Hermann Maier's Workout Routine

[SquawMan]

almost all cardio and almost no weights.....a great read



Train Like a Turtle
===========================
By Helen Olsson

Follow Hermann Maier’s über-endurance program—you’ll ski stronger, longer.
On August 24, 2001, Austrian Hermann Maier was riding his custom-made motorcycle near the town of Radstadt, Austria, when he swerved into a ditch to avoid colliding with an oncoming Mercedes. Pinned beneath his bike with a crushed leg, the two-time Olympic champ experienced massive bleeding in his muscles. Damaged nerve tissue paralyzed him from the waist down. In a seven-hour surgery, doctors repaired his compound fracture with a 15-inch rod—and they couldn’t say if Maier would ever walk again, let alone ski. Forget withstanding six g’s in a Hahnenkamm downhill.

But just 521 days after the accident, Maier won a World Cup Super G in Kitzbühel, and last season he took the overall World Cup title. What’s more incredible than the comeback is how he pulled it off. Though his massive quads would suggest marathon weight sets and hours of plyometrics, Maier’s training was—and had been for some time—90 percent cardiovascular. Post-crash, he lost nearly 40 pounds and his calf swelled bigger than his thigh. He simply couldn’t train like a heavyweight. What made him so strong—and brought him to full recovery—was the 10 hours a day, six days a week he spent pedaling the wheels of a stationary bike. In essence, Maier was training less like a ski racer and more like Lance Armstrong.
Maier’s trainers say that what makes his program so effective is the careful monitoring of lactate levels in his blood, which they measure with a pinprick to his earlobe every hour. If the levels are too high, he spins slower; too low, he ratchets up the intensity. Training in this window of efficiency increases his oxygen-carrying capacity without overtraining or injuring his muscles. “It’s all about easy cycling in the right amounts,” says Maier. Before meeting his trainer, Heinrich Bergmüller, Maier trained like a pro weight lifter. It wasn’t until 1997, when Maier broke his arm in a bad fall, that he switched to Bergmüller’s philosophy of endurance training. “Someone should have slowed me down…and thrown me out of the weight room,” says Maier. Six weeks after relinquishing his power training for stamina training—and all but giving up weight lifting (the heaviest weight he works with is a mere 11 pounds)—Maier won his first World Cup race, a super G at Garmisch.

If you like the idea of dumping the barbells and getting stronger, try these sample workouts, cribbed from the Herminator’s book The Hermann Maier Performance Program. Though the exercises don’t require dumbbells, your strength gains should be intense.Click the articles below for the workouts.

Train Like a Turtle: The Acid Test

Ask a personal trainer, physical therapist, or endurance coach where you can get a lactate test in your hometown. Cycling clubs like Carmichael Training Systems Performance Center (ctsaspen.com) in Aspen offer the test, which usually runs about $100. If you plan to check your lactate often, get a credit card–sized Lactate Pro Portable Lactate Analyzer at hdosport.com; the starter package is $400.

“It is not your pulse that is decisive, but the lactate which controls the heart rate,” Bergmüller says. Figure it out, stay in the saddle for the long haul, and you’ll be skiing longer, stronger, and injury free. Just be careful on the Harley.

Train Like a Turtle: Pedal for Power
By Helen Olsson
By measuring the lactate in your blood during exercise, you can determine how your heart rate corresponds with your anaerobic threshold.
Once you’ve determined your ranges, do 90 percent of your training below your anaerobic threshold (keeping your lactate levels below 2; you’re burning fat for energy and your heart rate is 110–120 beats per minute). Bergmüller calls this the “compensation level.” In the “stabilization level,” the body is still working aerobically, but lactate levels are between 2 and 4 (heart rate is 155–160 bpm) and you’re burning carbs and fat. The final phase of the training is the “development level,” an intense, carb-burning workout.

Compensation Training

3 sets of 30-minute rides (below lactate 2 OR pulse 120 at 88 to 90 revs/minute) with 5-minute stretching breaks between sessions.

Compensation + Stabilization
Stationary bike session at 88 to 90 revs/minute:

25 minutes of warm-up cycling at compensation level (below lactate 2, pulse 120)
7 minutes at stabilization level (between lactate 4 and 6, pulse 160)
5-minute break (stretching off the bike)
8 minutes at stabilization (between lactate 4 and 6, pulse 160)
5-minute break (stretching off the bike)
10 minutes at stabilization level (between lactate 4 and 6, pulse 160)
5-minute break (stretching off the bike)
25 minutes of cool-down cycling at compensation level (below lactate 2, pulse 110)
Compensation + Stabilization + Development
On the stationary bike (88 to 90 revs/minute) with compensation-stabilization- development level elements:

