Easy weeks and Mesocycles
Why are easy weeks and recovery phases important?
Microcycles, mesocycles, and macrocycles of ski training all revolve around the principle of supercompensation and adaptation. When there is a specific goal we want to accomplish in our ski training over several weeks, months, or years we periodize our training to reflect those goals. 
Supercompensation Image – USSA coaches manual
Mesocycles are made up of several weeks of ski training and reflect a specific adaptation or physical improvement we would like to accomplish over that period of time. A mesocycle in elite level ski training would likely focus on one of the following themes:
Cardiovascular mesocycles
Aerobic base, L1 distance
Threshold base, L3 training
Vo2max building, L4, time trials
Strength mesocycles
General Strength
Max strength
Power strength
Velocity strength
You can see from this screenshot of our 2023-2024 outline how our microcycle and mesoscales are planned. Early in the training year we like to use a 2-3 week cycle so athlete have a recovery week more frequently. This is important to ensure athletes absorb the new training load. Later on in the training year we will implement some 4 week cycles (example medium, intensity, volume, easy) versus an easy, medium, hard cycle.
Adaptation Graph – USSA coaches manual
This graph simply shows the importance of Mesocycle periodization in ski training. If a skier does the same type of training week after week their performance will stabilize over time because the training is no longer stressing the body the right way. Skiers will adapt to both the duration of their workouts and the intensity of their workouts.
Once an athlete shows an adaptation to a specific training stress it’s time for recovery then a new mesocycle of training. The next mesocycle can share the same focus as the previous one, but should include a new element of volume* or intensity to keep the athlete improving.
*In skier lingo volume refers to the duration of a training session or the duration of several training sessions. Periods when skiers are training a lot of hours are referred to as volume weeks or volume months.