FormalPara Key Points

Qualitative research methods can be employed to understand testing and training practices and gain insight into the challenges and opportunities within competitive snow sports environments.

Performance enhancement and health protection goals are the backbone of the ultimate design and development of training plans. These goals involve a cyclic process guided, modulated and influenced by the athlete’s assessment and monitoring.

Goal setting and training planning are collaborative and athlete-centred processes that require open communication, effective teamwork and shared decision making among coaches and medical and technical staff around the athlete, eventually leading to the training plan.

1 Background

Competitive alpine skiing, snowboarding, and freestyle skiing, despite their different features and nature among competitive snow sports, demand high levels of physical fitness, technical mastery and mental abilities [1]. Athletes participating in such competitive sports are exposed to high loads (e.g. training and competition loads, race calendar congestion, psychological load and travel). In turn, by their training programme, athletes and their support staff seek for methods to increase fitness and, consequently, improve performance over time [1, 2]. However, a poor load management, in combination with the increasingly saturated race calendars, may affect an athlete’s health [3]. Specifically, testing measures and training methods may be considered for athletes’ preparation to support performance enhancement while protecting their health [1, 4,5,6]. Thus far, it has been advocated that athletes need training to reach their best performance level while testing data is important because it can inform future training structures and plans [4, 6, 7]. Similarly, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) recently adopted the Athletes’ Health Unit, intending to provide a framework to protect physical and mental health while allowing for long-term high performance [8]. In this regard, testing and training approaches are embedded within the athlete-related pillars of this framework.

On the one hand, sport-specific tests guide the training process by predicting an athlete’s current performance level and evaluating performance progress [9, 10]. For example, Austrian ski and snowboarder athletes are tested across different areas, such as aerobic and anaerobic capacity, muscular strength and power, and neuromuscular function (e.g. balance, agility and coordination) [9]. Furthermore, it has been acknowledged that regular testing can contribute to prevent injuries and overtraining by tracking training adaptions [6, 9]. On the other hand, training methods aim to increase and optimise athletes’ performance to cope with the specific demands of their sport [4, 11]. Distributed across two main periods (e.g. preparation and competition periods), most training programmes include strength, power and neuromuscular training, technical training, and often involve cross-training in other sports [1, 7, 12]. In this connection, an integral approach to training load provides insights into training stress and response through training metrics, including monitoring variables related to external loads (e.g. training and race time, frequency and type, runs, strength and neuromuscular function) and internal loads (e.g. perception of effort and sleep) [3, 12]. Assessing load measures allows for the evaluation of an athlete’s adaptation, fatigue and recovery status, adjustment of an individual training programme, its impact on performance, and minimising the risk of injury and illness [12, 13]. Hence, an optimal training load management would yield performance and health benefits, acknowledging that both the temporal context and environment influence an athlete’s load and load capacity [4]. In respect to injury prevention, the training load has been suggested to drive the athlete towards or away from an injury [4, 13, 14]. Taken together, given the evolution of equipment, changing environmental factors (e.g. weather and snow conditions), and the complexity and nature of these snow sports disciplines, multiple factors come into play in relation to athletes’ performance and health [1, 9, 15].

Within the specific context of these competitive snow sports, testing and training may be a particular challenge. Moreover, these sports take place under extreme and difficult to standardise outdoor conditions. Therefore, testing and training become even more relevant because of these inherent features and potential limitations of the sports setting, which also includes on-snow and off-snow season periods, challenging and diverse snow and weather conditions, and busy schedules [1]. However, little is known within this context about the influence and impact of on-snow and off-snow season testing measures and training methods on optimising performance while ensuring athlete safety within the representative real-life settings. Additionally, there is a lack of understanding of how contextual and environmental factors influence both testing and training [4, 16]. Further, on-snow and off-snow periods vastly differ, as testing and training practices within these periods may do too. In relation to an athlete’s health status, an injury/health and performance relationship through a risk grading system between both constructs has been advocated [17]. Thus, assessing athletes through testing and monitoring may contribute to the identification of potential injury risks and health factors to develop further tailored performance-oriented training plans for physical and mental fitness [1, 6, 7, 9, 18]. Likewise, there is a need for snow sport-specific training approaches against one-size-fits-all practices to train and prepare athletes conveniently [1, 5, 7, 13]. Altogether, both testing and training processes can assist, through health protection (e.g. injury and illness prevention), the overall well-being and longevity of athletes’ involvement in alpine skiing, snowboarding and freestyle skiing.

