equals I can barely lift my mug at work!
Wow… My shoulders are just fried! I thought my legs rebelled in the pool when we put on the fins yesterday, but wow - this is the most specific shoulder targeting I’ve ever experienced. Just the anterior deltoid is screaming… Not when I leave my arms alone, but whenever I need to lift anything.
Cool. 
I remember reading about Oskar Svard and others doing intense 3-hour double pole workouts to get ready for the 90k Swedish Vasaloppet. I don’t think he was swimming the next day so you’ve got him beat
Khai
So how do your abs feel?
DB
I remember reading about Oskar Svard and others doing intense 3-hour double pole workouts to get ready for the 90k Swedish Vasaloppet. I don’t think he was swimming the next day so you’ve got him beat
Heh - only if you ignore the “intense” and “3hr” parts of his workout…
Hey Dave, my abs are a sore as well, but to be honest they still haven’t fully recovered from the pounding I gave them nearly 2 weeks ago - and as such I couldn’t push that aspect of the movement as hard as I wanted to on Wed night. Still, it’s not often that I notice my abs when swimming.
More time on skis has my balance and glide improving, although I still have a LONG way to go. I think I may have been trying to kick and glide too hard, and shooting my front foot out too much so that I couldn’t get over top of it. Does that make sense, or should I really be driving that foot as far forward as possible? I’m still working on getting on top of my glide ski as opposed to being slightly behind it…
Khai
In general, like running you don’t really want to ‘overstride’, so the amount of ‘drive’ will really be terrain dependant. It is kind of like running up the stairs: If you take 4 steps at once you get stuck and can’t get up and over your leading foot, but if you only take one step, you can’t really move your feet fast enough.
One imortant part of the equation is the arm drive. It is really to match the explosion in your kick with a really hard drive of the opposite arm. Are you doing that also. Back to the stair analogy, if you try to take 4 steps without a really agressive arm drive it will be hard, but if you really drive your opposite arm it will help get your center of mass going over your feet.
I kinda answered your question with a non-answer, I hope that made sense!
DB
Khai, my upper body is more cooked when I do a 1 hour ski + 30 min swim than if I just ski for 4-5 hours straight…seriously. I think the reason is because after skiing the entire upper body is a bit tight and when you get in the water, you lack mobility and might compensate by trying to pull more water than by extending and getting a good body position with a high elbow when you catch (tough to do when your shoulders are tight).
The remedy is to ensure you stretch your shoulder like crazy after your ski, but before your swim…do all the standard swimmer stretches after skiing (which is a good thing in general). Lots of athletes get shoulder injuries when they combine big volume XC skiing and even moderate swimming volume in the same week…you have to be careful.
Dev
Thanks Dave, that made a lot of sense. My instructor last night told me I was “pausing” a bit too much during the glide phase and to just keep it rolling - which in turn shortened my stride a little bit and seemed to help my balance. I was just trying to make sure that I wasn’t doing the wrong thing in not having as big of a forward stride as possible. That running analogy makes good sense.
Matching my stride with and equivalent arm motion seems pretty natural, aside from a tendency to move the arms too high (hands floating up above the shoulders almost over my head) when double poling. She told me to keep my hands below my shoulders. I was struck by the similarity between swimming and double poling on Thursday morning, as aside from the elbow position the arm movement is quite similar - especially the finish.
Thanks for the warning, Dev - I’ll be sure to bear that in mind! My schedule has me swimming Tue/Thurs AM and skiing Wed evenings with the club. I also try to get out on Friday evenings and Sundays, so while that isn’t exactly “high volume”, for a guy who’s new to skiing it certainly could be.
I’m usually pretty good about maintaining my catch and elbow position in the water, but I do have bad shoulders - so I’ll have to be especially careful.
Stretch like a mofo… got it.
