Registration is open for the Stratton Mountain School BKL Summer Camp, which runs August 3-6, 2026, on the SMS campus in Stratton Mountain, Vermont. The camp is open to athletes ages 10 to 14, with a maximum grade of eighth.
The four-day program is built around progressive skill work in a low-pressure setting. Hiking, swimming, roller skiing, ski bounding, and games are all on the schedule, along with the camp’s annual lip-sync contest. Campers will also sit down with members of the SMS T2 Elite Team for a Q&A — the T2 group has put skiers on World Cup and Olympic start lists, and the session is one of the camp’s longer-running traditions.
The camp is split into two sections, one for male athletes and one for female athletes, both running the same August 3-6 dates. Registration and payment deadlines are both July 31, 2026.
If the camp fills before the deadline, SMS is keeping a waitlist through a Google form linked on the registration page. Note that the form does not allow duplicate phone numbers. Cancellations made fewer than 30 days before the camp start date are non-refundable.
For questions, contact Nordic Program Director Matt Boobar at mboobar@gosms.org or 570-594-7555.
American Neve Gerard (l) leads athletes from other countries at an International Training Camp in August, 2024, in Sjusjøen, Norway. (Courtesy photo)
As this ski season wraps up, many of us coaches are doing similar work. Using spreadsheets or a popular training platform, we map out training for the year. We plan the yearly hours, monthly hours, and weekly hours, along with defining the training intensity distribution. We also plan how long and over-distance sessions should be, and maybe how much high-intensity training we should include, etc. I have done the same in the past.
Nowadays, my yearly plans include almost none of those things, but rather it is a general road map of how I might want the training loads to progress, what type of high-intensity, neuromuscular work, strength training focus, technique development, training camps, testing sessions, and a general concept of where we start in April or May. We must be able to adjust training on the fly based on an assessment of how athletes’ recovery and adaptation, week to week, with the training and developing fitness.
In this article, I want to make a case for the changes I have made. Why? Because these detailed hours and training-intensity distribution plans we make are about as good as the day they were written. We then must avoid the temptation to implement training in May, June, or July just because we wrote it down in April. There is no way we can anticipate in April how an athlete will respond to training next month, much less than 2-6 months down the road.
In discussion with many athletes and coaches I have consulted with in the last four to five years, I believe the biggest challenge faced is how and when to increase training load within a training year. For reference, I use TRIMP to define the metabolic load. TRIMP is described as a modeled internal-load metric or composite index based on exercise duration and HR-derived intensity weighting. TRIMP is not perfect because it is based on heart rate parameters, so power and strength training, mechanical loads are not accounted for. I find TRIMP an excellent proxy for the loads of all endurance training.
Bates College getting after some dryland in 2024. (Photo: courtesy photo)
Others simply use hours to plan and measure the loads. The challenge is difficult when just looking at hours, how to compare an hour of easy training versus an hour of hard training. Then, looking at percentages of time in zones or with other training methods does not define the load or focus the training on the desired adaptation.
I am not going to address the year-to-year increases simply because all the assorted tables recommending volume of training at an age are based on population averages. The goals of the athletes, the athletes’ training age, training history, and many other potential factors. Just assigning training based on a table is foolish without considering these other factors. In most cases, athletes will train enough if the right principles are followed.
When we are coaching athletes, we should only increase loads because of improved fitness not in an attempt to drive fitness gains. The decision to increase loads should come from evidence that the athlete(s) have absorbed the current load, not simply because it is a new month and the plan calls for a month-over-month increase. I believe that in the past we have used templates or models that have called for big month-to-month increases. The basis of building fitness is consistency and adaptation to the training. In many cases, we can go as long as 2-3 months at a very similar or very small increase in load.
I am far from certain how coaches plan training these days, but others and I in the past have planned training based on monthly and weekly hours. In my days, I used to start in May with 50 hours, and by November, I was training more than 100 hours. Then the weekly progression within those months might go 12 hours, 14 hours, 16 hours, 10 hours or something like that. Even back then, how does a 50-hour month prepare you to do a 60-hour month, how does a 12-hour week prepare you to do a 14-hour week? What I learned more than 30 years ago. It doesn’t work that way; even if an athlete completes that kind of protocol, it does not mean it worked; it just means they survived it.
