Wall-Mounted Vasa Ergometer Much More Ski-Like

Greg and I met to set personal bests on the Vasa Ergometer after I mounted it on the wall. Here's the results:

Personal Bests on Wall- Mounted Vasa Ergometer
as of July 1, 2007 (Best score in bold).

	Level	Mike	Greg
Fixed Distance		Time
100m Doublepole	3	1:16	1:06
100m Single Pole	3	1:24	1:20
Fixed Time		Distance
Doublepole - 3 minutes	1	231m	235m
Doublepole - 4 minutes	3	319m	-
Single Pole - 4 minutes	1	260m	-

So what's the difference between using the Vasa Erg as it ships (horizontally) versus mounting it on the wall? Everything! Our times came down because we could use out abs; the motion felt MUCH more ski-like; we could get our heart rates up higher. And it was easier to see the power meter.

We meet again this coming Thursday, July 12 at 6:30pm if anyone else is in the Wixom, MI area.

Greg doublepoles on the wall-mounted Vasa Ergometer

Vasa Ergometer Moves to the Wall: Let the New Competition Begin!

Some good improvements on the Vasa Ergometer this past week: I improved my times on 4 out of the 5 tests! Ryan Robinson joined us tonight and posted from pretty good times, especially considering he'd already gone running, rode 10 miles over on his bike, and was feeling under the weather!

Greg Worrel, however, has the honor of being the best on three of the five tests; Hugh Pritchard and I each have one title.

I've been focusing on the upper body quite a bit: Erg, weight room, doublepoling and V2 on rollerskis. Today I did a 2.5 hour classic rollerski with lots of doublepole and kick-doublepole. Tomorrow night I'll be doing some more strength training.

Personal Bests on Vasa Ergometer as of June 21, 2007 (Best score in bold. *indicates improved score)

	Level	Mike	Hugh	Greg	Yvon	Ryan
Fixed Distance		Time
100m Doublepole - prone	3	1:29*	1:27	1:21	1:33	1:23
100m Doublepole - kneeling	3	1:30*	1:32	1:32*	1:39	1:40
100m Single Pole - prone	3	1:33	1:27	1:32*	1:43	1:34
50m Single Pole recovery - standing	3	:46*	:45	:42	:53	:48
Fixed Time		Distance
Doublepole - prone, 3 minutes	1	188m*	-	190m*	181m	-

This coming Thursday, the testing changes and the competition starts anew: I mounted the Vasa Ergometer the wall of my garage. The Erg is great for upper body strength, but the design makes it difficult to utilize the abs. Given that abs initiate the doublepole movement, the ability to incorporate abs makes the exercises more specific.

By mounting the Vasa Ergometer on the wall, we can much more closely replicate the specificity of both doublepoling and single poling.

If you're in the neighborhood, come on over and give it a try!

New PRs on Vasa Ergometer

We had another great session last week with the Vasa Ergometer. Competition was fierce!

Since is was almost 90F outside under bright sun, we pulled the Erg from the garage and parked it under a nice shade tree in the front yard. A cooling breeze and lots of water kept the session comfortable. (Adult beverages afterwards helped).

Here's Greg Worrel doing the first test, the prone doublepole:

Yvon Dufour shows the second test, doublepoling from the kneeling position. I noticed my heart rate was a bit higher when on my knees because I could engage my abs.

Greg goes at it. Notice he's actually off the heels of his shoes, trying to get more abs action:

We did a single pole test, then turned around, stood over the Erg and did the single pole test backwards, so the arm return had resistance:

Yvon has been racing canoes with Doug Heady the past couple years and wanted to try out the kayak / canoe option that comes as an option with the Erg. The pole that attaches to the Erg is good for kayaking, but doesn't quite replicate the motion of canoing. Luckily, the pole separates in half. Yvon discovered that using just half the pole felt very much like paddling, and he could easily get his cadence up to 70 paddles a minute (the "bottom" of the paddle connects to the pulley on the Erg):

Here's where we stand. Both Greg and I improved our times or distance this week:

Personal Bests on Vasa Ergometer as of June 7, 2007 (Best score in bold. *indicates improved score)

	Level	Mike	Hugh	Greg	Yvon
Fixed Distance		Time
100m Doublepole - prone	3	1:31*	1:27	1:21	1:33
100m Doublepole - kneeling	3	1:34	1:32	1:35*	1:39
100m Single Pole - prone	3	1:33	1:27	1:34	1:43
50m Single Pole recovery - standing	3	:48	:45	:45*	:53
Fixed Time		Distance
Doublepole - prone, 3 minutes	1	185m*	-	186m*	181m

Everyone felt like they had a good upper body workout...

