we actually stop or slow it.  And that's what happens to a lot of runners and cyclists and endurance athletes.  During every stride or cycle they are slowing down too much during contact time.  If you can visualize a good runner, they look like they are hardly touching the ground.  They're just floating.  Their ground contact time is very, very short.  They are very light and quick.  These are analogies I use in skiing, cycling and running.  It's a bit esoteric to describe it in cycling, but I believe if you look at muscular EMG data and read some of the research - even in cycling someone could be cycling at 80 or 90 rpms and feel they are in the right zone, but the muscles aren't relaxed and during the period of force application, they are pushing too slowly.  The muscles are contracting too slowly because they're either too tense, not relaxed, or not loose or not fluid enough in the movements.  Making small changes in that area I think has a great impact on the economy of the movements and the ability to produce power.

Rich:
Certainly with running you can see where having a high cadence and not over-striding is going to minimize your ground contact time, which can help keep that cadence going and the effort as a light touch.  With cycling, I've always been taught to imagine my pedal stroke as big circles to get that power.  I have to admit that after our conversation last week, I was on my bike trainer this past week and trying to visualize the light touch at points in my stroke instead of the big power push all the way around the stroke.  The combination of focusing on a light touch applied in one part of my stroke and then rotating that spot in the cycle where I applied the short effort, seemed to allow my big leg muscles to relax somewhat.

Jim:
It's hard to translate.  Like I say, I cycle a lot and it's my second love next to skiing.  People are going to say, I'm spinning at 90 rpms, so the muscle contraction time has got to be right.  I can pedal at 80 or 90 rpms and be forceful through the whole movement or I can pedal at 90 rpms and be light on the pedals and still have good power development.  I call it almost faking it.  I can keep my cadence up and be rolling in a big gear, but not put a lot of pressure on the pedals.  Again, it's working with that speed we already have to keep things flowing and moving.  When you relate it to running it's not just about increasing cadence.  There's a certain cadence in everyone that is economical for them.  The research says it's 180 steps per minute, or 90 rpms, and very similar to cycling.  It's not just about making quicker and shorter stride length, or artificially increasing the cadence.  It's how quickly we move through the cycle.  It's not necessarily about shortening or lengthening the cycle - it could be.  But most often it's ground contact time and the shorter the ground contact time the more time you are floating.  It probably seems a little vague to your listeners, but I think when we practice these things in the field and in training we can start to see differences in efficiency and how we produce power.  I think things like wattage and some of the watt meters coming out for runners are going to be useful tools, not so much to measure training zones or training goals, but to measure improvements in efficiency in producing power. 

Rich:
There will be listeners who will want to learn more about either the training philosophy you are describing, see more about the product you are producing, or learn more about you.  Where would you direct folks to go?

Jim:
They can go to our website EPOCPerformance Training and we have some information there.  Our parent company, Firstbeat in Finland, has a lot of great physiological whitepapers on their website about our software and how we apply it to training and recovery.  I've read a lot of great books and one book that I like in particular is Cycling Past Fifty by Joe Friel.  The philosophy in that book is very closely correlated to my training philosophy that I've developed over the past twenty years of my coaching career.  I was really pleased to read what he had to say in that it fit with what I've learned in a practical way, and it fits with what the research says.  There are couple of points that I disagree with, but they are very few. The philosophy that Joe Friel espouses is, to maintain maximal strength we've got to maintain aerobic capacity that only comes with training above 90% of max VO2.  Those two things, for age group athletes, whether you’re a triathlete or a skier or runner or cyclist.  The strength training, in those older age groups, is equal in importance to the endurance training that we all like to do. 

There is a lot of great science around capacity training.  I'm not minimizing the need or requirement to do long, slow, distance training.  What we once thought about the development of peripheral structure of the muscle, the capillary density, the mitochondrial density, and the aerobic enzymes in the muscles, were the physiological attributes of long, slow, distance training.  What the science is now showing is that those peripheral functions of the muscle are better developed through high intensity training.  It doesn't mean you need to go overboard in the quantity or dose of the high intensity training, but it needs to be there.  To have that training be effective, it means we need to know the endurance training (long, slow, distance) is being done at the correct physiological workloads for two reasons.  One, so we develop a fatigue resistance in the muscle so we can go long enough, recover from it, and adapt fast enough, so the high intensity sessions can be done at the right high intensity.  With our software we can accurately measure whether the person is actually getting to their workout objective, which up until this point it has not been possible to get those measurements outside of the laboratory setting.  That, in a nutshell, is my training philosophy.  Whether we're talking about an elite international caliber athlete or an age group athlete, those are the capacities that we focus on.

Rich:
I certainly hope to learn more about Firstbeat software and we what it uncovers for me as an athlete.  Maybe we'll get a chance to try it out and talk about it more on the show.  This segment of the show is called "Try Something New.”  I'd like to give the listeners a few tips for how to get stared in cross country skiing.

Jim:
A couple of things if you are new to skiing.  Most people benefit by learning the classic technique first.  It's not that it's an easier technique to learn, but I think it lays the foundation for skating more effectively.   If you are really hooked on skating, find a good coach or instructor and get a lesson early on.  Get some good direction to get started because it can be a little frustrating starting out.  If you are doing it a lot, monitoring what you are doing is important.  Especially during the learning phase of skiing, because the physiological load or stress from an hour will be a lot greater than an hour of running or cycling.

Rich:
This is great.  I really encourage those who are considering cross country skiing to get that professional lesson when you try it.  Once you get the technique down, it really is a rewarding activity and sport.

I am really am excited that I was able to catch up with you and the listeners will certainly benefit.  I am geeking out at how cool it is to have a coach of your caliber on the show. 

Jim:
I'm happy to do it.  When we got into the Firstbeat business, after my friends made it available to me, the more I used it the more it shifted my theory of training and concept of what we want to do with endurance athletes.  It gives us an accurate measure of what we're doing and how we're doing it.  We really got into the business with the objective of doing three things for the athlete, particularly the older athlete.  Keeping the athlete healthy and maintaining long term health - it doesn't do us any good to train every day if we end up with a major disease.  We think that if we just train, we get a high level of protection from age related diseases, and that's not true in the absence of recovery.  Our real goal is to help people train better, perform better and be healthy in the long run.  For masters athletes in particular, performing in the short term and losing the long term health is not an attractive option in our minds.

Rich:
We as age groupers too often make the mistake of not taking recovery seriously enough.  Having you come on to the show and demystifying recovery for us has been extremely valuable.  I look forward to having you on the show in the future.

Rich Soares
  

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