The research and experience suggest that higher monthly volume and small periodic increases are better for building long-term fitness and performance, with far less risk than the typical plans that ramp up training with increases of 10-15-20% per month. Many old-school thoughts persist that we must increase volume to stimulate further improvements. That is an invalid belief and has been shown to be in much research and analysis. If we are in fact building fitness, we are moving faster at every intensity. Isn’t that already an increase in load? Recruiting more muscle fibers and motor units aerobically, improving mitochondrial density and function, improving aerobic enzymes in more muscle fibers, among other aerobic adaptations.
Fin Bailey works on uphill technique at training camp. (Photo: courtesy photo)
I look for three layers of signals: performance stability, physiological response, and behavioral cues.
The stability of performance in training is easily measured with simple technology, such as heart rate and GPS. Prior to increasing loads, the athlete should show improvement or stable performance in workouts. The aerobic training sessions should feel consistent and easy, with very little or no heart rate drift through the workouts. So, a simple training session once a week, once every two weeks, around a standard loop, both for high-intensity and aerobic training, can tell us much.
The key workouts should show repeatable performance levels from week to week. The pace athletes can maintain at aerobic intensity should gradually and slowly improve, and the technique should stay stable and efficient throughout the workouts.
Indicator
What it suggests
Same HR but faster pace, HRV is improving
Aerobic adaptation
Same workout feels easier, HRV is stable or improving
Load is absorbed
Ability to repeat intervals without extra fatigue
Ready for progression
If workouts are still producing large fatigue swings, the system is still adapting and increasing load is premature.
As I have written previously for FasterSkier, older junior ( U18’s) athletes, masters, and elite athletes, I think it is important to use HRV to assess recovery. Using HRV, we can see whether the athletes are recovering predictably between sessions. We can see the stability or improving response their training, and we can assess whether the training loads are sustainable.
Useful signals:
Resting HR stable
HRV 7-day trend stable or improving
Sleep quality normal
Muscle soreness minimal after aerobic sessions
The data and the athlete reports feeling normal again within ~24 hours
If recovery between sessions is incomplete, increasing load compounds fatigue rather than builds fitness. The rush to hit hourly objectives and the failure to respond to accumulating fatigue are the biggest causes of maladaptive training.
The critical question HRV can help to address. Are the current loads the athlete is doing correct? HRV, especially RMSSD trends collected consistently, can help flag whether an athlete is tolerating training well. But HRV should be interpreted alongside performance, subjective recovery, resting HR, sleep, and life stress rather than used as a standalone decision rule. In some cases, this may mean adjusting other areas of life; in others, we may simply have to reduce the training loads. Simply low HRV indicates a compromised ability to recover from and adapt to training
A good indicator of readiness is the athlete’s ability to handle training density. Most athletes should have at least one rest day per week. During a training period, the athlete should be able to handle 3-5 moderate training days in a row without feeling accumulated fatigue, and the quality of workouts remains normal and stable.
The occasional longer sessions should not disrupt the next day’s planned training, and recovery should be normal the following day. If an athlete is doing double sessions, the second session of the day should not be carrying excessive fatigue from the morning session, and the quality, speed, pace, or intensity of the second workout should be consistent.
When the athlete’s readiness and physiological measures indicate that an increase in load is appropriate, there should only be a slight increase in volume. Make a few sessions per week a little bit longer, followed in the future by adding a workout or two per week
Training load should only increase when the muscles and connective tissue are tolerating the training. If there is persistent tendon soreness, joint irritation, muscle tightness, or recurring niggles are common, it is not appropriate to increase the loads. Aerobic fitness improves faster than structural durability, which is why injuries often appear right after a volume jump.
We also need to be aware of and watch for behavioral cues in the athletes, not just the recovery and performance data. We should look for the athlete’s motivation to train and their assessment of the RPE (rating of perceived exertion) for a given workout. If the perceived exertion of a given workout is increasing, it is not a positive signal. Finally, we should ensure that athletes’ nutrition is good, and their body weight is stable.
As a practical guideline, I would recommend increasing load only after a period of 3-6 weeks, where we can see stable adaptation and improvement in training and recovery measures. When we look at elite training, we always see the training progression is often much slower than people expect.
