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Fitness
planks, in which you balance on
toes and forearms, keeping your
body plank-straight and parallel
to the floor. “Planks create tension in your core muscles that’s
more similar to what they experience in sports,” Fabrocini says. As
soon as Klug became strong
enough to handle the standard
plank, keeping his butt down and
body horizontal, Fabrocini started
throwing in variations: picking up
one arm or leg, using bands, doing
one-armed rows.
THE TAKEAWAY
Chris Klug is religious about core work and maintaining his posture—
he never knows when he’ll hit the rut that’ll put months of prep to the
test. And that’s why even during the heat of competition, he does
variations of these core exercises two or three times a week.
Curlup Lie on your
back with your hands
behind your head.
Keep one leg straight
and bend the other so
your foot is on the floor
and your knee is at a
comfortable angle.
Without using your
arms for leverage,
tense your abs to lift
your shoulders off the
floor. Hold for 3 seconds; do this 15 times.
Bridge Lie faceup on
the floor with your
knees bent and feet
flat. Place your arms
out to your sides,
palms down. Then,
with your torso rigid,
squeeze your glutes
and raise your hips
so your body forms a
straight line. Hold for
3 seconds; do 15 reps.
Opposite arm and
leg reach Get down
on your hands and
knees. Keeping your
back naturally arched,
reach forward with
your left arm while lifting and straightening
your right leg. Hold for
10 seconds. Repeat,
extending your right
arm and left leg. Do
10 reps on each side.
Plank Assume a
pushup position, but
place your forearms on
the floor so that your
elbows are directly
under your shoulders.
Now brace your core
tightly—as if you were
about to be punched in
the gut. Don’t let your
hips sag or shoot up.
Hold for 30 to 60
seconds.
Torso turn Attach
exercise tubing
securely to a door
frame at shoulder
height and grab the
handle so the tubing is
taut and in front of you.
Without twisting your
lower back, brace your
core and use your hips
to rotate your torso to
the left and right for a
total of 15 repetitions
to each side.
Plank arm lift
Assume a plank
position (described at
left), but spread your
feet to shoulder width.
Raise one forearm off
the floor for 5 seconds. Alternate with
the other arm. Repeat
5 times for each arm.
Achieve perfect balance
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See with your feet
Rob Roy, the veteran coach who oversees Chris Klug’s training, uses an
obstacle course to teach snowboarders to look ahead instead of down
at their feet. If you play basketball or soccer, you can benefit, too. Try
the sidewinder, from plyometrics expert Donald Chu, Ph.D. Line up
three cones 3 to 4 feet apart. Set up a fourth cone 20 yards away.
Keeping your eyes ahead, shuffle sideways, weaving through the first
three cones from left to right, and then back from right to left. Now
pivot and sprint 20 yards to the fourth cone. Return to the obstacle
course using a quick, sideways shuffle. Repeat 3 times.
BIATHLON Endurance and focus
Lowell Bailey began his biathlon career by making the same mis- take every other young hotshot has made: He
hammered the skiing as hard as he
could and figured the shooting
would take care of itself. “You never
want anyone to pass you, so you
throw all strategy and caution away
and just go for it.” Now 28 and one
of America’s deadliest men on skis,
Bailey has learned that he needs to
be able to switch from full throttle
to full control in an instant. “That’s
why it takes an incredibly long time
to master this sport,” he says.
Bailey didn’t grow up with a rifle
in his hand; as a kid in Lake Placid,
he mostly played tennis and soccer
when he wasn’t skiing. But when he
finally fired his first shots on a
biathlon range as a teenager, he discovered a similarity among all projectile sports.
“When you’re lining up a small
dot at the end of the sight and coordinating with a trigger pull, it’s a lot
like arcing a penalty kick or sinking
a 15-foot putt,” he says. “You’re
learning to be comfortable at a high
stress level.” Because in the end,
Bailey points out, talent and conditioning are meaningless if you can’t
keep it steady at the buzzer. You
may think you’re the hardest-work-ing athlete in the world, but in reality, just about everyone at your
level is logging the same amount of
hours and probably doing roughly
the same workouts. “So it comes
down to what tools am I going to
use to make it up on the podium?
A lot of time the difference between
a medal and top 20 is mental fortitude and finding inner calm.”
THE TRAINING
As often as possible during the off-season, James Upham, U. S. Biath-
lon’s development coach, points his
athletes in one direction: up. Hill
work is the fastest way to push into
the range of your max heart rate
while simultaneously building
strength, power, and technique.
“One legendary drill is the whiteface workout,” Upham says with a
devilish laugh. “It’s really fun for
coaches to watch. You bound
straight uphill for 12 minutes, alternating 15 seconds of moving with
15 seconds of rest. Then you take
5 minutes off and do it again.”
“Hills are the best,” Bailey
agrees. “Unfortunately, they’re also
the most painful.”