25 minutes of warm-up cycling at compensation level (below lactate 2, pulse 120)
10 minutes at stabilization level (between lactate 4 and 6, pulse 160)
5-minute break
2 times 6 minutes at development level (pulse of 175)
5-minute break
25 minutes of cool-down cycling at compensation level (pulse of 105)


Train Like a Turtle: How Do You Measure Up?
Hermann Maier
Height: 6 feet
Weight: 200 pounds
Age: 32
Hometown: Flachau, near Salzburg, Austria
Pedal Power: Can pedal at 300 watts while maintaining an aerobic pace for hours.
Cycling for Skiing: Spends 10 times as many hours on the bike as on the slopes.
Blood letting: In an eight-month training phase following his accident, Maier’s blood was drawn 1,106 times to check lactate levels. In that same time frame, he spent 212 hours in the saddle for the equivalent of 3,812 miles.
Claims to Fame

Four overall World Cup championships
Two Olympic gold medals at Nagano (despite crashing in the downhill, flying 100 yards at 70 miles per hour, and winding up on the cover of Time magazine)
47 World Cup victories, third only to Ingemar Stenmark (86) and Aberto Tomba (50)
In 2003, served as honorary starter of the Tour de France prologue, finishing just nine seconds behind the last pro.

[bad_roo]

I thought he kept in shape doing a stretching and agility programme in the off season.

[H-man]

I read that a week ago....

while I was having a second piece of birthday cake.

[Mountain Junkie]

was the 10 hours a day, six days a week he spent pedaling the wheels of a stationary bike.

This is truly my definition of hell.

[iceman]

This is truly my definition of hell.

Jesus, no kidding.

I would need a bong attached to the bike and the entire Beverly Hillbillies collection on DVD to withstand that.

[truth]

Jesus, no kidding.

I would need a bong attached to the bike and the entire Beverly Hillbillies collection on DVD to withstand that.

I think that can be worked into his routine without complication.

[ulty_guy]

almost all cardio and almost no weights.....a great read

thanks for posting that, cool stuff. the cardio thing works great if you have amazing genes (ala lance and herman) b/c the more you train, the better you get which is why they back down on the intensity so they can train longer. lance did a lot of sub-threshold long training as well.

edit- about the genetics thing, i participated in a very interesting study last year that tested a certain gene and if you were homozygous in one direction, you didn't really benefit from training, but quickly got into shape, the hetero was about equal in both direction and homozygous in the other direction meant it took you a long time to get into shape, but that you keep getting better the more you train and have a higher top end than the other 2. most people who summit everest w/out oxygen are the last type.

[edg]

I thought he kept in shape doing a stretching and agility programme in the off season.

That avatar rocks.

edg

[Hicks]

No matter whether that article tells the truth or not, but what it doesn't mention:

By riding and stretching alone without his extraordinany workout routines in the gym during his early days he likely would not have had the athletics to be top notch for so long but broke his neck on his Nagano crash.
Picture a cyclist or most of us crashing like these downhillers sometimes do, impossible to get out of harm's way without the according physical strenth.

[Big E]

No matter whether that article tells the truth or not, but what it doesn't mention:

By riding and stretching alone without his extraordinany workout routines in the gym during his early days he likely would not have had the athletics to be top notch for so long but broke his neck on his Nagano crash.
Picture a cyclist or most of us crashing like these downhillers sometimes do, impossible to get out of harm's way without the according physical strenth.

Hicks, I'm confused, are you saying that it was all the early, heavy weight training that built up the muscles that now allows him to use the all-cardio workout? Doesn't seem like that holds water, since he lost a huge amount of muscle from the bike crash.

[ddsnake]

Hicks, I'm confused, are you saying that it was all the early, heavy weight training that built up the muscles that now allows him to use the all-cardio workout? Doesn't seem like that holds water, since he lost a huge amount of muscle from the bike crash.

Muscle memory??

[Hicks]

Hicks, I'm confused, are you saying that it was all the early, heavy weight training that built up the muscles that now allows him to use the all-cardio workout?

I am not getting into what kind of percentage of his workout routines in his early days added how much to his unquestionable outstanding physical capabilities. But I just have my doubts whether he would have reached that just by the training routine described in the article above, since Hermann has been a very powerful athlete even before he entered his World Cup Racing career in the mid 90s. Hope that explains.
OTOH many people claim he never regained the strength as before his horrible bike accident despite his overall WC win in 2004. Honestly, I would not dare to make any judgement on that one.

[L7]

The early weight training probably had it's benefits. It may have set up the neural pathways that allow him to fire muscles more effectively than most. Sort of the muscle memory mentioned above. He may also have a genetic predisposition to above average strength (read super human) and an ability to easily retain that strength.

