Every 4 years, we become participants in a minor miracle. It usually happens in the dead of night, when we're clicking around the channels and finally settle on...
Curling
After curling, we watch skeleton races, then bobsledding, then speed skating. The Winter Olympics captivated 20 million Americans last time around, and this year promises to be just as much of an eye-grabber. And why? It's not patriotism or pure spectacle. No one watches that much TV out of a sense of national duty, and the raw entertainment value of seeing a guy helicopter-spin on a snowboard wears off pretty quickly.
So what's the secret of this unlikely attraction? Simple: It's our gut recognition that we're not just witnessing fancy tricks, but rather a master class in our own human potential.
Basic truths are always revealed in the extremes, out there on the edge of what's possible. Take biathlon, in which an athlete races on cross-country skis and then suddenly stops, whips a rifle off his back, and takes dead aim at a target 165 feet away. Nothing in life is harder than keeping cool in the clutch, and no sport does a better job of training you for that moment than biathlon. Bobsled takes the strength and explosive power of body-clash sports like wrestling and football, but ramps it up by demanding the finesse of synchronizing four fast-moving bodies wearing needle-sharp spikes on their shoes.
You'll probably never try these sports, or even figure out all the rules. But thanks to some of America's greatest winter athletes, you can go beyond appreciating them from a distance and learn the skills behind the thrills. We debriefed a select group of the country's top coaches and Olympians, and came away with their training secrets for building the extreme strength, speed, endurance, and agility that can give you a gold-medal edge in your own life.
BOBSLEDDING
Strength and speed
The way Jason Hartman looks at it, bobsledders are the world's alpha males: "They're what every guy wants to see in the mirror," he says. Hartman, the strength and conditioning coordinator for the U.S. Olympic Committee, rattles off the elements of his argument.
"Bobsledders have the physique, the power, the speed, and the agility," he points out. They're big and strong, but not bulky. They're quick, but strong enough to launch a 460-pound sled from a standing start to 20 miles an hour in just 10 strides, and they're nimble enough to vault inside the sled without catching their spikes on it.
Actually, Hartman could be describing himself. At 27, he still has the same shaggy blond surfer's hair and built-for-speed heft from his days as a fullback at Western Maryland College. But he quickly turns the conversation to his protege: Justin Olsen.
Olsen, 22, grew up playing football, but after struggling to balance academics, athletics, and the military during his first year at the Air Force Academy, he pulled out of school to see if he could figure out what was wrong. He returned home to San Antonio, where his mother suggested that just for kicks he try his luck at an Olympic bobsled recruiting combine being held nearby. Within weeks, Olsen was a convert; within 2 years he was a world champion. So how did he make such a startling transition from average college athlete to superstar sledder? "Simple," Olsen says. "It was all about training smart. If I'd trained like this during my football days I would have been unstoppable. I'd have been a freak!"
THE TRAINING
Step one, according to Hartman, is avoiding the bench-press-till-your-eyes-bleed mentality. "We get a lot of former football players, because the basic skill set is the same: In both, you're pushing heavy things around," he explains. "But football thinking is 'lift till you can't lift anymore, and then sprint till you throw up.' My approach is to do as little as you need to, then shut down. Coming back fresh makes you stronger and helps prevent injuries."
By most minicamp standards, Hartman's training diet is lean cuisine. He scales back not only the length of his workouts, but also the variety, stripping the menu down to a few meat-and-potato basics. Many exercises, Hartman believes, are just useless clutter.
"Take the legs," he says. "Instead of monkeying around with six different exercises and five different machines, why not just focus on back squats? Do them right, and there's not much more you need."
Consider Hartman's gym at the Lake Placid training facility. It's an exercise camp for some of the world's top athletes, but it looks more like a prison weight room. Between the cinder-block walls are squat racks, lifting platforms, stacks of plates, and... that's about it.
"Don't pollute your training with extra stressors," Hartman insists. "Go hard at a few exercises and be smart about your combinations, and you'll keep seeing results."
THE TAKEAWAY
During the early stages of an exercise cycle, Jason Hartman likes high reps with a short rest between sets, believing that a standard of about 3 sets of 10 repetitions, performed two or three times a week, keeps his athletes from trying to bang too much weight. (Of course, reduce the number of reps if your form begins to suffer due to fatigue.) He also focuses on just a handful of old-school standbys: squats, dips, pullups, power cleans, deadlifts, lunges, and sprints. "That's it," he promises. "That's the secret to becoming an alpha male."
