BC Ski Team Summer Training - Coach Nancy checks in with another update

The BCST Men and Women are completing their final block of the 3 week dryland camp in Whistler under the direction of Exercise Physiologist Cindy Thomsen. The entire BCST has been present for this mandatory component of the BCST Program.

“We are really pleased with the intensity that this group brings into itself when they are all brought together,” commented coach Nancy O’Neill, “In this environment, they consistently are pushing each other, and this is the only way to train in order to compete with the best in the country”.

Typical daily routine has the athletes in the gym from 8 – 11 in the mornings, with a second session in outdoors location from 2 – 5 in the afternoons. Evening sport education sessions have also been a frequent activity throughout the camp.

In addition to the intensive individual weight lifting sessions, activities have included cycling, plyometric (bounding), trampoline/water ramps (under direction of freestyle coach), agility, yoga, Feldenkrais, games and team building activities.

Pacific Sport Exercise Physiologist Cindy Thomson reports, “ BC Alpine is fortunate enough to have a great group of athletes and coaching staff who recognize that a key element for success in ski racing is to have well developed physical capacities. The team has worked very hard in the past few months to ensure they are well prepared physically for the up coming Specific Preparation phase and Competition season. Coming together for training camps has helped the team push each other to new limits, and to learn new things about sport and performance. I am expecting that will the great leadership of Coach O’Neil and Coach Mosead the team will continue on the path toward the National team and World Cup!”

Coach Chris Mosead remarks, “Sweat plus sacrifice equals success – these athletes need to do what they HAVE to do in order to achieve what they WANT to achieve in this sport.”

At this time we would like to thank Mark MacDonell of BC Freestyle for his excellent coaching on the water ramps and trampoline. We would also like to thank Gail and Paul Morrison for the Team barbecue featuring fresh West Coast Salmon caught by our very own Sasha Zaitsoff and Mathieu Leduc! Another thank you to our host billet families Al and Irene Whitney, and Gail and Paul Morrison.

We would also like to extend our “thank you” to the following presenters of the education elements: Cindy Thomsen, Dr. Karin Kausky, and Irene Gutteridge.

The team now prepares for travel to Mt Hood for the second block of on-snow training for the summer. “Hood will be a Slalom specific camp in order to give the athletes the best use of terrain at this time. We expect to achieve a solid 9 days at this time, which will give the athletes a total to date of 17 days technical skills and slalom focus. We will move into a GS / Speed focus in Chile … so the time spent in Hood on skills and slalom will be most effective in preparing the athletes for the transition into the other disciplines.”