Skimo Monthly
Making you a stronger and more skilled skimo racer.
Howdy folks!
Welcome to Skimo Monthly!
Our goal with this material is to give you the skills, strength, and knowledge necessary to maximize your hard earned fitness for skimo racing!
Your membership will include monthly material in the areas of Skills, Strength, and Everything Else.
Skills - We’ll start with a guided self-assessment of your current skills, and then progress you through doing the skills slowly, then quickly, and then while tired and breathing hard.
The Skills:
- Uphill Skills
- Pole timing
- Gliding
- Kick Turns
- And many more!
- Transition Skills
- Skin to ski
- Ski to skin
- Skin to boot
- Boot to skin
- And many more!
Strength - We’ll being with a guided self-assessment of your flexibility and strength, and then build you from the bottom up, working on flexibility, stability, strength, endurance, and power.
Strength Phases:
- Flexibility/Mobility
- Stability
- Strength
- Endurance
- Power
Everything Else - This is where we’ll put topics that are relevant to the month.
..like:
- Hydration guidelines for summer training
- When you should be thinking about buying new skis (hint: All the damn time)
- What race registrations are coming up
- Etc.
Note that this course does not include much on fitness training! We wanted to create a service that would help athletes who wanted to self-coach or already had their own fitness coaches!
Your Instructor
Hi! I’m Joe Howdyshell! Sometimes people call me “Joey,” or “Howdy,” or even “Pale Thunder.” I’m an endurance coach, a sometimes jorts-racer, and a general lover of a nice work-play balance. I grew up in Lander, Wyoming where I learned my love of running and cross country skiing. I picked up cycling (road and mountain) and triathlon while attending West Point, and then after I finished my masters degree in Exercise Physiology from the University of Wyoming, I moved to Summit County, Colorado, where I found “my thing,” ski mountaineering racing, or skimo. I’ve raced to skimo National Championship podiums myself, and coached athletes to a wide variety of achievements, from first-time-finishers, to World Championships medalists, to being the Head Coach of the USA Skimo National Team from 2017 to 2022. These days I coach mostly skimo athletes in the winter, and then whatever those athletes do in the summer, whether that’s training for skimo, mountain running, or cycling (or, usually, some wacky mix of all three). My favorite kind of athlete to work with is one who wants to be honest about their current abilities (inside AND outside of sport), and work honestly to change them. I don’t care how fast you are, I care how much you want to push against the edges of what you think you can do.
Frequently Asked Questions
Thanks for joining our course!