The current literature acknowledges and highlights the relationship of testing and training, through load monitoring, with injury risk prevention [6, 11, 19]. However, specific snow sports-specific research in these areas is limited and all the knowledge on these areas comes from personal experience and anecdotal information or remains protected and unpublished. Despite the limited research within the field, the great potential of testing and training interventions from a prevention perspective has been highlighted. To date, mainly in young athletes, testing measures have targeted physical-related and biomechanical-related aspect (e.g. neuromuscular coordination, strength, muscular activation patterns, and dynamic postural stability tasks) [20,21,22,23]. Regarding injury prevention training programmes, the focus has been on home exercises addressing alpine skiing-specific injury mechanisms [24] and indoor and outdoor exercises combined with an educational intervention for preventing anterior cruciate ligament injuries [25]. Yet, there is a need to understand and comprehend testing and training practices within the competitive snow sport context and how contextual and environmental factors (e.g. experience, communication, shared responsibilities, busy calendars, race venues) primarily influence athletes, coaches, and team staff when designing and performing their current testing and training practices.

Accordingly, the voices of athletes and all stakeholders may help to gain insight into how and why testing measures and training methods are used within this context from a performance and safety perspective [16, 26, 27]. Thereby, qualitative methods are one way to increase the meaning and knowledge of such approaches, yielding a more in-depth outlook on the topic as they are the main end users of interventions on a daily basis [28]. Therefore, this qualitative study explored the perspectives and perceptions of stakeholders from competitive alpine skiing, snowboarding and freestyle skiing regarding testing and training practices in their setting.

2 Methods

2.1 Study Design

This study used an exploratory qualitative research design applying grounded theory (GT) principles [29, 30]. Grounded theory is a systematic and inductive method that focuses on building new theories from data to generate concepts and categories from the data. Our qualitative research focused on processes and interactions by interpreting and generating connections from various perspectives and participants’ voices within an interpretive paradigm [31]. The results are reported according to the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research guidelines (Electronic Supplementary Material [ESM]). [32]

2.2 Recruitment and Participants

Potential competitive snow sport participants were invited to participate in the study through an invitation e-mail by one of the researchers (JS), who worked jointly with FIS. The eligibility criteria included to be > 18 years old, professionals working within their competitive snow sport setting, and to be able to communicate in English or German. Participants were provided with an information letter with a written explanation of the study, informed about their voluntary involvement, and reminded about anonymity and confidentiality. Following the acceptance to participate, participants were further contacted by the research team.

Considering that testing and training are approached and conducted by different professionals in competitive snow sports, and based on the maximum variation sampling method [33], we aimed to ensure that the diverse groups of participants represent different roles, disciplines and countries, allowing a broader outlook of the topics from multiple perspectives, backgrounds and experiences. The sample consisted of 13 (four female and nine male) competitive snow sports athletes (n = 2), head coaches and managers (n = 3), on-snow coaches (n = 1), off-snow strength and conditioning (S&C) coaches (n = 3), physiotherapists (n = 3) and sports psychologists (n = 1). Participants, with less and more experience within snow sports, worked at the elite level in alpine skiing (n = 9), snowboarding and free skiing (n = 4) on the World Cup and European Cup circuits of different FIS snow sports disciplines. Among all competitive snow sports, we sought to involve competitive alpine skiing, snowboarding and freestyle skiing stakeholders given that these disciplines showed the greatest injury incidence and severity at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Games [34]. Moreover, included participants were from the national teams of Switzerland (n = 3), Austria (n = 2), Germany (n = 2), Canada (n = 1), Finland (n = 1), Japan (n = 1), New Zealand (n = 1), Norway (n = 1) and the USA (n = 1). To guarantee confidentiality, no additional demographic details are presented.

2.3 Data Collection

The data were collected through online semi-structured interviews from May to August 2022. All interviews were conducted by video call by one researcher (PB) in English or German, depending on the participants’ preferences. Thus, seven of the 13 interviews were conducted in English, and six were conducted in German. The interviews were audio-recorded. The mean length of the interviews was 46 min (range 34–71 min). All data were pseudoanonymised; unique reference numbers were used for each participant. During interviews, handwritten notes were taken by the interviewer [35]. The interview guide covered questions about their perspectives regarding training goals, planning and execution of training, testing measures, future perspectives of training and testing, and the roles of injury prevention and mental aspects within testing and training practices. Before the start of the study, the interview questions were tested in a pilot interview and refined afterwards. This pilot interview was not included in the sample. Throughout the ongoing process of data collection, we also used theoretical sampling to include new participants with different roles and disciplines to obtain different perspectives and a more in-depth understanding of emerging concepts [33], as well as questions were added and adjusted in response to the newly gained information. The topic list is presented in the ESM. After 13 interviews, no conceptually meaningful data emerged from the interviews as the same constructs were repeated in variation and meaning, indicating saturation [36]. All participants provided verbal informed consent before their interviews. This study was performed in accordance with the standards of ethics outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki. The present study protocol was reviewed by the Cantonal Ethics Committee KEK Zurich (BASEC Nr. Req. 2021-01329) and was judged not to fall within the scope of the Human Research Act (HRA).

