SkillsQuest Gets A Fitness Facelift

Remember the medals test? You know, the pre-season physical testing you went through as an athlete back in the day that measured everything from vertical jump to shuttle run time? Well, elements of that old program are making a comeback as a new part of the SkillsQuest program.

Physical testing for athletes is nothing new; it’s been going on for at least as long as sport has existed. What has changed, however, is how we are able to use new technology to effectively compile data from these assessments to establish baselines and create fitness programs custom tailored to each athlete. The new SkillsQuest fitness assessment aims to do just that.

“What we’re really trying to do is have some sort of measurement across the country of any athlete that is in the club system of their general athleticism,” says U.S. Ski & Snowboard High Performance Coordinator Calin Butterfield. “Being able to track that every year as they progress will be a big advantage for us.”

U.S. Ski & Snowboard moved away from a national standardized assessment a number of years ago because a direct link between test results and performance on the hill was not easily identifiable. Now, after looking at how some other countries in the ski racing world test their athletes, there is renewed value in developing a national set of athletic standards.

“It started a couple of years ago as an effort to bring back a physical fitness assessment into our programs,” says U.S. Ski & Snowboard Alpine Development Director Chip Knight. “Other countries have various forms of physical assessments with some being really quite elaborate and creative and some being incredibly demanding. With this, we really want to move towards a set of standards or norms and expectations of physical fitness and literacy.”

The new assessment is a compilation of seven tests that include various body weight strength endurance exercises, a shuttle run (or “beep test” as it is often called), box jumps, a 20-meter sprint, as well as standing long jump and triple long jump. Ideally, Butterfield would like for clubs to test their athletes at least twice per year to compile enough data in order to track athlete development through a national database.

“Coaches will be able to have access to data from within their club, within their region, and across the country for comparative norms as to where their athletes sit amongst their peers and against national team athletes,” Butterfield says.

Yes, the athletes of the U.S. Ski Team will all be subject to the very same assessment as U10s at local clubs. This allows for athletes to easily see where they could be – and in some cases where they should be – when it comes to physical and athletic literacy.

Another advantage of a national database is that it provides an opportunity for coaches and sports science professionals to build athlete profiles for each sport and see how alpine athletes differ physically from those in cross-country, freestyle, and snowboarding. An assessment of easy-to-conduct exercises allows for this and other important benchmarks to be measured.

“The reason we chose those tests is that you can do them with any level of athlete,” explains Butterfield. “We do have a few modifications to some of the more complex ones like the box jump, but basically we want to get every athlete doing the same tests. We don’t want data for data’s sake. We want to make sure we’re collecting data and using it to effectively change anything that we need to change within the system.”

It’s important to note that the new assessment is not meant to be a strict compilation of scientific measurements that identify athletic traits. Rather, the new assessment is aimed more at setting a tone and an expectation of what U.S. Ski & Snowboard wants to see from young athletes. According to Knight, the assessment is designed to measure the athletic competency of those athletes before they start their real training.

Many clubs across the country have already begun testing their athletes with this new assessment. Has your club? Let us know in the comments below.