JC Schoonmaker and Luke Jager training in Anchorage, Alaska back in 2023. (Photo: Brinkema Brothers)
Training Phase
Progression Pattern
Base Phase
+5–10% volume every 3-6 weeks, but only if all inputs are positive. If using TRIMP or Training Peaks TSS the load increase should never exceed 15-20%
Race Prep Phase
Maintain a stable volume, intensity increase slowly from the base phase
Competition phase
Volume and Training load decreases slightly; intensity is maintained or increased due to race load.
As useful guidelines for coaches. If a training day or a week feels heroic, it is too big. Most likely, all the heroic training did was build fatigue and greatly slow recovery and adaptation. Sure, the athlete can do it occasionally, but it in no way means the load improves fitness or performance, or that the athlete adapts to it. My rule of thumb is that the longer it takes for an athlete to recover from a workout, a week, or a month of training, the less adaptation that is possible. When I shared this comment regarding high-intensity workouts with Zach Caldwell, I asked him when we should adapt to them. His response was Thursday! Not next Thursday, not a Thursday next month. Thursday!
An effective training progression should feel well-tolerated for weeks. Fitness improvements are built on consistent, manageable weeks. Where the fitness is developed through compounded training, not the occasional massive week. I have seen it repeatedly, it is big increases in training load, too much, too soon, that ultimately leads to declining performance and overtraining. Sure, elite athletes train massive weeks, but to get there, they adapt to training every year, step by step.
Increases in training load should be almost invisible over weeks and months as athletes develop. Over the years of training, the increases are clearly visible and large.
In summary, increase training load when:
Current workouts are repeatable and controlled
Athletes recover following training days, normally within ~24 hours
No structural soreness or injury signals
Motivation and energy are normal
This training performance has improved, and recovery has been stable or improving for 3-6 weeks
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The U.S. women’s relay after taking a historic third in the 4 x 3.3 k relay at 2017 Junior World Championships on Sunday at Soldier Hollow in Midway Utah, with (from left to right) Hailey Swirbul, Julia Kern, Hannah Halvorsen, and Katharine Ogden. (Photo: U.S. Ski Team/Tom Kelly)
As the season winds down, it’s worth stepping back and asking a simple question: Does the way we develop young skiers in the United States reflect the philosophy we say we believe in? I know everyone is probably done with hearing about how the Norwegians do it, so let’s look at what we say we know and what we embrace.
Many coaches and programs describe cross-country skiing as a lifetime sport. We talk about patience and say it takes ten years or more to develop as a skier. Clubs reference long-term athlete development models, and parents hear that endurance sports reward athletes who build gradually and peak later in life.
All of that is true.
But much of the system we’ve built rewards the opposite.
Once rankings, camp selections, college recruiting, and program reputation become tied to junior results, the incentives quietly shift. Development begins to be measured by podiums and training hours rather than movement quality, long-term improvement, or whether athletes are still engaged in the sport five or ten years later.
The U.S. men’s silver-medal relay at 2018 Junior World Championships in Goms, Switzerland, with (from left to right) Luke Jager, Hunter Wonders, Gus Schumacher, and Ben Ogden. (Photo: JWSC2018.ch)
What is long-term development
Aerobic capacity develops over years, often decades. Technical efficiency improves gradually. The durability required to handle training load is built slowly through years of training. Most elite endurance athletes reach their peak in their mid-twenties or early thirties, not in high school.
If peak performance happens ten or fifteen years after an athlete first enters the sport, the early years should focus less on maximizing results and more on building the foundation that supports long-term growth.
That foundation includes several elements.
Movement skill. Nordic skiing is a technical sport, and the best skiers move efficiently long before their physiology fully matures. This efficiency is critical to managing training loads in the future. More efficiency in technique equals less stress and load from training.
General athletic development. Running, biking, jumping, climbing, and playing other sports all contribute to coordination and resilience. Athletes who move well tend to adapt better to training later.
Motivation. The most valuable asset a young athlete has isn’t VO₂ max or the hours trained by some arbitrary definition. It’s the desire to keep showing up year after year.
