Raymond James Athlete Journal - Jeff Bell

Again we find ourselves in the grind of dryland summer training. Not many people know about or see what the Alberta Ski Team does during the summer, but let me tell you it is one of the most important parts of the season. During this portion of the season we work on our strength, cardio, agility, coordination and everything else you could possibly think of that has anything to do with fitness. Between sleeping and eating, everyone hits the gym twice a day for a total of about 3 1/2 hours in between work and/or school. To say the least we all sleep rather well. To start off the dryland season we go through fitness testing, a test of all the aspects of our fitness to help us see and concentrate on our individual weaknesses. After this we have all the info we need to effectively hit every portion of our fitness and work on being stronger and more able to ski like we want to.

Along with all the training and testing, a more well-known part of summer for us is the off season trips to the snow, starting with Mt. Hood this year and later on going to Chile again! This time in our off season is when we work on the basics of skiing, yes the basics; we go back to no gates at first and then an incessant amount of drills throughout all of the summer. All this to help us perform better throughout those long racing stretches in the middle of the racing season and so that we can go out every run and give it our all without being too tired or sore. And with that I hope I gave you a small insight of what we do throughout the summer.

Thanks for reading

Jeff Bell