June 23, 2011 (Park City, UT) – I’m in Park City, Utah for some quality testing and Rookie Camp; where all the newbies to the USST get introduced to how the team works, how we can still take classes from Westminster College while traveling, and all that good “life balance” stuff that’s super important but usually gets overlooked.
In the last two days, I’ve done a battery of tests including three treadmill rollerskiing tests, which were cool but super hard and painful at the same time. The Center of Excellence, where we’re training, has a lot of cool stuff including a weight room, gym, skate park, trampolines, foam pit, recovery room with ice baths, a PT and medical center, and a lot of spin bikes and treadmills. Which is sweet, especially since two of those treadmills are giants that could fit about 6 runners at once… or a rollerskier. So we did two “near-max” tests, one classic and one skate, but I accidentally maxed out on my classic one because I started the next speed level and since the levels go for 4 minutes, I wasn’t able to say “stop” so I fell off the treadmill instead. Yep, I’m smooth! Below is the video provided by Dave Knoop (posted to youtube by Yuriy Gusev):
Some of the other tests we’ve done include a max VO2 test classic-style, a strength test, a flexibility test, a movement screening and physical, a body composition test, a baseline impact test in case we ever get a concussion, and tomorrow morning we’re getting our bones scanned to make sure they’re strong enough. Everyone working at the COE is super nice, motivated and helpful, and stayed positive through a long day of testing!
Although all the testing kinda wears you down, I think it’s a really good idea because a lot of it has to do with injury prevention and finding out what you need to work on and where you need to get more flexible, so you can adjust your training to train smarter instead of simply harder.
So tomorrow, Rookie camp begins and I’m pumped to meet all the rookies from the other sports!