The following was submitted by Sarah Applegarth, and exercise physiologist at Active Life Conditioning.
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Three Collingwood youth will represent Ontario at the U16 Alpine Skiing National Championships in Sun Peaks BC from March 9 to 15.
Max Murphy, Taiga Young, and Jayden Buckrell are Grade 10 students at Collingwood Collegiate Institute (CCI) and are U16 ski racers from Craigleith and Osler Bluff ski clubs respectively. They recently competed at the Ontario Championships in Thunder Bay and were among the top-14 skiers in the province after the four events.
It was a busy week as Taiga and Jayden came home from the Ontario Championships straight into the OFSAA alpine skiing competition where they helped their CCI team to gold in both giant slalom and slalom and the Overall OFSAA title.
The three boys were members of the Alpine Ontario U16 High Performance Program this past year where they attended off-hill testing and physical training and an on-snow camp in France or Chile with skiers from various ski clubs around Ontario.
This allows for athletes of similar skill level to train together and push each other and to become more comfortable with the other competitors they will face throughout the season.
Top competitors at this age will typically travel to find snow for 7 to 10-day camps in June, August and November until the Collingwood area is ready for regular training.
Once December hits they are training in their local club programs from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays.
With lots of missed schooling it can be challenging for skiers to keep up on the high school workload.
Max decided a great way for him to keep on top of his schooling was to take two online courses, one per semester and courses during the summer months to help relieve the pressure of missing so much school.
Hard work and dedication to this has shown Max that he will continue on this path.
All three boys do their off-hill physical training at Active Life Conditioning Training Centre in Collingwood.
Exercise Physiologist Sarah Applegarth and her team train the boys.
"Skiing is a very physically demanding sport with strength, power, core stability, foot speed and athleticism all required to be successful,” said Applegarth. “The speeds that they travel coupled with ever-changing terrain and weather conditions requires the athletes to log many hours of off-hill training in order to stay injury free and compete at a high level."
In the spring, summer and fall, skiers at this age typically spend two to three days per week working on strength, two days per week on speed and energy systems, and three days per week on core training.
Mobility is also a key element for injury prevention. A specialized teen mobility class has been designed at Active Life that has paid big dividends for Jayden.
"I was having some pain in my back and knee after a big slalom camp that I went on this past fall and doing a dedicated weekly mobility session has helped me to work on some tight areas and freed up my hips to be able to get deeper angles in my skiing to generate more power each turn," he said.
In season, the skiers must continue with maintenance work in the gym one to two times per week as skiing is a quadriceps (front of the thigh) dominated sport. Strength work is required for the glutes and hamstrings (back of the thigh) to prevent major imbalances from happening and keep the knees safe.
In SunPeaks this week they will compete in a SuperG race on March 10, a giant slalom race on March 11, a ski-cross race March 13, and slalom on March 14.
There will be approximately 100 male and 100 female competitors from all over Canada in each discipline.
