Do you have to go to a ski school to be an elite skier?

Question

Alex Jospe · Answer

So this is going to sound counterintuitive because I work at a ski school and I think it's great. But you do not need to go to a ski academy in order to be an elite skier. If you think about what makes somebody a good cross-country skier, there's sort of four pillars of training, progress, whatever. There's fitness, technique, strength, and mental performance. And if you can address all of those, you're going to improve. You're going to get good. Now, the importance of your pace group, your training group, is... it's big. And so you want to surround yourself by fast people. If you were training in a silo or you are the best skier on your team, it's really hard to improve if you're already at the top. And that's where the advantage of either going to a ski academy or a really high-level club can help you out. So, don't train alone. It's not worth it. You aren't going to get as good as you possibly could get surrounded by good people. So, what's the advantage of a ski academy? Everything is provided for you. All the logistics, all of the ski support at races, travel, lodging. And remember, stress is stress. And so if you're spending stress you could be spending on training, organizing all of that, it's going to be detrimental to your career. And so that's sort of the advantage of a ski academy. But you can absolutely get it done at a good club. And there's a lot of those.

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"Do you have to go to a ski school to be an elite skier?"