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North America's leading news source on All Things Nordic across the continent and abroad.

14/08/2026

Jim Galanes makes the case that periodization has been misread for decades. The point was never to build one physiological system at a time, it was to keep every system alive while shifting which one gets the emphasis. Including hard training in the base period.

Read Jim's latest article on FasterSkier — link in comments.

pc: Phillip Belena/EISA

29/07/2026

U.S. Biathlon's board votes tomorrow on an alliance with U.S. Ski & Snowboard. Stability, or a surrender of independence? Both sides are working from the same facts and reaching opposite conclusions.

We read the whole agreement and talked to people at the table. Here's the piece, straight down the middle.

Board meets Wednesday, 4 p.m. ET.

Link in comments.

pc: Nordic Focus Photo Agency and U.S. Ski & Snowboard

22/07/2026

Two Olympic silver medals. Six weeks non-weight-bearing on a torn meniscus. Ben Ogden's spring pulled him in two directions at once.

While the rest of Vermont was stopping him in Burlington restaurants to say they watched him race in Milano Cortina, Ogden was learning to walk again after knee surgery. One side of the season sent him back into the ski community that raised him. The other sent him inward, to crutches, the SkiErg, and a lot of patience.

FasterSkier's John Skavlem talked with Ogden about the new attention, the injury that came out of nowhere on a routine spring ski, and what progress looks like when the goal shifts from an Olympic podium to getting outside for a bike ride.

Link in comments.

pc: Nordic Focus Photo Agency , Jamie Jozefiak , courtesy photos

16/07/2026

A drop in your race heart rate over the season sounds like fitness. Jim Galanes says it is usually the opposite.

In his latest for FasterSkier, Jim breaks down why a sustainable race heart rate that falls 10 to 15 beats without faster results is one of the earliest warning signs of accumulated fatigue and overtraining, and why the muscles, not the heart, drive the whole system.

If you coach or train seriously, this one is worth your time.

Link in comments.

15/07/2026

Adam St. Pierre has a master's in exercise science and a physiology lab down the hall. So why does his best training advice keep coming out this simple: go easy most of the time, be consistent, and make it fun enough that people stick around?

In part two of our conversation, the Montana State head Nordic coach makes his case that most American skiers train too hard. He breaks down the "spice in the soup" approach to intensity, why he is skeptical of old-school periodization, and two field tests you can run without a lab to track your own fitness.

Read it on FasterSkier — link in comments.

10/07/2026

Jim Galanes first wrote this piece in 2004. Twenty-two years later, he believes it holds up, and we agree.

His argument is simple but easy to get wrong: before you keep piling on volume and intensity, an athlete has to be able to produce speed and power in the first place. Grinding up steeper hills at a slower and slower pace isn't training good movement. It's just adding physiological stress.

If your skiers are hitting high heart rates while barely moving, the limiter may not be the aerobic engine at all. It may be power.

Jim breaks down what he saw across years of uphill testing, why the fastest 500 meter athletes were also the best performers, and why speed, not terrain, should create the load.

Read it now on FasterSkier — link in comments.

pc: Phillip Belena

09/07/2026

Adam St. Pierre finished second to last in the first ski race of his life. The one skier he beat had crashed into a tree.

About twenty years later, he is the head Nordic coach at Montana State, he has sent a kid he started coaching at age six or seven to the Olympics, and he still credits a New Hampshire ag school and a homemade snowbank for the fact that he found the sport at all.

Part one of our two-part conversation with one of the most thoughtful coaches in American skiing, from that first race to a $1,500 job offer from the late Marty Hall to landing the job he had quietly wanted for a decade.

Read it on FasterSkier — link in comments.

29/06/2026

We're thrilled to welcome John Skavlem to the FasterSkier staff, and he's hit the ground running with a beautiful piece on Rosie Brennan.

After more than a decade with the U.S. Ski Team, three Olympic appearances, and two World Cup wins, Brennan is stepping away from the World Cup. But as John writes, she's not calling it retirement so much as "rewiring." Skiing isn't something she's leaving behind. It's something she's redefining.

It's a thoughtful look at a remarkable career built on perseverance, patience, and a late start that never held her back. A fitting tribute to one of the best all-around skiers the U.S. has ever produced.

Read John's full feature on Rosie's career and what comes next at FasterSkier — link in comments.

Welcome to the team, John!

23/06/2026

Most of us treat the warm-up as the boring part to get through before the "real" workout starts. Jim Galanes makes the case that it might be the most important part of the whole session, because how you begin largely determines the metabolic response that follows.

Start too hard, and you spend the next 30 to 45 minutes just digging yourself back out. Start gradually, and you arrive at your intervals with the physiology ready to actually do the work. Jim draws on both the science and his own years racing time trials and hill climbs to explain why the best athletes are often the ones warming up the longest.

Read the full piece on FasterSkier — link in comments.

15/06/2026

For five minutes at the finish line in Soldier Hollow on February 15, 2002, Beckie Scott did not know she was about to make Canadian cross-country skiing history.

Twenty-four years later, she is the CEO of Nordiq Canada, navigating frozen federal funding, a fractured community, and a generation of athletes she believes can win.
We spoke with her about the long arc that brought her here.

Read the full story only on FasterSkier — link in comments.

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