Busy Week by Matt Liebsch

Matt Liebsch is a member of the CXC Elite cross country ski team and a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a BS in Electrical Engineering. He is an Olympic hopeful and had a very successful 2009 season… 3^rd Place at US Nationals, Mora Vasaloppet winner and American Birkebeiner Champion. When Matt is not training and racing he is helping out at Gear West or spending time with his wife and one-year-old son.

So this past week was quite eventful. I started the second week of training camp only to get a call from Marybeth after the first workout. She was heading to the hospital with her mom to check things out… she stated that she didn't think she was in labor and said I should stay at camp and finish my second workout with the team… I ignored her and got in my car went to meet her in labor assessment.

Good thing I did because we had a little girl later that evening. Check out my website www.mattliebsch.com for her picture and stats. She is a mellow baby compared to Grant and is very sleepy. Marybeth is recovering quickly and our parents have been helping out a lot… I even got in a few workouts last week.

I'll be hanging low for the next few weeks as our family adjusts to a new little one but then the training hours will get ramped back up. It's not worth training hard if the sleep (recovery) isn't there. Remember it is the recovery that makes us faster and stronger. I learned this the hard way when Grant was born.

Train hard, train smart

Matt

Training Hard by Matt Liebsch

Matt Liebsch is a member of the CXC Elite cross country ski team and a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a BS in Electrical Engineering. He is an Olympic hopeful and had a very successful 2009 season… 3^rd Place at US Nationals, Mora Vasaloppet winner and American Birkebeiner Champion. When Matt is not training and racing he is helping out at Gear West or spending time with his wife and one-year-old son.

I am currently one week into the 2^nd CXC training camp of the year. Last week my training load was the largest I've done in quite awhile… 24hrs of rollerskiing, weight lifting, running, intervals and some paddling. Sunday my team concluded the training week with a 4 hour classic rollerski… lots of double poling and about 45 miles covered. I am surprised at how well my body reacted to the training load. Usually after a week of high level training I am ready for a message and a few days off.

Right now I am enjoying my Monday (off/rest day) without any excessive tiredness or soreness. I attribute this to tapering a bit coming into camp and carrying out my passive and active recovery methods daily. I've been doing some active recovery jogs, stretching and self message along with proper nutrition during and after workouts.

This week is the last week of camp and won't involve quite as many training hours. Hopefully the weather stays nice.

Also, our baby girl should be arriving any day now. Soon I'll have two kiddies to chase around!

Best Cool Down – 55/5’s by Matt Liebsch

Matt Liebsch is a member of the CXC Elite cross country ski team and a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a BS in Electrical Engineering. He is an Olympic hopeful and had a very successful 2009 season… 3^rd Place at US Nationals, Mora Vasaloppet winner and American Birkebeiner Champion. When Matt is not training and racing he is helping out at Gear West or spending time with his wife and one-year-old son.

This past year I have been following a cool-down procedure used by the USST sprinters. I only do this cool-down after lactate acid accumulating workouts. The goal of this specific cool-down is to flush as much lactate out of the muscles as possible so I can recover faster. After I finish my last set of intervals I let my heart rate get back to Level 1 by walking around a bit or if the last interval was really hard, I pass out on the ground. After reaching L1 heart rate I move back into L2 for 10 minutes. Next comes the 55/5’s which involve 55 seconds at sub L1/ recovery pace followed by 5 seconds of all out L5 speed. This super slow pace followed by super fast speed does a wonderful job of squeezing lactate acid out of the muscles and flushing it out of the system.

Some key points of doing this correctly are that the 5 seconds of on-time need to be very hard. It should feel like all the muscles in your body are contracting at maximum. Also, you don’t have to start the 5 second speed from a dead stop. You can workup to high pace and then back down slowly as well… should be around 15 seconds total with the middle 5 seconds being at maximal effort. This buffer in and out of the speed will lessen any chances of injury. Last year I injured my ankle doing 55/5’s via running by starting and stopping too soon. There is a lot of force produced from going 0-100% effort but if you go from 60%-100% you lessen some of that extreme acceleration stress.

Train hard, train smart

Matt

Lactate Testing and Finding LT by Matt Liebsch

Matt Liebsch is a member of the CXC Elite cross country ski team and a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a BS in Electrical Engineering. He is an Olympic hopeful and had a very successful 2009 season… 3^rd Place at US Nationals, Mora Vasaloppet winner and American Birkebeiner Champion. When Matt is not training and racing he is helping out at Gear West or spending time with his wife and one-year-old son.

The past Tuesday I meet up with my good friend and club coach, Piotr Bednarski, for some baseline lactate testing. I had already V02max tested with my program coach Bryan Fish, but I wanted to check some lactates to make sure everything matched up and get my training zones squared away.

The protocol we used involved skate skiing up the 3-5min hill along East River Road which goes underneath East Franklin Street. Every time I rollerskied up the hill I would try to bump up my heart rate into the next perceived training zone. Here are my results.

HR	Lactate	Time
129	1.0	4:28
149	2.1	4:06
163	3.9	3:38
168	5.1	3:01
172	7.8	2:43

After discussing the results with Piotr, we were able to nail down my current training zones. There are a lot of theories on defining training zones but the most important point to know is your lactate threshold (LT). LT is the pace at which accumulation of lactate acid matches the bodies ability to remove it from the body… this LT zone is usually the pace one could hold for about a 1hr all out effort. Lactate threshold is usually right around 4mM for most individuals but can vary in between 2.5mM and 6mM for some people. Based on this test data, my LT zone would be between 164-166 BPM (a little lower than normal but hey, its spring time and I have not be training a ton of intensity yet). It is important to remember that LT is different for each exercise so my LT could be higher or lower depending on whether I was double polling, running, biking, swimming or striding. Now that I know my LT zone I can training at my LT pace and make solid gains. I find that LT training gives me the most "bang-for-the-buck" with regards to fitness gains. A favorite workout of mine is 3by15min at LT; with proper warm-up and cool-down of course.

If you're interested in having a lactate profil done contact Piotr via http://gotraining.us/

Train hard, train smart

Matt