News

The Cowboy Chronicles: Getting out of the gym

Sunday, 30 May 2010 17:00

Freelance writer Chad Buchholz is spending time with some members of Canada's Alpine Ski Team as they prepare for the upcoming season and he's agreed to send us a few updates. Here's the latest installment of "The Cowboy Chronicles."

For someone used to recognizing the signs, it would be hard to identify Matt Price as anything but a hockey player. Sure, he might stand a little shorter than one would expect, and as far as build goes, he could just as easily play the flank position in rugby, but take one look at the scars on that chin and it becomes pretty clear Price's face has seen more action from sticks and pucks (and stitches) than the faint of heart spectator would rather consider. Were one to guess his occupation, "Director of Sport Science for Alpine Canada Alpin" might not be the last thing one would venture, but it probably wouldn't be the first, either.

"Yeah, my background is in hockey, but through some weird, divine intervention I ended up training ski racers. I wouldn't say it was a match made in heaven, but it worked, and has continued to work," Price responds when asked about how he ended up having under his charge some of the most intensely conditioned athletes on frozen water. "I think, actually, that one of my assets coming in and working with this particular group of athletes is that I'm not from a ski background and I don't get trapped in the conventional wisdom and tunnel vision of 'This is how we train for ski racing.' I can bring a lot of different ideas to the table and think outside of the box."

Thinking outside of the box seems to be the MO thus far into Price's first year as head of conditioning for the Men's CAST, and in conversation with Price unconventional - yet logical - wisdom abounds. "If you look at some of the athletes and where they are in their careers - Erik Guay is closing in on 30 years old, and he's a multiple, multiple podium guy with a Crystal Globe trophy to his name, Manny (Osborne-Paradis) with multiple podiums, Johnny (Kucera) the World Champion, Mike Janyk with multiple podiums - there's a very high level, deep pool of athletes here who are very accomplished. In a four-year cycle I think one of the operating motives is to keep them healthy and keep them happy. With Manny, for example, a 50 per cent increase in fitness will not equate to a 50 per cent increase in podiums. However, keeping him mentally engaged and keeping him healthy means that he's in more races and he races longer. And that may translate into more podiums."

This is the philosophical approach that has led Price to design dryland training sessions as multifaceted, multi-disciplined affairs. At least 50 per cent of workouts are taking place outside of the gym and away from the weightlifting equipment. Whether it be kickboxing in a mixed martial arts studio, shot-putting river rocks in Northwest Calgary's Bowness Park, or sweating through a session of hot yoga, Price has crafted a conditioning program that seems to be running just the right balance of physical challenge vs. mental stimulation for the skiers. As Price tells it, within the program each element has been arranged in complement to the other elements, with the ultimate goal being to help create athletes who are not just the most powerful but perhaps also the most well-rounded and mentally strong on the circuit.

"If I made a list of fitness qualities I wanted to develop over the course of the summer, there's a number of ways to achieve strength or speed or power," Price explains. "Not all of those methods involve the stationary bike or barbells or weights. The opportunity to do some MMA-style kickboxing training with (MMA fighter) Nick Ring I think, for me, checked off a lot of the criteria on my list. And doing the outdoor training in the park, we're using a lot of unconventional implements and a lot of objects that guys probably haven't picked up in a long time but that you could just find lying around in the garage. With the yoga... I think that exposing the athletes here to a new way to unwind and to allow both the body and the mind to relax is a great way of showing them a new approach to recovery."

Diversifying the workouts, getting the athletes out of the gym, engaging those athletes in ways that go beyond simple weights, reps and stop clocks - for an outsider who doesn't understand the amount of time the CAST would historically spend in the gym in a typical week of dryland training, it could all seem a little 'new-age-y.' But ask any one of these athletes how they feel about the new program and chances are the answer is going to ring back positively on all fronts.

For me, this was brought into sharp focus as I was driving to Invermere with a few of the boys on the Saturday following the first week of dryland camp. At one point I suggested that I 'guessed' I could understand how spending five or six hours at a time in the gym, day in and day out, could 'start to make you go crazy.' "Start to make you go crazy?" Manuel Osborne-Paradis and Robbie Dixon - the two skiers present - replied in unison, laughing. "We lose our minds. Matt's progam is better. A lot better."

In ski racing, there is really no point at which a team can rest on its laurels. Heroes are made or broken by increments of time that only make sense to hummingbirds and physicists. This is something Matt Price understands. Something he also seems to understand is that physical conditioning only goes so far, and that if the athlete is unhappy or mentally unfit, 'so far' becomes 'not very far at all.'

As we wind down our conversation he puts his philosophy to me as clearly as possible; "My main objective is to create an environment and culture around our group that will make training fun and that will make being around each other fun. We are really trying to forge a relationship between athlete and coach that will make us successful through the race season. That's the critical aspect for me, to create that environment and that culture. I think the rest of it looks after itself. When an athlete shows up to the gym in the morning and wants to be there and is motivated to be there, the fitness aspect takes care of itself. Anyone can write a program and implement a program, but when the athlete wants to follow through with it, that's when you see the results."

Like the best skiing, Price's mantra is at once powerful, elegant and simple. And hopefully, like the best skiing, its implementation will lead to the best results.