2.4 Data Analysis

All interviews were transcribed verbatim and further inductively examined following a constant comparative data analysis [37], applying principles of GT, including open, selective and axial coding [29, 30]. To ensure consistency throughout the process, the interviews were analysed in their original language, and all the codes were processed in English. In parallel to data collection, collected data were analysed to inform the ongoing data collection [38]. During the coding process of every new interview, codes of previous interviews were compared, and if needed, codes were refined or merged. In the first stage, two researchers (OBM and PB) independently open-coded two interviews using ATLAS.ti software (Scientific Software Development GmbH, Berlin, Germany; version 8.4.5). The open coding is the initial stage of the comparative analysis with the aim of labelling the transcript data that described and conceptualised the dataset [30]. Then, they discussed their codes. OBM, PB and CB coded one additional interview independently to ensure coherence and consistency. Subsequently, codes and memos were discussed, and the analysis was refined in a team meeting (OBM, PB and CB). After reaching an agreement (e.g. removing themes when not supported by enough data, and merging related themes into a single main inclusive theme), one researcher (OBM) coded the remaining interviews (n = 10). Over two meetings between OBM and CB, in which the authors examined the emerging findings and potential interactions, an outline was introduced to two independent researchers (EV and JS) not involved in the data collection and the first steps of the analysis. During this meeting between the researchers (OBM, CB, EV and JS), codes, categories, and discrepancies were considered and compared until the categories of interest were settled for analysis. Consequently, preliminary results were developed from the analysis. Following the constant comparative data analysis, similarities, differences and connections were discussed to obtain the main concepts with a description of the core concepts (Fig. 1). In addition, a practical example of the data analysis process is provided in Fig. 1, where codes from the initial coding phase were merged into two categories and further integrated into one main concept.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Step-by-step diagram of the data analysis process. On the right-hand side, there is an example of our coding process from codes to categories to eventually concepts

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2.5 Reflexivity

The research team consisted of five male individuals and one female individual. OBM is a PhD candidate from Andorra and a sports physiotherapist with experience in alpine skiing injury prevention. PB is a Swiss human movement scientist and an athletic coach. EV is a Dutch sports scientist and epidemiologist with thorough expertise in injury prevention. VG is a French sports medical scientist, researcher and former professional athlete. JS is a Swiss human movement scientist with extensive experience in alpine skiing research and injury prevention. CB is a Brazilian sports physical therapist with experience in sports injuries and a postdoctoral researcher. Considering the researchers’ backgrounds, the analysis may have potentially been influenced by an overemphasis on aspects of injury prevention. Nevertheless, the diversity of perspectives and backgrounds represented by the authors supports the impartiality of our findings.

3 Results

The main concept from the data analysis was that the ultimate goal of training is getting the athletes in their best condition to perform and win. Testing and training methods are conducted via a systematic and cyclic approach, with performance and health as pillars to achieve the athlete’s best performance. Figure 2 outlines the testing and training cycle supporting athletes throughout their short-term and long-term development. Our findings are presented according to the main concepts, related subcodes and quotes in Tables 1, 2, 3, 4, and these tables are structured based on our main findings and represented by multiple stakeholders.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Sequence of winning in competitive snow sports: performance and health as pillars to achieve athletes’ best condition to perform. Based on our data analysis, this figure describes the systematic and cyclic approach of testing measures and training methods to ensure athletes’ preparation to perform optimally in competitive snow sports. The overarching goal of this process is winning (yellow boxes). Following a cyclic course, different factors are essential for supporting and helping athletes win: a providing strategies to enhance their performance while protecting their health (green boxes); b periodically assessing their physical and mental status (red boxes); c establishing a shared decision-making process driven by communication among all the team members that assists in goal planning and goal setting according to the athlete’s needs (blue boxes); and d eventually implementing a tailored physical and mental training plan, which is continuously nourished by the previous stages and feeds the successive athlete plans following the same pattern. These aspects are critical in the wheel of success and occur in the short-term (actual season) and long-term (athlete’s career) stages in competitive snow sports athletes. However, this development pathway encounters some limitations across all process steps

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Table 1 Concepts, subcodes and exemplary quotes on the ultimate goal of training is winning: balancing performance and health
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Table 2 Concepts, subcodes and exemplary quotes on the essential role of assessing the athlete’s status
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Table 3 Concepts, subcodes and exemplary quotes on goal setting and planning through shared decision making
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Table 4 Concepts, subcodes and exemplary quotes on closing the training plan and the ongoing process
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3.1 Testing and Training Are Needed to Achieve the End Goal of Winning

Participants described “winning” as the end goal of the testing and training, which requires athletes to compete in their best condition. Two main and interlinked targets were reported, namely performance enhancement and health protection, while different strategies were defined.

