How to keep an alpine ski training diary
What to write before and after training, in five minutes a day, so the diary leads to a clear next step with your coach.
A training diary is not a performance score. It is a short, honest record of how a session went, so that you and your coach can see patterns and agree what to change. A systematic review found that athletes’ own self-reported measures reflected changes in training load more consistently than many commonly used objective measures (Saw, Main and Gastin, 2016).
In DOME5 most answers are a tap on a 1–5 scale, with three short answers in your own words: your focus, what went well and your next step.
Before training: two minutes
- Energy and physical wellbeing on a 1–5 scale.
- Sleep: hours and quality. For orientation, sleep experts recommend 9–12 hours for children aged 6–12 and 8–10 hours for teenagers aged 13–18 (Paruthi et al., 2016).
- What and when you last ate, and how your stomach feels.
- One technical focus for the day, in your own words.
After training: three minutes
- How the session felt overall, and how it felt physically and mentally.
- One thing that went well — with a concrete example from a run.
- What you would adjust, and how you responded to a mistake.
- The errors you noticed in your own skiing — in DOME5 you tick them from the same list your coach uses.
- One next step for the next session.
Rules that make the diary useful
- Write on the same day, ideally at the same time.
- Use your own words and describe what you did, not what kind of person you are.
- Leave measurements blank if you do not know them; do not estimate device scores.
- Agree with your coach which session you are both writing about.
- Read the last week with your coach before agreeing anything new.
- Before
- Energy 3/5, physical 4/5, slept 8¼ h (quality 4/5). Focus: pressure on the outside ski earlier.
- After
- Felt tense in the first runs, freer later. Success: run 6, outside ski held through the rhythm change. Adjust: a reminder before the start. Next step: one cue before each start.
- Coach entry (same day)
- Transitions smoother in the last three runs; pressure still late when the rhythm changed.
- Agreed
- One technical cue before each start for two weeks; review on 30 September.
On race days add the race-day questions — see the ski race-day checklist. At the end of the month, review the diary together using a monthly progress report.
DOME5 helps you record and review; it does not give medical advice. If something hurts or you feel unwell, tell your coach and see a doctor.
Sources
- Saw AE, Main LC, Gastin PB. Monitoring the athlete training response: subjective self-reported measures trump commonly used objective measures: a systematic review. Br J Sports Med. 2016;50(5):281–291.
- Paruthi S, et al. Recommended amount of sleep for pediatric populations: a consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. J Clin Sleep Med. 2016;12(6):785–786.