Monday
Back squat: 3 sets, 10 reps
Bench press: 3 sets, 10 reps
Reverse lunge: 3 sets, 10 reps
Dip: 3 sets, 10 reps
Sprint: Run six 60-meter sprints, with 2 minutes rest between sprints
Wednesday
Power clean: 4 sets, 5 reps
Deadlift: 3 sets, 6 reps
Pullup: 3 sets, 10 reps
Russian lean: 3 sets, 5 reps
Sprint: Run eight 80-meter sprints, with 2 minutes rest between sprints
Friday
Front squat: 4 sets, 5 reps
Military press: 3 sets, 8 reps
Walking lunge: 3 sets, 10 reps
Good morning: 3 sets, 6 reps
Sprint: Eight 100-meter sprints, with 2 minutes rest between sprints
(Rest 60 seconds between sets and use a challenging weight.)
Save Your Back
Much like a weekend warrior, the bobsledder's biggest occupational hazard is a blown-out back. So how do these athletes protect themselves? With nature's weight belt: beefed-up hips, hamstrings, and glutes.
"I'm convinced that many back issues stem from weak glutes," Jason Hartman says. For his sledders, he relies on two battle-tested standards. (If you have a preexisting back condition, see your doc before attempting.)
Good morning: Stand holding a bar across your upper back. Then bend at your hips until your torso is nearly parallel to the ground. Raise back to the starting position and repeat. Do 3 sets of 6 reps.
Russian lean: Modify this exercise by working a Swiss ball into the routine. Kneel with someone anchoring your feet, put your hands on the ball, and walk it as far from you as you can reach; pause, and walk it back toward you. Do 3 sets of 5 reps.
Jump Higher
Jason Hartman likes to wow new bobsledders with his magical jumping drill. First, he tests their maximum vertical leap. Then he has them do a set of heavy squats before jumping again. Without fail, they'll jump several inches higher after blasting their legs with the squats.
"It's called post-activation potentiation," Hartman explains. The theory is that the squat activates bands of last-resort muscle fibers called "high-threshold motor units." Your body keeps HTMU fibers in reserve for emergencies and only the most strenuous jobs, so the trick is to recruit them voluntarily.
Unlike with the training regimen Hartman typically uses, you don't want a lot of reps here. "I tend to make sure the resistance is high but not maxed out. Just do a small amount of volume to wake up your muscles." And once you've recruited that HTMU oomph to leap those extra inches, Hartman says, the gains remain; after your body learns that it can jump 32 inches instead of 30, you can do it all the time, even without the squat-rack warmup.
SNOWBOARDING
Agility and power
When it came time to build core strength, Chris Klug faced the ultimate challenge. Or nightmare, depending on your perspective.
In 1994, Klug was diagnosed with a rare bile-duct ailment that demanded he either receive a liver transplant or wait to die. He continued to compete as a snowboarder, winning the 1998 World Cup giant slalom and becoming the top-ranked U.S. snowboarder entering the 1998 Olympics, where he finished sixth. Two years later, with the 2002 Salt Lake City Games in his sights, he received word that an organ was available. If he survived the surgery, his life would be saved. But the price? Surgeons would have to cut through his abdominal wall, the very muscles that made Klug's career possible.
"Snowboarding is all about the core," says Bill Fabrocini, a physical therapist and the director of the Aspen Club Sports Performance Center, who would later mastermind Klug's rehabilitation. "Change of direction, shock absorption, velocity control, it's all based on your ability to stabilize your core and control the power that comes from your hips and legs. The problem for Chris was that they were basically cutting him in half and turning off his ability to control that power." To this day, some of Klug's lower abdominal muscles have never reactivated and reformed. "I'm a can short of a six-pack," he jokes.
Compounding the challenge was Klug's size. He's big for a boarder, at 6'3" with a weight that hit 215 pounds after his tenure as an All-State quarterback at Oregon's Mountain View High School. Klug carries a lot of muscle mass in his upper and lower body, which generates incredible torque and strain on his core. "This wasn't going to be easy," Fabrocini recalls. "And when I asked other therapists how to help an Olympian get back in shape for the Games after an organ transplant, they shrugged and said, 'Dunno. No one's ever tried before.' "
Fabrocini's strategy was to throw out the old bodybuilding model of isolating muscles and cranking out repetitive sets of crunches. "That mentality just leads to more problems, more compressive forces on the spine," he says. "To me, core stability is all about timing and rhythm, teaching muscles to turn on and off in unison to support the body in different postures."