Junior athletes race during the 2022 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Soldier Hollow, UT. (Photo: Tobias Albrigtsen / @untraceableg)
The System Sends Mixed Signals
In practice, the system often sends young athletes a different message.
Junior racing has become increasingly competitive. Rankings exist even for younger age groups, and selections for camps, trips, and development programs often depend on early results. National events and development pathways can make performance at 14 or 15 feel like it carries some long-term significance. Yet we also claim to know that identifying future elite athletes at that age is extremely unreliable. If that’s true, it’s worth asking why the system places so much weight on those results.
One example is allowing U14 athletes to ski up in order to qualify for Junior Nationals. It doesn’t happen frequently, but it happens every year. It’s hard to reconcile that with the philosophy of not rushing development. If long-term development truly matters, governing bodies should show leadership and address this issue.
In some regions of the country, qualifier races have U16 athletes seeded in the start list with U18 and U20 athletes. People say it doesn’t matter because we separate them in the results. I disagree, the are intermingled with much older and more developed athletes. But more than that it is again the message begin sent?
At the same time, training culture has shifted. Training data is widely shared, and conversations often revolve around hours. Young athletes begin comparing workloads long before their bodies are ready to handle them. Often the more is better attitude prevails, even though we say that we should be working on other skill aspects of development.
These pressures can push athletes toward earlier specialization and higher training loads than their stage of development requires. A 14-year-old begins to feel like they need to train like a college skier. A 15-year-old worries that missing races or reducing training volume might put them behind.
The Boulder Nordic Junior Race Team out for an adventure ski in 2014. (Photo: BNST)
What are the impacts of the mixed signals
The most visible consequence is burnout. Many people challenge the idea of burnout. But after more than forty years around this sport, I’ve seen the pattern repeatedly. Just because we don’t measure something well doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
Coaches who have spent time around junior skiing see the pattern: talented athletes who disappear from the sport sometime between their late teens and early twenties. Sometimes academics, finances, or changing interests are the reason. But often the explanation is simpler, they are tired from too much too early and to intense.
There are also physical consequences. Adolescence is a complex period of growth and development. Training loads that are manageable for more mature athletes are impossible for a developing body. When volume and intensity climb too quickly, overuse injuries and chronic fatigue become more likely.
Early specialization is not the problem. Rather, it is ineffective programming that has these young athletes training like more mature athletes. This early training focus limits athletic development. Athletes may accumulate impressive training hours but miss the movement diversity that builds long-term durability.
The biggest loss in this process is one that is unseen because those athletes are lost from the sport.
From a coaching perspective, the shift shows up in small ways. Conversations revolve around weekly training hours instead of how well athletes are skiing. Easy sessions slowly become harder. Fatigue accumulates while movement quality quietly declines. None of this happens overnight, but over time, the focus drifts away from skill development and toward simply doing more.
Development in endurance sports isn’t about accumulating work. It’s about adapting to the work being done and building the capacity to handle more later. A training log that looks impressive at 15 doesn’t necessarily translate into success at 25. What matters more is whether the athlete remains healthy, motivated, and technically sound over the long term.
Hailey Swirbul celebrates the U16 Junior National Championship title in the Freestyl Mass Start in Stowe, Vermont, in 2014. (Photo: Voisin/FasterSkier)
What Good Development Actually Looks Like
If long-term development is the goal, the early years should look different from elite training. Young skiers benefit from variety. Running, cycling, hiking, and other sports build coordination and resilience. The goal isn’t to replicate elite training programs but to create athletes who move well and enjoy being active.
Technique deserves major attention. Nordic skiing rewards efficiency, and athletes who develop strong movement patterns early often progress faster later because every hour of training becomes more productive. Training volume should increase gradually over time. Consistency across years matters far more than pushing limits in any single season.
Most importantly, development should seek to preserve motivation. The sport needs athletes who remain engaged long enough to realize their potential. We often see athletes try to do a big training year to catch up or reach a target training volume. It rarely works out.
The Problem With “More Volume” Thinking
In Nordic skiing, training volume carries a certain mystique. Conversations quickly turn to hours, weekly totals, yearly totals, and stories of elite athletes training 800 to 1,000 hours per year.
