http://www.newsday.com/news/health/the-daily-apple-1.4760551/long-island-olympians-talk-training-fitness-and-nutrition-1.7698773
Sixteen years ago, a vision became clear for Long Island Olympian
Matthew Mortensen -- if he was going to succeed in the luge, strength
and conditioning was going to become an essential part of his life.
Mortensen, a Huntington Station resident and a sergeant in the United
States Army National Guard, entered the U.S. Luge's development program
in 1998 -- a preparatory program designed to train young athletes for
the luge -- where he learned the proper way to lift weights and
exercise, focusing heavily on lifting form and injury prevention. This
was Mortensen's first introduction to the weight room.
“Once you become part of the development program, the staff gets you
on a workout program as soon as possible to start to train you as a luge
athlete,” said Mortensen, 28, of Huntington Station. “There is no heavy
lifting going on because you do not want to stunt someone’s growth, but
you are made into a very knowledgeable lifter.”
Mortensen is also a member of the Army’s World Class Athlete Program,
which provides the support and assistance soldier-athletes need to be
successful at both their athletic and military careers.
He was one of three Long Islanders -- along with Aidan Kelly, 19, of
West Islip and John Daly, 28, of Smithtown -- competing in the 2014
Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
In May 2013, Mortensen began an intense training regimen for Sochi,
including specific movements such as the bench press, weighted pullups,
triceps extensions, Olympic lifts and medicine ball workouts -- all of
which are protocol to luge athletes, who focus on upper-body strength.
During the first month, Mortensen focused on high-volume -- 3x10 or 4x10
set/rep design -- in order to build a base for the rest of the program.
“The following months after that, the set/reps start to go down to
maximize strength and speed output,” said Mortensen, who graduated high
school from St. Dominic in Oyster Bay, in 2004. “In this sport you need
to not only be strong, you need to be fast.”
Nutrition is also an important part of the regimen, especially during
the summer months, said Mortensen, who lives in Lake Placid for about
five months of the year but spends the rest of his time on Long Island
when not traveling for competitions and training. He said he eats a lot
of dark greens, such as spinach; proteins, including tuna, salmon and
chicken; and enough carbohydrates to keep him energized.
“During the summer, I try to eat as clean as possible,” he said.
“Nutrition during the season doesn’t go out the window, per say, but it
becomes a lot harder to eat a certain type of food -- certain foods may
be unavailable in certain countries. You are kind of at the mercy of
what you’re served.”
Kelly, who started lifting weights at age 14, said he knew he would have to train hard in the weight room to improve his start.
“Because luge is an upper body sport where we pull off two handles to
start, most of our lifts include upper back, lower back, tricep- and
bicep-pull movements,” said Kelly, who attended West Islip High School
before transferring to the National Sports Academy in Lake Placid. “Luge
athletes are notorious for having strong backs.”
After a single year of training, Kelly was able to do a pullup with
an additional 45 pounds added to his body weight. Now, four years later,
the 195-pound Kelly can perform a pullup with an extra 135 pounds.
Kelly competed in this year’s Olympics after recovering from a luge
crash in 2011, during the Adirondack Ice Breaker competition in Lake
Placid. The crash left him with a compression fracture of his T6
vertebrae and serious concussion.
Kelly said he was out of commission for a month and a half, and that
he limited exercises for his upper body during rehabilitation. “I
couldn’t put any weight above my shoulders,” he said. “So I ended up
doing whatever exercises I could do without pain.”
Kelly said that while a cardio base is important for long-term lifting sessions, it’s not a key focus of his current training.
“We are training to be good at one thing -- pulling off handles as
fast as we possibly can,” he said. “We train to be as strong as possible
for less than five seconds of work, so being able to run a mile or so
is more or less irrelevant.”
For Daly, a skeleton athlete since 2001, meeting with United States
Olympic Committee strength and conditioning coordinator, Jason Hartman,
was the push he needed to increase his strength.
“I was always serious about the sprinting side of the sport, but what
was lacking was my strength,” he said. “[Jason] fine-tuned my speed and
made me a lot stronger. A huge part of my training is listening to my
body.”
Daly said his strength routine doesn’t involve adding more weight to
his exercises, but rather decreasing the weight and focusing on
explosive movements. He also places a large emphasis on nutrition to
maintain his body weight.
“For me, nutrition has always been a big deal because I would lose
too much weight throughout the season,” he said. “So, I try to eat at
all the wrong times, basically all the time -- a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich right before I head to sleep.”
Looking ahead from Sochi, Mortensen continues to maintain a positive
outlook on the importance of fitness and returning to the Olympics.
“I constantly think about making the Olympic team -- as in the future
team -- to motivate me in the gym,” he said. “I need to know at the end
of the day that if I weren’t to make the team, it wouldn’t have been
because of a lack of effort in the weight room.”