How to Train For Skimo Part 2: Transitions

Or: How to Train Your Skimo (dragon)

I was recently a guest on The Infirmary podcast, check it out on Apple and Spotify

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This is Part Two of a Three Part series on how to train for Skimo (Part One is here). Today we’re going to talk about the transitions, and then how to get good at them.

Let’s go back to the performance model of skimo

1. Uphill (We already talked about this)/

2. Transitions

   1. Physical

   2. Psychological

   3. Technical

   4. Tactical

3. Downhills (Next Month)

   1. …and again here.

First let’s chat about a couple things.

1. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again here: Skimo is not an engine sport. I can’t tell you how many super fucking fit athletes have tried skimo and quit because no matter how much faster they were than every else at a mountain running/biking race, they couldn’t even crack the top-10 (or even 20) of a Skimo race. This is because of the skills. These skills are as important as fitness.

2. There are two main things to consider with transitions.

   1. How fast is this transition. Obviously if you lose 10 seconds in a transition (really easy to do), then you have to be 10 seconds more fit on the next uphill to catch back up to where you were. Lose 5-10 seconds at every transition for a four lap race (including a booter), and you’re looking at well over a minute in time. Are you so fit that you can piss away a minute to your competition and still be happy with your result? I didn’t think so.

   2. How well did this transition set you up for the next transition? The extreme example of this is the double-rip transition. If you need to use those skins again later, then you’re going to lose a lot of time. All transitions have the opportunity to affect the next one. Fold your skins quickly but shittily? You might be super slow putting them back on. Get your brakes tangled in your backpack loop by rushing the on-pack? Well then it’s gonna take you a while to get them out, making you lose time at the second transition.

3. Transitions need to be automatic. You can’t possibly have good transitions if you have to think about them. Could you answer 14 + 17 at the to top of a mountain at 5 degrees with your heart rate at max and your blood sugar low? Fuck no. So how can you expect to think your way through a 10-second skins-off? Here’s how we think about the stages of learning:

   1. Unconscious Incompetence: At first, you’re shit at transitions. In fact, you’re so shit at them that you don’t even know you’re shit at them. This is Unconscious (you don’t know) Incompetence (you’re shit at them).

   2. Conscious Incompetence: Then, some dickhead like me comes along and tells you (and probably shows you) how shit you are at transitions. Then you know (Conscious) that you’re shit at them (Incompetence).

   3. Conscious Competence: After a bunch of practice, yayy! You aren’t shit at transitions any more! You can do them pretty fast and pretty well in a calm and clean environment, but you don’t really have a lot of room for distraction. This means that you are Consciously (having to think and pay attention) Competent (good at them).

   4. Unconscious Competence: And then finally, after you’ve done even more work, you get to the point where you could nail a 20 second skins on while singing Espresso at the top of your lungs (Sabrina Carpenter is a fucking national treasure). This means that you don’t even have to think about (Unconscious) being good at (Competence) transitions any more. This is the goal! If you want to be able to perform well in situations where you’re oxygen deprived, cold, stressed the fuck out, and probably running a little low on carbs, you have to get to the point where they’re automatic.

4. For details about transitions, here’s some old videos I made and used to sell, but you get them for free (please consider a paid subscription, I worked hard on these).

   1. Skimo Transitions 101. Yes, this is an old video, and some of the transitions and gear have changed slightly. But if you learn and master these transitions the way I show you in this video, you will be among the fastest in the country.

   2. Skimo Transitions Drills. These are the drills I still use to get people fast transitions. They’re pretty fucking great if I do say so myself.

   3. Also, if you don’t have it (I think most of you do), here’s a link to my “This is Skimo E-book”

5. Any time that you are not moving and not transitioning is a fucking travesty 😜. Need to eat? Do it while you’re moving. Need to change a layer? Do it while you’re moving. Need to take your poles off? Do it while you’re moving. Doing any of these things (and many more) while you’re stopped at a transition zone is a waste of time which you’re going to have to pay for on the next climb. Get used to staying moving for everything.

Ok, now let’s talk about the performance model for transitions:

Transitions:

1. Physical Factors of Skimo Transitions:

You don’t need super strength or fitness for good transitions. You don’t really even need that much flexibility. I can’t possibly touch my toes, but I can still out transition most people.

Training the Physiology of Skimo Transitions:

There are a lot of ways to increase flexibility (which is really the only thing I think you might want to train), but I’m going to focus on only one: Do a lot of transitions, and especially the Toes drill from the Drills video. If you aim to spend 3-5 minutes per day most days on the Toes drill, you’ll pretty quickly get enough flexibility and mobility to be good at transitions.

2. Psychological Factors of Skimo Transitions:

You need two main psychological factors to be good at transitions:

1. You need Unconscious Competence

2. You need some fucking calm. It is possible to fuck up your Unconscious Competence by thinking about it because you’re trying to rush/panicking/can’t keep your shit together.

Training for the Psychology of Skimo Transitions:

First off, you need to practice a lot (we’ll get into exactly what that looks like in the next section, don’t worry). Not only will this increase your skill and speed, but it will also increase your confidence. If you come into a transition zone scared you’re gonna fuck it up, you probably will. But if you come into that zone knowing that you’ve put in more work than the others, and that your system is bomb-proof, that’s going to go a long way to making you confident.