The results speak for themselves: Six months later—six months!—Klug won his first World Cup race. At the 2002 Winter Games, he became the first transplant recipient to win an Olympic medal, taking bronze in the parallel giant slalom.
THE TRAINING
"I like to work from the core out to the arms and legs," Fabrocini says. "One instant way to increase core strength is by increasing patterns of movement, allowing other muscles and structures to get into the game." Fabrocini layered in resistance work with cables—chopping motions from low to high, diagonal, kneeling, and half-kneeling moves—designed to build postural strength. But his go-to exercise doesn't even look like exercise. Fabrocini lays the foundation for all his athletes' core work with planks, in which you balance on toes and forearms, keeping your body plank-straight and parallel to the floor. "Planks create tension in your core muscles that's more similar to what they experience in sports," Fabrocini says. As soon as Klug became strong enough to handle the standard plank, keeping his butt down and body horizontal, Fabrocini started throwing in variations: picking up one arm or leg, using bands, doing one-armed rows.
THE TAKEAWAY
Chris Klug is religious about core work and maintaining his posture—he never knows when he'll hit the rut that'll put months of prep to the test. And that's why even during the heat of competition, he does variations of these core exercises two or three times a week.
Curlup: Lie on your back with your hands behind your head. Keep one leg straight and bend the other so your foot is on the floor and your knee is at a comfortable angle. Without using your arms for leverage, tense your abs to lift your shoulders off the floor. Hold for 3 seconds; do this 15 times.
Bridge: Lie faceup on the floor with your knees bent and feet flat. Place your arms out to your sides, palms down. Then, with your torso rigid, squeeze your glutes and raise your hips so your body forms a straight line. Hold for 3 seconds; do 15 reps.
Opposite arm and leg reach: Get down on your hands and knees. Keeping your back naturally arched, reach forward with your left arm while lifting and straightening your right leg. Hold for 10 seconds. Repeat, extending your right arm and left leg. Do 10 reps on each side.
Plank: Assume a pushup position, but place your forearms on the floor so that your elbows are directly under your shoulders. Now brace your core tightly—as if you were about to be punched in the gut. Don't let your hips sag or shoot up. Hold for 30 to 60 seconds.
Torso turn: Attach exercise tubing securely to a door frame at shoulder height and grab the handle so the tubing is taut and in front of you. Without twisting your lower back, brace your core and use your hips to rotate your torso to the left and right for a total of 15 repetitions to each side.
Plank arm lift: Assume a plank position (described at left), but spread your feet to shoulder width. Raise one forearm off the floor for 5 seconds. Alternate with the other arm. Repeat 5 times for each arm.
Achieve Perfect balance
Bill Fabrocini, director of the Aspen Club Sports Performance Center, is a big advocate of plyometrics for strength and agility training, but he has a caution: "A lot of guys look at all this hopping around and think it's kid stuff," he says. "They're the ones who get hurt. It's riskier than pushing a bar up and down off your chest."
Fabrocini starts his athletes off with simple body-weight jumps, teaching them to work on their landing and making sure they're stacking their joints properly to dissipate force. Then he has them move to single-leg squats, and when he's satisfied with their technique, it's on to single-leg leaps.
For men who'll never set foot on a snowboard, Fabrocini recommends this workout devised by Donald Chu, Ph.D., one of the country's leading plyometrics experts.
The cycle takes 14 weeks. Do the routine 3 times a week for 4 weeks, then twice a week for 4 weeks, and finally once a week for 6 weeks.
1 Single-leg hops over 10 meters (try to cover as much ground as possible)
2 Single-leg hurdle hops: 5 sets, 6 reps over 12"-18" barriers
3 Single-leg pushoff: 5 sets, 6 reps from a 12" box (drive up for maximum height)
4 Reverse lunge: 10 total, each leg
See with your feet
Rob Roy, the veteran coach who oversees Chris Klug's training, uses an obstacle course to teach snowboarders to look ahead instead of down at their feet. If you play basketball or soccer, you can benefit, too. Try the sidewinder, from plyometrics expert Donald Chu, Ph.D. Line up three cones 3 to 4 feet apart. Set up a fourth cone 20 yards away. Keeping your eyes ahead, shuffle sideways, weaving through the first three cones from left to right, and then back from right to left. Now pivot and sprint 20 yards to the fourth cone. Return to the obstacle course using a quick, sideways shuffle. Repeat 3 times.
