Physical Standards Test - lots of pictures!

As part of our summer training, and as part of the upcoming Team Trials, we have to pass a physical test with certain minimums. We spend our summer training, mostly for the upcoming racing season, and partly to pass the test!

We jokingly refer to the test as some sort of hepta-deca-supa-cathalon since there are 9 items, and you have to do all of them on the same day. It's grueling, but, a good measure of our fitness.

The nine items are:

• Standing 15-meter sprint
• Standing 30-meter sprint
• Standing 45-meter sprint
• Standing 60-meter sprint
• Flying 30-meter sprint
• Ball toss (4 kilo ball for women skeleton, 6 kilo for skelly men / bobsled women, 8 kilo for bobsled men
• Standing broad jump
• Power cleans (barbell)
• Back squats (barbell)

The sprints can all be run at once - i.e. you can choose to just start and run through the timing eyes, or choose to do them separately, but that's still a minimum of 3 full-on sprints. Tiring, but kind of fun too, and it's nice to measure our progress.

We did our first test on July 25th, as Brad's and my "baseline" test. We'll test twice more by October, when our training peaks. Mid-summer tests are slower, so we wanted the baseline by which to gauge our fall tests.

This time, we tested at the Park City High School. First, it was outdoors on the track for the sprinting / jumping / throwing portion.


Brian, one of our coaches:


Brad sprinting through the eyes:


Me getting ready:


My weakness is getting out of the hole - I hesitate a bit and it costs me. I.e. my 15 and 30 times are slower than some of the other girls, but then I catch them by the 45 and 60, which means my speed is up there but I'm not exploding out of the start:


Plus, look at my neck - I clearly need to relax a bit! Eek!


The broad jump is a lot of fun, though I haven't practiced it enough.

Brad:


Me:


Nick:


"Dr. Rosen":


The ball toss is one that I'm reasonably good at doing.






Brad's even better:


He really gets after it:


So do the other guys:


We spent a lot of time between items checking our scores and seeing how much improvement we need by the end of the summer.


Tribute to Alaska on my shoulder (for those not in the know, it's a reference to the state flag):


I had the points sheet on my phone:


After sprinting, it was indoors for the lifting portion.


The coaches kept an eye on things, and had to watch each time we did an official lift.


Adding a weight plate during my warm-up:


I don't have pictures of my actual lifts, but I got several personal bests throughout the test:

• Clean: 160lbs from the floor, 1 rep
  
• Squats: 205 lbs, 3 reps
• Ball toss: 12.4 meters
• Flying 30 sprint: 3.86 seconds (still need a couple tenths there)
  

As for the rest of the test, my standing sprint times were the same as or a little better than my end of summer test last year and my broad jump was a baseline since it's a new event.

All in all, I'm pretty happy; mid-summer times are slower than they will be in September/October when we peak, so to have them so close to or better than last year's peak test makes me happy!

My overall score ended up well over 600 points, and we need a minimum of 500 to pass, but of course I can't be content with the minimum:

• Squats, Cleans, and the Ball Toss were in the "elite" category
• Flying 30 and Broad Jump were in the "America's Cup/Europa Cup" category
• BUT the rest of the sprints were in the "development" category and that's just not acceptable to me.

Here's to more training and updates from the next tests.