Second, you need to practice still being fast and nailing your transitions in super high-stress situations. If you come up to a training session where I’m helping someone with this step, you might hear me say some truly horrible shit to them, because I’m trying to mimic (or even over-do) their inner dialogue in a race situation. Do you remember the last time you came up to a race situation and the voice inside your hear said “hey, you’re a really great person and you’re really good at this?” Fuck no, your demons are likely screaming horrible shit at you “You didn’t really train hard enough,” “if you were good at things Jim wouldn’t have left you,” “this is why we can’t have nice things.” If you are totally unprepared for the combination of stress, oxygen debt, negative self-talk, and all the other stuff that you have to deal with, then you’re start thinking about your transitions and you’ll lose 5-30 seconds, or, hell, you might even totally break down (I’ve seen it) and drop out of the race.

3. Technical Factors of Skimo Transitions

There are five main transitions in Skimo, and another combo that honestly I haven’t seen in a race in a while, but that I still teach to prove a point.

1. Regular Skins-Off - Benchmark - Under 15 seconds: This is the first transition we become familiar with. If you go up, and want to come down, you need to know how to do this!

2. Double Rip Skins-Off- Benchmark - Under 10 seconds: Because this results in a wad of skins that would take Hercules himself multiple minutes to untangle, this transition is only used on the last one (or sometimes two) skin rips in a distance race, or the skin rip at the top of a sprint course.

3. Skins-On - Benchmark - Under 30 seconds: This is the big-daddy. This is the longest transition, and for sure the one where the most time is lost. It’s quite easy to lose 30 second or more to someone who is really good at this transition, so practice it a lot!

4. On-Pack - Benchmark - Under 10 seconds: This transition should be pretty quick and easy and honestly a lot of this has to do with the right backpack (or mods).

5. Off-Pack - Benchmark - Under 10 second: Another quick and easy one, but you can spend a lot of time faffing around getting back into your boots after a bootpack, so this one can actually lose more time than a lot of people think.

6. Bootpack to Ski - Benchmark - Under 20 seconds: This isn’t something you see very often any more, but it highlights an important point: If you come up to a transition you’ve never seen before (like bootpack directly into skiing, or skiing directly into a bootpack), then all you do is string together the transitions you already know! For a boot to ski transition, you simply do an Off-Pack transition straight into a Skins Off. For a ski to boot transition, you simply do a Skins-On transition into an On-Pack transition. I have seen many people try to get cute and make up something else, and it almost always ends in tears.

Training for the Technique of Skimo Transitions:

1. You need a sequence for each of the transitions listed above. You literally need to write out the order and the instructions. What are you doing first, second, third, ninth.

2. Then, you need to practice slowly in that order until you can do it in your sleep.

3. Then you practice it quickly until you can hit the benchmarks listed above

4. Then you practice it with stress. In the beginning that might simply be something like pushups to get your heart moving, but later it needs to be mimicking the psychologically challenging situations you’ll come upon in a race situation.

And finally, you need to practice with specific equipment. You can’t practice with different bindings and a different jacket and pants that go over your levers and all that shit and pretend it’ll tranfer over. If you’re going to race in a race suit, then practice your transitions in a race suit. If you have training skis and race skis and they have different bindings, practice on your race skis. If you have race boots, practice your transitions in your race boots.

For all of these steps I highly recommend filming yourself and sending that video to someone to look at. It’s pretty rare that we can see all our flaws. If you want to take some videos and hop on a call with me to give you all my thoughts, let me know and we can set up a consultation session.

4. Tactical Factors of Skimo Uphill

For transitions, I think that the Tactical factors are mostly about equipment selection.

1. You need a good backpack.

   1. Hook instead of a wrap. Also this hook needs to be attached to the backpack solidly.

   2. Not too big

   3. Probably change out the tail loop with a bungee cord.

2. You need good bindings

   1. Probably not Plums (I love their bindings, but they’re still figuring out the brakes)

3. You need short skins. You can’t perform good transitions with full length skins. they need to be cut to about halfway between the end of the ski and the tailpiece of the binding

4. You need a race suit. Your transitions will be shit (not to mention your heat management) if you’re trying to race in a jacket and pants.

5. You need to get use to racing in small gloves or learn to transition in really heavy gloves and just accept that your transitions will be a little slow.

6. Use goggles. I can’t tell you how many transitions I’ve seen mangled when sunglasses fall into the snow.

7. You need a big-ass zipper pull on the front. I like to use a zip-tie so that I have a big loop I can grab.

8. If you’re doing the sprint, then you need a “kangaroo pouch” on your suit. No company is making them right now, so you’ll have to sew on your own.

Training for the Tactics of Skimo Uphill

Work on your shit! Your equipment shouldn’t just be an afterthought. It should be tailored (where legal) to making your transitions faster.

Summary

Like I said in Part One, we endurance athletes aren’t usually too keen on taking time out of our over-committed days to work on things that aren’t “hard.” But damnit, if you don’t spend time on these skills, you’ll be super frustrated with skimo. And I don’t want you to be frustrated with skimo. I want you to get out there and smash some fucking races. So go practice.

I’m sure I’ve missed some things in here! Please comment and let me know what you think I’ve missed.