A little friendly competition among skiers on the Vasa Ergometer

A couple NordicSkiRacers have been out playing with the Vasa Ergometer. We've been trying different competitive scenarios:

• Who can do a fixed distance fastest
• Who can do the most distance in a fixed time

We started out with some 100 meter sprints. We arbitrarily picked "100 meters" not really knowing how long it would take: The Vasa Ergometer is normalized for swimmers, so the distance measure assumes the resistance of water, not the resistance of skis on snow.

Regardless, we can use the distance measure as a stake in the ground for repeatable testing.

The Vasa Ergometer has 7 resistance settings from 1 = easy to 7 = hard. We started at level 3 for the 100 meter tests. It was hard enough! Everyone slowed down after the first minute, and we were all huffing and puffing with sweat dripping off our brow by the end of each sprint!

We did 100 meters of doublepoling, both prone (on our stomach) and kneeling, 100 meters of single poling (diagonal stride arm movement) while prone, then 50 meters of single pole recovery. For the single pole recovery, we stood on the floor facing away from the pulleys and did diagonal-poling, but the resistance now was on moving the hands forward during the recovery phase of the poling.

Hugh Pritchard doing doublepole sprints on the Vasa Ergometer from the kneeling position

I noticed that it was easy to cheat on these short distance by using shorter and more rapid arm and shoulder motions. The problem with this is that it doesn't replicate skiing. Adding a 3 minute doublepole test took care of the problem at a lower intensity took care of the problem: the resistance was easy enough to push all they way through, and the time was long enough that you couldn't sprint with short arm motions.

Results of the competition are in the table below:

Personal Bests on Vasa Ergometer
as of May 31, 2007
(Best time in group in bold)

	Difficulty	Mike	Hugh	Greg
Fixed Distance		Time
100m Doublepole - prone	3	1:36	1:27	1:21
100m Doublepole - kneeling	3	1:34	1:32	1:38
100m Single Pole - prone	3	1:33	1:27	1:34
50m Single Pole recovery - standing	3	:48	:45	:46
Fixed Time		Distance
Doublepole - prone, 3 minutes	1	183m	-	185m

Alas, I did not win any of them!

Some observations:

• Kneeling on the Vasa Ergometer - where you could use your abs to help with the poling - was slower than laying prone. This could be caused by a longer cycle time needed when using the abs or by angle of the pull line from the pulleys being too low so the abs didn't really add any power but still took energy. I think the latter.
• Longer times on the Ergometer feel more like skiing because you have to pace yourself better.
• When you first try the machine, it's pretty easy to pull at the maximum resistance (setting 7). Don't be fooled - if you want to do more endurance or interval work, you'll need to crank it down to a lower setting.

I'm thinking the Vasa Ergometer will be great for doing longer interval sessions like 4 x 3:00, 4 x 4:00 or longer intervals. You can measure your training progress by comparing distance or average watts between sessions. And you could modify the resistance for some sessions to compare poling on slow snow vs. fast snow.

Let's see who shows up for this coming Thursday's Vasa Ergometer competition!

May's Cross Country Ski Fitness Test

I was pretty lazy this spring - I think I averaged only a couple hours of training per week during April!

To get myself more motivated, I decided I'd do the US Ski Team fitness test (also called the "Medals Test") in May to set a baseline for the year.

I also decided to add a kilometer-long uphill doublepole time trial after reading Aerobic Conditioning Testing for the Cross Country Skier. The article makes a strong case for adding the test focused on more than just upper body strength:

"Both laboratory and field testing have consistently shown that upper body maximal aerobic capacity and muscular endurance are strongly correlated to cross country ski race performance (r = 0.75 to 0.92). In other words, those who perform best on this test are likely to do well on the ski course."

We have a nice, long, gentle climb on one of the local bike paths that's perfect for this test. To make it easily repeatable, I extended the distance from 1 kilometer to a bit longer (to about 1.1 or 1.2 kilometers) so I could start on an expansion joint across the path at the bottom and end at a sign post at the top.

Below are the results so far:

	May 2007
	Time	Min / Mile
3,000 meters	13:23	7:11
Uphill doublepole TT	4:20	-
	Set 1	Set 2
Pushups	25	20
Dips	10	9
Sit-ups	27	26
Pull-ups	2	1
Box jumps	-	-

I still have to build a box for the box jumps. I may add a rollerski skate time trial to the set of test as well.

The tests results were motivating - I've definitely stepped up my training over the past three weeks!

I'll repeat these tests ever month or so until snow time.