Basically this training regimen may not work for others but it certainly hightlights the need for cardio training and the over reliance on strength and weights. Skiing is about suppleness and agility not brute force (although it can help). It certainly isn't about muscle mass. I know 3 guys who have stood on top of World cup podiums and at one point in their careers bulked up substantially and struggled for a couple seasons after that until they trimmed down again.

It kills me when my nephew tells me how well he does in fitness testing on all the strength tests but he struggles to make the standard for the 12 minute run. When he was a kid he was a great cross country runner and the cardio and 12 minute run should be the first things he does well at and a lot of the strength stuff could come later.

[truth]

Hicks, I'm confused, are you saying that it was all the early, heavy weight training that built up the muscles that now allows him to use the all-cardio workout? Doesn't seem like that holds water, since he lost a huge amount of muscle from the bike crash.

Unless you have a flesh eating virus it's unpossible to actually lose muscle. Your muscle may shrink, but the number of fibres or cells is always constant. So, hicks point is valid. A highly trained athlete who loses all conditioning can regain all that strength far more rapidly than if they had never had it. I know that after 15 or so years in the gym I can take 6 months off, have an ACL repaired and then in a matter of 6 weeks be right back at the levels of uper body strength I was at prior to halting my training. Even if I basically give up trining with heavy weights, there is an inherent strength to the muscles that can only be developed with previous training. It's as if they know how hard they can contract because they have been there before, even if they don't get to go there often anymore. Mature muscle mass is a cool thing that way. One of the few upsides to getting older and having higher mileage on the body.

I know my best skiing was doneduring the winters I was in the weight room following long road and mtb racing seasons.

[KevinDineen]

Bode Miller's training program:

[SquawMan]

Summer Conditioning Series: Mountain Biking
================================================== =========
SkiPresse
June 15, 2005
Photo Courtesy Whistler/Blackcomb
by Kristin Bjornsen

Mountain biking may be to skiers what the nicotine patch is to smokers: a vital tool for helping snow addicts cope with the dry months of summer. But in addition to easing withdrawal symptoms, mountain biking also can improve your skiing fitness and technique. Just ask Jeff Hamilton, the World Speed Skiing champion in 1995, 1997, 1998 and 1999 and the first person to ski faster than 150 miles per hour.

“Mountain biking makes your ski muscles more efficient,” Hamilton says. “In both sports, the terrain is always changing, so you’re training your reaction time as well as your strength.”

Hamilton mountain bikes several times a week, in part, to stay in shape for ski season at Squaw Valley. But even ski programs such as the North American Ski Training Center (www.skinastc.com) are beginning to incorporate biking into their training regimens.

“It’s fun and also can improve your skiing,” says Chris Fellows, director and founder of NASTC and a member of the Professional Ski Instructors of America’s national demonstration team.

Any ski training program should target five aspects of fitness, Fellows says: plyometrics, balance and agility, strength, cardio and flexibility. Mountain biking hits most of these.

For plyometrics, the quick, intense bursts of energy required to crest a hill on your bike or maneuver around obstacles mimics the energy expenditures of skiing, Fellows says. There, you’re constantly adjusting for fluctuating snow conditions (powder, ice, corn) and for various terrain such as steeps, moguls and trees. “Even the ski turn itself is explosive rather than stagnant,” Hamilton says. So mountain biking, especially on technical routes, naturally lends itself to plyometric training..

Tip for Plyos: Find routes that require quick side-to-side movements, fast starts and stops, and jumping. For interval training, choose routes with rolling steep sections. You can blast up steep sections and then rest on flat and downhill sections.

Still, powerful plyo-pedaling won’t help you if you can’t stay balanced on your bike. Whether you’re traveling over rocky terrain, zipping down a single track or crossing a narrow bridge, biking requires coordination and agility, as does skiing.

Your improved balance from biking will carry over to the slopes, helping you stay centered on your skis, absorb changes in the terrain and recovery quickly from irregularities in the snow.

Tip for Balance: To practice your balance, come to a stop on your bike and try to balance on the pedals without the help of forward momentum. To do this, you may need to mechanically adjust your bike to assure it’s the proper fit for you, Fellows says. Too easy? Another exercise is to bike as slowly as you can across a grassy area (which provides a cushier landing if you fall) and lean your bike to the left toward the ground. You’ll have to keep your body counterbalanced to the leaning bike by keeping your weight over the left pedal. When you get your bike as low as you can, return it to an upright position. Now do the same thing on the other side by tilting your bike to the right.

As anyone with aching muscles after a long ride knows, mountain biking also will strengthen almost every muscle group. “Just to stay upright, you use your core muscles – your back, obliques, and abs, which are so important in skiing,” Fellows say.

