Team Ramudden Ski, the Tour de France and Lysebotn Opp – Power Insights That Push Skiing Forward

In the summer of 2020, Skisens began its collaboration with Team Ramudden and Guided Heroes, and in the fall of 2021 we joined the team at their training camp in Båstad. There, we measured the athletes’ power and threshold while climbing Hasslövsbacken on Hallandsåsen. A few weeks ago, we once again joined Ramudden for a training camp — this time in Åre. Much has changed since 2021. Back then, Lina Korsgren was the team’s star on the women’s side. Now she is on parental leave, serving as sporting director, while her husband Gustav temporarily leads the team. Since 2020, some athletes have left (Max Novak and Ida Dahl), but new ones have joined, including Emilie Fleten, Thomas Joly, Amund Riege and Alfred Buskqvist, and the team may now be stronger than ever.

A lot has also changed for us at Skisens. We have an entirely new ski-grip power meter and an app that athletes can install on their own phones, along with live-data support so coaches can follow every push in the follow car — or anywhere in the world with an internet connection.

How watt-based training is transforming skiing — and what we’ve learned

The biggest development in recent years is everything we’ve learned about watt-based training for cross-country skiers. Our strong conviction is that this knowledge — much of it developed through our collaboration with Team Ramudden — will push skiing to a new level. Just look at what has happened in cycling. Since power meters became mainstream, cyclists have reached entirely new performance levels.
This year’s Tour de France, which just finished, is an impressive example. Cyclists are now pushing 5–10% higher wattage than they did ten years ago (source). That kind of improvement is nearly impossible to explain by anything other than measurability. With power meters, athletes and coaches receive immediate feedback that guides micro-adjustments — the ones that actually drive performance.

The same performance leap is coming to skiing

As we now bring power measurement into cross-country skiing, there is every reason to believe we will see similar improvement in the coming years. Everything starts with knowing where we stand.
We now have a clear picture of how double-poling power varies with terrain and intensity. Below is power and heart rate from a 5 km threshold session at 5% incline. You can clearly see how heart rate responds to changes in power — always with a delay. This is a strong argument for training after power instead of heart rate.
Training with power is proactive. Training with heart rate is reactive.

Power vs. heart rate over time during a 5 km threshold session. Heart rate rises as a reaction to increased power, making heart rate a lagging and unreliable tool for pacing.Threshold power: what elite skiers actually achieve

The average power in the session above is about 4 W/kg over 20 minutes — a high elite standard for male skiers in double poling. For elite women we have established threshold values around 3.3–3.5 W/kg. These numbers match what has been measured both on roller-ski treadmills and on the SkiErg.

This knowledge of threshold watts is quite new in skiing, and we are still learning how to use it. Athletes with a power meter in their training watch can of course use it for intensity control, but the immediate value is in scouting and performance tracking.
If your threshold is 3.3 W/kg (women) or 4.0 W/kg (men) in double poling, you have strong potential for long-distance skiing success. Knowing where you stand allows you to track every small improvement in technique or training structure that pushes the number upward — and that is how long-term progress is made.

Comparing outdoor power to SkiErg performance

Those who have not yet tested their outdoor double-poling power can get an idea using SkiErg benchmarks. A woman of ~60 kg should be around 20:00 for 5000 m, and a man of ~75 kg should be around 17:30. Scale the times as needed (source).
This measurability has existed for a few years and has clearly raised the standard — more skiers double pole Vasaloppet today, and they do it faster.

The SkiErg is great — but the big breakthrough comes when we take power measurement outdoors. Only then can athletes adjust technical details to ensure power is translated into forward motion.

Threshold watts matter — but peak power wins races

Threshold power is essential for long-distance skiers, but anyone aiming to win races must also produce extremely high power over shorter durations — to attack, respond to attacks, or win a sprint.
Knowledge of short-duration peak power is even more limited in skiing than threshold power, and scientific literature is almost nonexistent. At Skisens we want to lead the way, so we have begun building a database of peak-power measurements.

From step tests on roller-ski treadmills, we see that world-class skiers can reach 9–10 W/kg (men) and 7–8 W/kg (women) for 5–10 seconds in steep incline. We have also measured power outdoors, such as in Hasslöv three years ago for efforts from 4 to 10 minutes.
With this data we can now build a power-duration curve — similar to the power profiles long used in cycling for scouting and performance development (source).

Why steep incline is necessary for true peak power in skiing

An interesting observation is that skiers often need a steep incline to reach their true peak power over 5–10 seconds. One hypothesis is that at high speeds skiers are technically limited rather than metabolically limited. Cyclists do not have this issue because mechanical gears allow optimal resistance.

We have therefore studied power profiles both in steep and flat terrain. For threshold power, incline matters little. For peak power, incline matters a lot.

Below are the power profiles we have developed for elite skiers based on outdoor and treadmill measurements. For context, we plotted the estimated average power for elite women and men from the 2023 Lysebotn Opp — 585 meters of climbing over 6.14 km.

Power profiles for world-class male and female skiers in steep incline vs. flatter terrain.Comparing skiing to cycling — and why skiing produces lower power

The average power for the winners of the double-poling race aligns well with the power profiles we have developed.
When comparing skiing to cycling, it is clear that skiing produces lower power and a flatter power profile. Threshold power for cyclists is about 50% higher, and over 5 seconds cyclists can produce more than double the power.

This is partly because cyclists can empty their anaerobic reserves faster thanks to gears providing optimal resistance at every cadence. It is also worth noting that our power profiles are for double poling only. If skiers are allowed to use the full body (skate or diagonal), peak power uphill becomes much higher because the skier is not as muscle-limited.

For illustration, we included estimated power from Therese Johaug’s and Simen Hegstad Krüger’s record times up Lysebotn Opp.
Krüger produced an estimated 4.6 W/kg, about 10% higher than Musgrave’s double-poling performance. Johaug reached an impressive 4.2 W/kg — 22% higher than Astrid Øyre Slind’s double-poling power in 2023, 12% higher than Ebba Andersson’s skate power, and even higher than Musgrave’s double-poling numbers. Johaug at her peak was truly exceptional, and these numbers make it even clearer.

The next step: measuring Lysebotn Opp 2024 live

Now that skiing is measurable, we look forward to the improvements this will bring. Next up is this year’s edition of Lysebotn Opp, where we will be on site to measure and analyze performance. We will measure selected athletes live. With measured rolling resistance, we can estimate average power for the entire field.

Join us on this journey and see whether anyone will break our measured power profiles. Will we see a woman break 3.6 W/kg or a man break 4.2 W/kg over the ~30 minutes it takes to double pole up the climb?