The top three positions on the halfpipe podium at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver went to Shaun White, Peetu Piiroinen of Finland, and the USA’s Scott Lago. Louie Vito finished fifth and couldn’t stand it. “I wanted to get a medal. I was focused,” he said. So he changed … pretty much everything. No more booze, no more eating badly -- living more like champs Floyd Mayweather and Apolo Ohno, the U.S. short-track speed-skating gold medalist who introduced Vito to the world of high-performance training.
Since starting to train with Ohno’s coach, John Schaeffer, he’s run stairs with NFL players and shadowboxed with professional boxers (and that’s in addition to his year-round conditioning program).
“You get older, you see things differently. My friend Kevin Pearce, he hit his head super bad and, last year, the unfortunate passing of [freeskier] Sarah Burke…” says Vito. “Our sport is dangerous, and you can pass away in the blink of an eye. I want to look back in 2014 and say I did everything in my power to have a shot.”
Monday
Morning: 90-minute set of limit strength training for legs, with high-intensity run-hop drills (fast sprints, with vertical leaps).
Afternoon: 50-minute interval training.
Tuesday
Morning: 60-minute set of cone drills, with jumping and series of 90, 180, and 720-degree spins.
Afternoon: 50-minute step drills with weights.
Wednesday
Morning: Upper-body limit strength training with upper-body drills on chest, shoulder, arms between sets.
Afternoon: 60-minute interval misdirection run (30-second pace, and then 30-second sprint, increasing each time).
Thursday
Morning: 60-minute misdirection cone drills.
Afternoon: 40-minute treadmill interval run at a max speed of 14 mph.
Friday
Morning: 60-minute limit strength training for back.
Afternoon: 50-minute cone drills with 20 40/40s (40 sprints forward and then backward) at the end, pull-up drills between each set.
Saturday
60-minute recovery run.
Check out the December 2012 issue of Red Bulletin magazine (on newsstands November 13) for more articles. To read the magazine on your iPad, download the Red Bulletin iPad app.
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