You work your hamstrings, quads and gluteal muscles in the up- and down-strokes, and your upper body gets into the action maneuvering the bike across variable terrain. Some indoor bicycles such as the X-Bike attempt to mimic that upper-body movement, for a total-body workout, by creating handlebars that move side to side as you cycle (www.x-biking.com).

Strength Tip: For strength training, find steeper trails that will engage your muscles for a sustained time, so you’re not spinning your wheels as often. For core strength, find a rock, log or even a sidewalk curb to jump your bike either onto, down from or over. These movements will build your core muscles and mimic some of the movements for dropping over a cornice or launching off a jump. Practicing the landings also will train your balance because on both bikes and skis, you have to be centered and balanced when you land, Fellows says.

In the pursuit of bulging quads, don’t neglect your spongy lung muscles. Mountain biking can build aerobic capacity as well.

Cardio Tip: For endurance, sprinkle into your training longer, more moderately angled routes that will keep you in your target heart rate for 40 to 60 minutes. Do this about three times a week. The American Cancer Society offers a target heart rate calculator: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/co...Calculator.asp

Finally, although mountain biking can fortify physical fitness, half of its usefulness comes from its mental conditioning. “No. 1, it helps with your perception skills and allows you to plan a line ahead of time, especially with a more technical route,” Fellows says.

You have to plan your speed of approach, angle of turn and what gear you should be in. “That engages the tactical side of the brain, which is very, very important in skiing because you always need to be looking a couple turns ahead,” he says.

One payoff of physical and mental training may be avoiding injury. Knee injuries account for 30 to 40 percent of all alpine skiing injuries, but mountain biking can help protect your ACL and MCL from tears.

“If I were to build a program for a skier to protect against knee and shoulder injuries, mountain biking would be a part of it,” says Tim Poppe, a certified strength conditioning specialist at Physiotherapy Associates in Denver, Colo. “It wouldn’t necessarily be the largest or most important part, but it definitely helps protect you.”

Specifically, improving endurance and agility can help ward away injury when you’re fatigued.

“You often hear an injured skier say, ‘It was the last run of the day,’ or ‘My legs were really tired,’ and that’s when you make a mistake,” Poppe says.

Both Poppe and Fellows say mountain biking should not be the only training tool a skier uses, but it can improve your power, strength, cardio and balance – while at the same time providing an adrenaline fix to satisfy your summer cravings. So come November, you’ll not only be primed for ski season, but you’ll be yearning for the chairlift.

[13]

10H?! He's a madman indeed.

[altagirl]

Muscle memory??

I think there's something to that. I knew a woman who was a bodybuilder until she fell and broke her neck, which required a whole bunch of surgeries, a bunch of pins in her neck, and she wasn't allowed to lift anything over some ridiculous thing like 10lbs, period, and couldn't do any high impact activity. She still had a bodybuilder physique though, despite doing nothing but walking and stretching for several years. If you saw her, you wouldn't believe she wasn't in a weight room every day until you saw that she can't even turn her head. I think there's something to being able to keep muscle mass if you did enough years of weights at first. Maybe only for people with certain genetics, who knows.

Either way, I would guess that Maier's results if he started his training early in life with low threshhold aerobics instead of weight training, etc.

[m1e448]

I'm not sure, but I thought that when Lance had cancer that all of his muscles atrophied severely. He was able to take advantage of that because he had too much muscle mass to be effective on the climbs in the TDF pre cancer and he built back just enough to be efficient with out having to haul too much mass up the mountains. Am I wrong about this or what? I think that how fast or if your muscles atrophy is in your genetics, but feel free to call me out on this if I'm wrong.

[Buster Highmen]

Didn't phUnk have some rounds with a world cupper?

[Sphinx]

I call bullshit on his pulling 6 gs in a turn. You'd pass out without a pressure suit.

[Dexter Rutecki]

No, you'd be fine as long as it was short duration (an instantaneous 6g's won't make anyone pass out). But 6 is high--I know that they've measured the force exerted during turns and found them to be as high as 500 pounds, which might be 3g's for a guy like Rahlves, but probably only about two for Hermann.

[Buster Highmen]

And here I thought F=M*A. Silly me.

[Ski Monkey]

I call bullshit on his pulling 6 gs in a turn. You'd pass out without a pressure suit.

We pull 4 and 5 g's in skeleton without pressure suits. Granted track limits are 2 seconds max at 5 and 3 seconds max at 4. Holding your head up off the ice can get hard after a few runs down and you get fatigued.

[aspenskibum]

I call bullshit on his pulling 6 gs in a turn. You'd pass out without a pressure suit.

no, i've done a fair amount of aerobatic flying (powered planes) six g's will pin you to your seat for sure, some people might get a bit fuzzy, but plenty of people pull upwards of 6 g's without a pressure suit and don't come close to passing out. My dad's 63 and he still flies areobatics pulling whats probably close to 6 g's.