Text Teemu Virtanen
This week's Visma Ski Classics podcast series, Orsa2Levi, is guested by top Swedish coach Mattias Reck. He is known in both cycling and skiing circles as a professional who achieves good results. In cycling, he coaches Team Trek Segafredo and the long-distance team Team Ramudden in skiing. In the podcast episode, Mattias shares his own views on the differences between cycling and skiing and on proper training.
“Previously, when I was just a cycling coach, I was tense from February to October during the cycling season. Now that skiing has also come along, I have to be nervous all year around because one of my athletes is always competing," Mattias confesses at the beginning of the interview.
Mattias says he is dedicated to his work and always has many irons in the fire. Years ago, when he was a teacher at various schools, he didn’t spend his summer vacations napping in a hammock but thinking about new ideas and jobs to do.
“I’m a person who works a lot. Even during my career as a teacher, I was kind of a coach. I've never done skiing, but I watched it a lot on TV. I was a cyclist with a general interest in endurance sports. I combined my love of endurance sports with my teaching skills and thus became a cycling coach. I'm sure a lot of people think I studied sports sciences at university, but in reality, I was a teacher of history, religion and political science.”
As his coaching duties increased, Mattias decided to quit his teaching job in his 40s and move to sports full-time. He founded his own company, Guided Heroes, through which he provides coaching services to various athletes. Mattias' diverse background is further colored by being competitive in martial arts at a young age, and he has two taekwondo Swedish championships under his belt, and he was also with the national team. Mattias moved to competitive cycling at the age of 25 and kept racing until he was 39.
“When I moved on to cycling, I had no idea what the sport was about. I had watched it on TV, and it looked easy. It was a bit of a shock first, but I persevered for two years and developed into a good rider. I was never a professional cyclist or a member of the national team. I love cycling so much that I once said I'd rather be last in a cycling race than win gold in a taekwondo.”
Mattias got to know long-distance skiing more closely when he was lecturing at a Swedish university where Team Ramudden's Max Novak was in the audience. After the lecture, Max approached Mattias and asked him if he could start coaching him.
“In the lecture, I showed how measuring power with watts revolutionized cycling, and I mentioned then that when the same thing comes into skiing, the whole sport changes. This must have gotten Max interested, and he contacted me after the lecture. Then Lina and Gustaf Korsgren asked if I was willing to become a coach of their team. I didn't hesitate for a second, and I said yes right away.”
Mattias has brought a lot of new things and training methods to skiing. He is a strong supporter of block training; training hard for several days straight followed by a recovery period.
“Cyclists now have about 70-80 race days a year, which puts a heavy strain on them. In addition, there are training sessions, camps and travel days. As a good cycling coach, you have to be able to combine competitions, training and rest in the right balance. Racing is always hard, and there is no easy race. However, cycling tours are good for training. In winter, cyclists take part in multi-day road races, which they take advantage of in training, and after the tour, they rest before the start of the new block.”
Mattias says that he often uses the same formula for skiers, which means that their training is structured as stages in a multi-day cycling competition. Since long-distance skiing does not actually have multi-day tours, Team Ramudden skiers have to simulate a cycling race on their own.
“I cannot claim that such block training is scientifically proven, but in cycling this has become a praxis over time. On the other hand, traditions can be so strong that it is difficult to get new methods and practices accepted. In general, the way cyclists train tends to produce good results. The worst way for staying in shape is one-day races once a week as the athletes need to travel and rest before and after the race. This is slowly leading to a point where the shape goes down. That’s why I have tough training periods for skiers during the race season.”
In the podcast episode, Mattias also talks about the fact that cyclists have measured their power in watts being almost as good at the beginning of a long tour as at the end, although their heart rate has usually dropped by about 10%. Mattias emphasizes that the heart rate is not the key factor in training because actual power output, measuring watts, would be a much more effective way to monitor an athlete's training outcome and progress. This supports the notion that block training can be endured, and thus it becomes more effective.
“I understand that for standard distance skiers this kind of block training or racing is almost impossible because the World Cup is so hectic. At least in the Visma Ski Classics Pro Tour, the races are much longer, which is more suited to the block training mindset.”
One of Mattias' training methods is a four-day period; three hard days and one rest.
“In this training method, three days are so hard that the fourth must be devoted to rest. Especially in training camps, we do this set-up quite often. One example of a four-day training session is that on the first day, we do a long strength-focused workout that can have power exercises while riding a bike or a specific gym session, on the second day, we do a long workout with different intervals, and on the third, we go out for a long easy session. The fourth one is a day off. Endurance sport, especially cycling, is quite catabolic in nature, so it is also important to spice it up with intervals and sprints and also ensure effective recovery.”
Mattias confesses that he sometimes finds it difficult to see the red thread in the modern cross-country ski training as it often seems to be a bit unstructured. Of course, he admits that he is still a newcomer to the sport and still has a lot to learn, but he considers cycling to be a much more systematic sport than skiing in terms of training.
“Of course, cyclists could also learn something from skiers. Skiers are better at using different sports to their advantage when training, thus diversifying their training. I think cyclists should strengthen their upper body and run more. They also don't focus as much on their equipment as skiers, for whom waxing and ski selection are utterly important. A good example is that in cycling we usually use the same tires despite the weather conditions.”
What does Mattias think of the skiers' favorite topic, the maximum oxygen uptake - VO2 max?
“In general, athletes with good efficiency do not necessarily have the highest oxygen uptake rates and the same applies the other way around. If you could combine an athlete with the best possible efficiency and high oxygen uptake, he would be invincible. In a marathon run, such an athlete would run the distance in an hour and 50 minutes. Of course, all athletes want high thresholds and high VO2 uptakes, but top athletes do reach their own limits with the current training loads. It doesn't matter much if they do five-minute or eight-minute intervals because they always end up with their own maximum. For athletes with less time on their hands, the quality of the intervals and the time spent at the VO2 max level is much more critical. In this case, you need to know how to achieve the best VO2 max level in a short time and with limited workouts.”
In the podcast, Mattias also talks about dynamic intervals and sprints and how effective they have been proven. This means that the speed and tempo of an interval can be changed dynamically depending on the session. This will result in a more competition-like exercise, in which the body also operates more time in the VO2 max zone.
In the cycling and skiing worlds, so-called Reck-intervals are gaining in popularity. These are sessions where hard threshold intervals are done for three minutes followed by a one-minute recovery. Another example is 40-20 sprints where you go all guns blazing for 40 seconds and recover for 20 seconds. This workout is well suited for today’s long-distance skiing, where one often has to face breakaways, and the victory is decided by a sprint finish.
One of the big changes that Mattias has brought to ski training is one workout a day compared to two that most professional skiers do. According to him, there is no evidence that two sessions a day is better than one longer and effective workout. He also states that skiers often have the wrong impression of speed training, meaning that ten-minute intervals at the threshold have nothing to do with speed. Speed training must be more intensive and above an anaerobic threshold.
In addition to his training philosophy, Mattias talks about Team Ramudden, his own life besides his coaching responsibilities d his future goals in the podcast episode. Orsa2Levi can be heard on all podcast platforms and on the Visma Ski Classics site.
