Training with World & European No.3 Junior Waterskiing Champion

In my last post I talked about designing effective training programs.

Recently Luis Noguera Spanish, World and European Number 3 junior waterskiing prodigy came to me and asked me to help him in his preparation for the coming waterskiing calendar. I was somewhat amazed to learn that this guy had managed to get through all his 21 years and reach such heights in his sport without any kind of physical preparation through pure talent, grit and determination and for sure the huge help of family and friends.

We needed a plan. We decided we needed to work on his muscular endurance building on his aerobic capacity. We decided to split his training into blocks and spend several weeks in each block and have a total of 3 workouts per week devoted to S & C and anytime else devoted on the water improving his waterskiing skills. We really wanted to concentrate on improving one thing at a time instead of trying to improve strength, endurance and power all at once.

Our baseline assessments included

• Resting heart rate - we checked his resting heart rate with a monitor we want to see a drop of resting heart rate rate of anywhere from 5 to 10 beats per minute
• Modified Coopers test - in his test we got Lluis to run as far as he possibly cold in 6 mins and recorded his distance
• Heart rate recovery - after getting Lluis to do a bout of intense activity we looked at how fast his heart beat could get back to normal. In general terms if you

One of our methods of training aerobic capacity is using Cardiac Power Intervals. This involves using any high intensity exercise that maximally elevates the heart rate such as sprinting as well as various high intensity waterskiing drills can be used. This was aimed at helping to improve oxygen supply at higher intensities and improve the power endurance of the cardiac muscle

The guidelines for carrying out these exercises were that

• heart rate should be maximal in each rep
• rest intervals should be 2-5 minutes or HR 120-130
• 4-12 reps per session
• 1-2 sessions per week

This is an example of one of our training sessions but already we have some kind of starting point in our assessments. Throughout this training block we can then analyse our training sessions always keeping note or our baseline measurements and progress our exercises accordingly. A game plan is always needed.