It’s easy to see why. Endurance sports reward consistency and large training volumes. But a subtle misunderstanding often occurs. Volume stops being seen as the result of long-term development and starts being treated as the cause of performance.
Correlation becomes mistaken for causation.
Hunter Wonders (APU/Alaska) winning the U16 Boys Mass Start Freestyle race at the US Junior National Championship in Stowe, Vermont. (Photo: Voisin/FasterSkier)
High Volume Works for Elite Skiers
At the elite level, high training volume makes sense. World Cup athletes have spent years building the capacity to handle that workload. Their aerobic systems are highly developed, their movement patterns are efficient, and their bodies have adapted gradually.
High volume works because it sits on top of a massive foundation: technical skill, durability, and years of progressive training.
The problem arises when that model gets copied without the same foundation underneath it.
The Missing Variable: Training Age
One of the most overlooked concepts in endurance development is training age. Training age refers to how many years an athlete has spent consistently adapting to structured training. Two 18-year-old skiers may have very different training ages. One may have spent eight years gradually building capacity. Another may have entered the sport recently and increased training dramatically. On paper, their training logs may look similar. In reality, their ability to adapt to those loads can be very different.
Training only produces progress when adaptation occurs. Without adaptation, training simply builds fatigue.
The U18 Girls field works its way past the Loppet Foundation Adventure Center in Minneapolis during Junior Nationals on March 11th, 2022. (Photo: David J Owen Photography)
The Efficiency Problem
Elite skiers move extremely well. Their technique allows them to ski long distances while conserving energy and minimizing unnecessary muscular stress. Developing this efficiency early is critical. In the future, it will allow the athletes to train large volumes without the metabolic and neuromuscular stress that can lead to overtraining.
Young athletes often lack efficiency. When technique is still evolving, large training volumes can actually slow technical development. Fatigue reinforces inefficient movement patterns that later become difficult to change.
For developing skiers, time spent improving movement quality can be far more valuable than time spent extending distance.
The Cost of Chasing Hours
There is also a practical cost to the “more volume” mindset. Elite athletes structure their lives around training. Sleep, nutrition, and recovery are integrated into the system. Young athletes are balancing school, travel, social life, and other commitments. When training volume climbs, something gives. Sleep declines, recovery becomes inconsistent, and fatigue accumulates.
Under those conditions, simply adding more hours rarely produces better results.
What Volume Should Really Represent
Training volume does matter. Endurance sports ultimately require substantial workloads. But volume should be viewed as a long-term outcome of development, not a short-term objective. Successful endurance athletes rarely build training hours quickly. They accumulate them gradually across many seasons, allowing their bodies to adapt step by step. By the time they reach elite levels, high training volumes feel natural because they have spent years building the durability to support them.
The 2026 US Ski and Snowboard Junior National Championships in Cable, Wisconsin, hosted by the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation. (Photo: Tryg Solberg)
A Better Question to Ask
Instead of asking how many hours an athlete should train, a better question might be:
What training can this athlete adapt to right now?
For some athletes, the answer may involve increasing volume. For others, improving technique, strength, or intensity distribution may produce greater gains. Development is not identical for every athlete. What matters is finding the training load that promotes consistent adaptation rather than constant fatigue.
Why This Matters for the Future of the Sport
Cross-country skiing, like all endurance sports, depends on long-term participation. The sport needs athletes who remain engaged, not only as competitors but as lifelong skiers, coaches, and community members.
A development system that pushes athletes too hard, too early risks losing them before they reach their potential. It also narrows the pathway to elite performance by favoring early maturity and filtering out late developers.
If Nordic skiing truly wants to remain a lifetime sport, its development culture must reflect that philosophy.
Closing
Cross-country skiing has always valued endurance. That value should extend beyond physiology and into how we develop athletes. Endurance isn’t just about how long someone can ski hard on race day. It’s about how long they can remain engaged in the process of improving.
If we truly believe Nordic skiing is a lifetime sport, then our development system should not resemble a funnel that selects kids out at every progressive age group. It should look more like a runway, where every young athlete has the opportunity and the time to fully develop their potential, not just the ones who mature early.
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The 2026 US Ski and Snowboard Junior National Championships in Cable, Wisconsin, hosted by the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation. (Photo: Tryg Solberg)