You’ll be surprised how low your elbows end up in the water after a good bout of skiing…if you put on some monster pizza paddles, you’ll immediately know…or if you swim with “fist only” you’ll notice the difference…good luck man!
Wow… My shoulders are just fried!
Khai,
Now you know why with a solid winter of xc-skiing you can knock-off the bike and the swim, almost completely from Dec - March and jump right back in in March with swimming and cycling like you barely missed a beat. Quit frankly I don’t know why the xc-ski trails are not packed with triathletes in the winter. It really is the perfect winter activity.
I completely agree!
So I’ve been skiing, swimming, and stretching my shoulders a lot, and hitting the hot tub to stretch out after swimming as well. Overall the shoulders have been holding up, with the pain dissipating 4-600m into a swim workout and feeling good for the duration. After the workout and for the rest of the day however, the anterior portion of the joint/capsule has been really sore.
I saw my RMT last night and he worked them over pretty thoroughly - it hurt like a sonofabitch, and he commented that the biceps tendons were pretty worked in addition to the delts and rhomboids, and guessed that I was mostly aware of the delts because they aren’t primary movers and the other muscles are larger/stronger/more used to work. Given the physiology of the joint and the arm motions, it makes sense to me.
Well my shoulders feel **AWESOME **today! Only minor soreness, and much “easier” ROM. That is, unless I touch them - I don’t really bruise (visually), but they feel like Fat Tony had his boys work me over with a pillowcase full of doorknobs. Note to self - avoid mob loans.
I’m really looking forward to skiing tonight, especially as I missed my usual Friday/Sunday sessions due to a yoga workshop. Bring it on!
Follow-up.
Last night’s ski workout was great! I got there early and did a thorough shoulder warm-up, and some hip openers as well. We started out with some cornering and downhill technique and then moved on to 2-up “drag racing style” hill repeats. Finally we capped off with 2-up double pole races. The shoulder felt great throughout, though I was a little concerned when I strained my (L) elbow double poling (technique got sloppy and I hit with a very bent elbow). I got some pointers after the class from one of the instructors and we skied together for a bit while he watched and commented on my “technique”. Though we ran really late, it was an excellent session.
The shoulder felt really good throughout today’s swim as well, and although it feels a little tight there’s no pain at all. I altered my stroke a bit because my coach pointed out that I was crossing over slightly, which changed the feel in my shoulder while swimming and made it feel slightly less stable - especially during hard efforts. It felt pretty good though, and normally by now would be aching. The delts are still sore to the touch, but the joint itself feels pretty good.
It seems that stretching combined with massage is the ticket here.
Yeah after my scant two times back on the xc trails in the past week, I can feel some quasi-dormant upper body muscles awakening. First time out (1hr steady only), my shoulders and upper back were definitely feeling it. Yesterday, which was a f*ck of a lot of climbing (almost 1hr straight), I could feel them working but not getting tight. This morning I feel that nice “hey you did something” feeling in them. Should work well for spin+core class later 
One of these days we’ll both be there at the same time lol
AP
I completely agree!
Perhaps, it’s good this way. Keeps the trails nice and quiet. Skiied 30K last weekend with a good friend and we barely saw another person for 2 hours. It was an awesome workout and we enjoyed the peacefulness and solitude of the woods.
Khai, another thing that you might find useful…if you can insert a run in between your last ski session and your next swim session your shoulders will loosen out a bit, simply because you are swinging your arms and moving them lightly and continuously. For the first 500m in the water I just “soft pull”, concentrating more on reaching, until I feel I have my full upper body range of motion back. Don’t forget that XC skiing uses lots of upper back, lats, lower back, so everything needs some time to get to its full range, before really pushing the pace.
Thanks Dev. There’s no way that I’m going to squeeze a run in between those ski/swim workouts as the skis come off at ~ 21:00 on Wednesday, and the alarm goes off at 04:20 on Thursday so I can get to the pool. Besides - I’m not supposed to have to run with all this skiing, right? 