Active Expert: Gale Bernhardt : Tags : aerobic

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Active Expert: Gale Bernhardt

2 Posts tagged with the aerobic tag

Is downhill skiing aerobic or all anaerobic? Take a look at the data file.

Posted by Gale Bernhardt Feb 6, 2013

Often, I get the question “Is alpine (downhill) skiing aerobicor is it all anaerobic?”

The answer depends on the skier, ability, type of runs skied and intensity of skiing. I’ll show you a file from a recent day of skiing. You can find it here.

I decided to carry my Garmin on this particular day of skiing. I did forget to start the unit early in the day, so I’m missing some data. I estimate I’m missing about 2062 elevation gain and 1125 elevation loss making the total loss 16,971 feet.

If I use my aerobic cycling zones, my estimated time in Zones 1-2 is roughly 1:10. The time I spent at Zone 3+ is some 10 to 20 minutes. I estimate actual skiing time (subtracting lift “moving” time out of total moving time of ~3 hours) to be around 2 hours. That leaves some 30 minutes just under Zone 1 low end.

The entire day’s outing was 5:50 (again estimating lost data). The lunch stop ended up being around 1:30 as I met some friends.

For me, it was a big day of skiing. It was my first day this season. Before lunch, on many of the runs I tried to ski a steady pace top to bottom with no (or minimal) stops. These runs were mostly aerobic.

When I went into bumpy terrain, I did stop more to recover from the higher intensity efforts.

On this day, with the type of skiing I did my effort while skiing was mostly aerobic. There were some anaerobic sections as well.

So the short answer to the question is, “both”.

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269 Views 0 Comments Permalink Tags: skiing, anaerobic, downhill, aerobic, alpine

Is downhill skiing aerobic?

Posted by Gale Bernhardt Apr 7, 2011

There have been questions on a few message boards inquiring about the aerobic component of downhill skiing. Is it downhill skiing aerobic or is it all anaerobic?

The short answer is, it depends.

How aerobic a day of skiing is depends on your skill as a skier, how aggressively you ski on any given day and the terrain.

I’ll share two files with you, one file is a day of skate skiing and the second file is a day of downhill skiing:

1. Skate skiing day. Set all of the dropdown menus to “time.” When I skate ski, I try to minimize stop time. Though you can’t see it on this software, my heart rate response for this near two-hour workout was: less than Zone 1 = 27 minutes, Zone 1 = 43 minutes, Zone 2 = 29 minutes, Zone 3 = 12 minutes, Zone 4 = 6 minutes, and Zone 5 = 0 minutes. Though no Zone 5 is shown, there is likely time that heart rate response did not reflect effort. Some short efforts left my legs searing and I needed to stop and recover. If you change the dropdown menus to “distance” it doesn’t change the charts much.

2. Downhill skiing day. Again, set all of the dropdown menus to “time.” The flat-line altitude reading you see is a generous lunch break. Because I’m trying to work on retrieving lost downhill skills, we stayed mainly on blue runs. There were a few bumps and steeps, but not much. Collected heart rate data: less than Zone 1 = 3:30, Zone 1 = 59 minutes, Zone 2 = 10 minutes and Zone 3 = 1 minute. For this 4:40 day at the mountain, only about 70 minutes of it was aerobic work.

If I continue to downhill ski next season, I’ll be curious to see how the data changes – or if it does change.

While there is some aerobic work within the downhill day, it is harder to track the strength work accomplished. I believe downhill skiing does work on leg strength.

In both cases, I believe skiing works on balance and muscular fitness not accomplished by running and cycling. Both running and cycling are primarily forward motion, while skiing involves the use of all the leg muscles.

Will this season’s ski work benefit my summer race season? (Thirteen days of Nordic skiing and two downhill days.)

Whether it helps me or not is to be determined; but skiing doesn’t seem to hurt Dave Wiens.

Maybe I’ll take up hockey and skin touring next year...