BIATHLON
Endurance and focus
Lowell Bailey began his biathlon career by making the same mistake every other young hotshot has made: He hammered the skiing as hard as he could and figured the shooting would take care of itself. "You never want anyone to pass you, so you throw all strategy and caution away and just go for it." Now 28 and one of America's deadliest men on skis, Bailey has learned that he needs to be able to switch from full throttle to full control in an instant. "That's why it takes an incredibly long time to master this sport," he says.
Bailey didn't grow up with a rifle in his hand; as a kid in Lake Placid, he mostly played tennis and soccer when he wasn't skiing. But when he finally fired his first shots on a biathlon range as a teenager, he discovered a similarity among all projectile sports.
"When you're lining up a small dot at the end of the sight and coordinating with a trigger pull, it's a lot like arcing a penalty kick or sinking a 15-foot putt," he says. "You're learning to be comfortable at a high stress level." Because in the end, Bailey points out, talent and conditioning are meaningless if you can't keep it steady at the buzzer. You may think you're the hardest-working athlete in the world, but in reality, just about everyone at your level is logging the same amount of hours and probably doing roughly the same workouts. "So it comes down to what tools am I going to use to make it up on the podium? A lot of time the difference between a medal and top 20 is mental fortitude and finding inner calm."
THE TRAINING
As often as possible during the off-season, James Upham, U.S. Biathlon's development coach, points his athletes in one direction: up. Hill work is the fastest way to push into the range of your max heart rate while simultaneously building strength, power, and technique. "One legendary drill is the whiteface workout," Upham says with a devilish laugh. "It's really fun for coaches to watch. You bound straight uphill for 12 minutes, alternating 15 seconds of moving with 15 seconds of rest. Then you take 5 minutes off and do it again."
"Hills are the best," Bailey agrees. "Unfortunately, they're also the most painful."
Of course, it's precisely when things are most painful that Bailey and other biathletes need to be able to stop and shoot with accuracy. "There's no better time to practice staying in control than when your heart is at 195 beats a minute," says Upham. In other words, the best way to practice free throws isn't when you're cooling down at the end of practice, but by mimicking game conditions and stepping to the stripe right after a series of line drills.
Still, when it finally comes time to rest, Upham is an absolutist. "Most athletes want to keep loading on the volume, not realizing that a smart spell of rest could add training time in the long run."
Never miss a workout
Because biathletes are on the road for up to 7 months a year, many have come to rely on the Redcord, an exercise system consisting of two cords with loops at the end. You can stuff it (or any similar system, such as TRX) into the side pocket of a suitcase, and then sling the cords over any kind of overhead support for hundreds of different body-weight workouts: dips, pullups, triceps presses, down-dog crunches, shoulder extensions, you name it. "Our Italian coach introduced it last year, and the athletes really like it," says James Upham.
THE TAKEAWAY
Even one of James Upham's "toned-down" training regimens is more strenuous and time-consuming than most recreational athletes are used to. If you're in great shape, go for it.
Monday
Warm up 20 minutes, then do 4 reps of 4 minutes of maximum effort uphill, either running (treadmill) or bounding (outside). Jog down easily between reps. As you become stronger, add reps.
Tuesday
90-minute easy run or bike, with twelve 15-second sprints mixed in.
Wednesday
Long-distance run or bike, building up until you can go 2 to 4 hours.
Thursday
"Natural intervals": 90-minute run or bike on a hilly course, accelerating to maximum effort on every uphill.
Friday
60 minutes of steady-state distance, working on efficient form and relaxation, preparing for...
Saturday
Race-pace effort. Run or bike a time trial over your target race distance.
Eliminate distractions
"People have this misconception that biathletes can magically lower their heart rates when it's time to shoot," says Lowell Bailey. But his shooting only improved when he learned to stop focusing on things he can't control—his heart rate—and bear down on the things he can. So he searches his body for stresses he can eliminate: A tense hamstring or a clenched calf, for example, can be just as destabilizing to his shot as a knotted shoulder. Practice running your own split-second body scan anytime you're about to launch a ball, be it on the court or the course.
More Links:
Train Like An Olympian
Download Men's Health Workouts
The 100 Best Fitness Tips Ever
Lose 15 Pounds in 6 Weeks
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