Technical ability and a desire to achieve need to be backed up with a high degree of fitness. This is sometimes overlooked and rarely is it structured and managed consistently throughout the year. Our aim is to provide expert training programmes for individual racers and monitor as well as test their progress throughout the year.

ROUTINE
Part of the daily routine at the academy is physical fitness training. Often overlooked or perhaps not thought about as much as it should be, is the athletes own fitness levels. As their technical ability and speed increases on ski's it is vital that fitness levels increase alongside. The British Children's team, the Home Nation squads and the Senior British Teams all have minimum levels of fitness as part of their selection criteria. Please click here to access the fitness targets for all age groups levels, both for Male and Female, as set by SnowsportGB.

BOREDOM
Fitness is a chore to most young racers, they find it difficult to motivate themselves. If the individual is not lucky enough to have a friend to do fitness training with, they will often find the routine they have set themselves becomes boring. They will then find it difficult to keep to an ongoing programme, This is understandable, we have to remember they have a lot of other, more exciting things going on in their lives. The trouble is, it could well be that their fitness level is the one fact that is keeping them from developing as fast as their peers, perhaps it's loosing them that vital second or part of a second in a race and ultimately keeping them from being noticed by the team selectors.

TRAINING
Our physical fitness training at the academy is geared up to encompass all this. We try to put some fun into training, especially for the younger children, but always keeping in mind what they need to achieve as far as fitness targets and testing are required. We periodically test our trainees in line with SnowsportGB's published targets, to see where they are and how much they have improved over their stay at the academy. We alternate our fitness programme through out the year, to allow us to concentrate on different aspects in the Summer period, than those in the Winter race period. We will prepare our trainees for those important fitness tests, in early and late summer as well as autumn. Our summer training period takes in 7 weeks from the middle of July until the end of August/early September. This is a very important period where the athlete, as well as concentrating on enhancing their technical ability, can really concentrate on achieving a high level of fitness, even beyond the minimum requirements stated above.

DEVELOPMENT
As the young racer develops and moves through the age categories the fitness levels and targets increase. The stronger and fitter an individual racer becomes, the more they will achieve within the sport. With this in mind we will be organising specialized fitness programmes and testing, for the more serious and committed racers, at the Olympic Fitness Centres in Obertauern and Flachau. Flachau is 5 minutes drive from our base in Radstadt, Obertauern is 15 minutes. please see below for further developments to this programme.

Specialized Individual Fitness Programmes, training and testing:
We will be arranging to use the Olympic Fitness Centre in Obertauern and its facility in Flachau. There will be full fitness programmes and testing arranged for trainees on an individual basis. This is a World class physical fitness establishment. Top sport people from all over the world use it. To have a full programme planned for you as an individual, with periodic testing to measure where you are in the programme, would really help you to achieve a very high level of fitness.

Full details will be posted shortly. In the meantime for full details of the facilities available please take a look at their web site. There is an English link but not all pages have not yet been translated.

This is a separate programme from the academy fitness programme and will incur an additional fee, which will be paid to Olympia Stutzpunkt. This can be paid through the academy if requested.