Midweek race training for kids??

[pj415]

Any pugski parents have their kids in midweek alpine race training?

It seems to get to the next level, most of the top kids go midweek training. How do you swing that with schooling? Midweek training at my mountain is from Wednesday afternoon and then Thursday to Sunday all day. How do the kids maintain a certain degree of academics?

Also, when do you know it’s time to up the training for a U12/14 athlete? When do you make that kind of leap?

I’m trying to wrap my head around the whole thing. Would love to hear from other parents or even athletes doing midweek.

 

[Swede]

Hard question. Amount of training is very dependent on your athlete and the goals he or she has. Also what the ”norm” is in your environment. Here (Sweden) midweek training is the norm. When I had kids that age U12-U14, they did three nights/week, 2 hours each time 6-8 or 7-9. Schooldays at that age usually ended 3-4, so an hour or so for home work—dicipline needed. Logistics need to be on your side for it to be doable, our training hill is app. 15-20 minutes away with car and we were 4-5 families in the same area with kids in the same squad so we could take turns driving them. U14 and then u16 got more challenging as travel and being away from school increased. Club was great there and had ”study time” every day when the kids had to do school work.

 

[hbear]

We do mid-week training as it’s really table stakes in the big picture for where my daughter wants to take her skiing.

She does online schooling and has a very understanding principle/teacher group that supports her with her sport. Only way it can work IMO, especially if they are doing big blocks away. (Eg we are in Sweden for a full month in November before our season gets going here).

All athlete dependant however, no way I would do this if she wasn’t as driven as she is.

 

[Sibhusky]

Back when my daughter raced (now we're going back to 2003-2005), they had training weekends and two days midweek plus a night of weight training. The midweek started after school. The kids got transported from school to the mountain, but that's only a 15 minute trip, no biggie. If I recall correctly, they trained for three hours? Then I fetched her home. From a schooling standpoint, this was actually less stressful than her 3 times a week gymnastics routine back in New Jersey. We'd just switched sports. What was a huge hit was travel for competitions. In this part of the country, a three hour away race is a "local" race. She was usually driving or flying to multi-day events. Now that cuts into schooling. Fortunately, from the school's perspective, the football team has similar issues in terms of missing school due to travel. Maybe not quite as bad because they were only generally missing Fridays, but there was a process in place. Skiing was not a varsity sport, but someone managed to negotiate with the school anyway. We provided the teacher at the start of the year a list of all the days she would be out. She was given her homework and reading in advance of each race and had to hand it in when she got back. She had to maintain her grades. If she didn't maintain her grades, she was effectively benched. (This happened to only one kid I heard about. Said kid now has his own business with 30 employees now, so I don't think his life is ruined.) One of my daughter's friends apparently set a new school record for number of days missed yet managed to get a full ride scholarship for skiing in college. Another went onto West Point, where she was captain of the ski team. In general, the kids learned to manage their time well. I've only kept track of my daughter's friends, but 10-15 years later, they are pretty successful people.

 

[crgildart]

Urban/suburban bumps like Buck Hill for mid week. Then those kids go to the bigger mountains for race camps over spring break. Hood in the summer, etc..

 

[ejj]

My kids train several afternoons/evenings--every week (This is pretty typical in Minneapolis).

 

[Wilhelmson]

It's really up to you and your kid. Like any sport,activity, or academics, it's a lifestyle choice and also depends on the kid. Some kids are gun ho and those that aren't eventually burn out, sometimes to the dismay of their parents. Others continue to progress and excel.

 

[robertc3]

My kids train one evening per week in addition to weekends. A coach drives a van to and from the hill (1.5 hours each way) and they train for about three hours under the lights. If the mountain were closer they would train more evenings, but as it is right now they are about 8 hours door to door, so more isn't really an option if they want to be able to stay awake during school. Homework on the van is definitely common. This is their first year of doing it simply due to logistical constraints. We needed our daughter to be old enough to drive to meet the van as leaving work at 2:30 pm to get them there wasn't possible for either my wife or me. My son is a U14 and that is the youngest the team allows for mid-week training.
Do you have to do all day Thursday through Sunday or are there options for just Wednesday evenings or just Thursdays? If you are training four full days plus one evening per week the kids are going to have to be in some kind of very flexible school situation.

 

[Pdub]

My kids have trained midweek since second year U14, but that's because they ski for their school team in addition to their weekend USSA program. In New England most midweek training is through schools rather than USSA programs. The big exception of course is ski academies, which train half days all week.

Training after school is exhausting and requires a ton of commitment. Lots of homework in the van, late nights of studying, physical exhaustion, etc... Not recommended unless the kids are really fired up.

 

[hbear]

We don’t train in the evening. My daughter’s midweek training is during the day (academy) hence the importance of flexible and accommodating school arrangement.

Understanding this may not be available to all but as posted above, evening training after school is very fatiguing. We (and her coaches) have found eliminating 2 evenings and putting in a full mountain day in place of it, much more gets accomplished with the full mountain day. (Even better if you can string a few of those mountain days during the week)