3.1.1 Goals Are Driven by Physical and Mental Health

Performance goals include preparing athletes to increase their performance levels by improving their physical capacities, acquiring skills, especially in free skiing, and working on their mental abilities. The latter, with the leading support of their teams, entails dealing with pressure in their personal and professional domains and coping with risks, both in their training and racing settings. Subsequently, preparing and supporting the athletes ensures they will “get from A to B, from start to finish, as quickly as possible”. Likewise, all the stakeholders acknowledged that a fit and healthy athlete is ready to perform. While they recognised their performance-driven environment, they agreed that health is a premise for optimally performing. They perceived injury or pain as a hurdle to perform, stating that as long as the athlete is healthy, coaches and team staff can push them into their best version. Consequently, participants highlighted this as reason for injury prevention and health protection being training goals.

3.1.2 Mental Aspect is as Important as the Physical Aspect

When athletes and the staff were asked about the importance of mental health, training and abilities, they all acknowledged that the athletes’ mental aspects were just as important as their physical aspects. Coaches and team staff mentioned that athletes encounter different types of pressures and how they deal with them. For instance, they reported that athletes cope differently with performing under pressure, the nerves before a competition or the pressure to keep their spot within the team. These dimensions of pressure could come internally from themselves, their team, their family or from external sources, such as the National Association, media and sponsors. A mentally strong and self-confident athlete was considered to be a resilient athlete who dealt better with such dimensions of pressure and ultimately performed better. Similarly, athletes, coaches and sport psychologists agreed upon the importance of getting focused immediately before competitions and how elemental it is to be “ready on day X”.

3.1.3 Short-Term and Long-Term Goals of an Athlete’s Career Development

Coaches and team staff noted their key role in supporting and helping in athlete development. They recognised that such an approach encourages and assists athletes in developing themselves to become top athletes while being fit and healthy throughout the development process. The development path was described in short-term and long-term views, in which the work carried out during a whole season was deemed from a short-term perspective, whereas the long-term development course was aligned with an athlete’s career. Moreover, the team around the athlete also mentioned that training goals must be adapted to young athletes. The main focus is on introducing them to on-snow and physical training involving fun activities, with the long-lasting aim of preparing them for skiing while underlining the crucial role of preventing injuries.

3.2 Why is Assessing the Athlete’s Status Fundamental?

Based on the stakeholders’ perspectives, assessing an athlete’s status periodically led to the collection of data on their physical and mental status by different means, eventually guiding the next steps in the training plan process.

3.2.1 What is the Status Quo of the Athlete? Baseline and Follow-Up Assessments

Participants employed both objective and subjective testing measures. Coaches and team staff mentioned that they perform objective assessments twice a year with elite athletes. Although different terminology was used, these periods coincided with the end of one season and the pre-season period of the upcoming season. The stakeholders emphasised that both assessments are used not only for testing performance but also for informing health threads and, in some cases, for both purposes. Objective testing measures generally included a battery of tests consisting of a medical check focusing on the cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and visual systems. They also tested for physical capacities (e.g. strength, mobility, power, endurance and balance). Likewise, the stakeholders mentioned conducting subjective assessments to identify an athlete’s physical and mental weaknesses and strengths through tests, self-reported questionnaires, apps and interviews.

3.2.2 There is a Critical Need for the Adequate Tests, Criteria and Normative Values

Coaches and team staff mentioned that the criteria by which these assessments are carried out fall under the consensual idea of “what they have always done”. Different factors, such as S&C coaches’ and medical staff’s own experience, scientific literature, background and education, discussions with other S&C coaches and physiotherapists from other teams, and trial and error cycles, play a role when defining these criteria. Participants outlined the limited literature on objective and subjective assessments, including uncertainties on what testing measures to perform and their reasoning, the lack of reference and normative values for physical capacity tests (e.g. strength and endurance), and the differences between sexes. Moreover, they highlighted a shortage of knowledge regarding how athletes have reached their full potential. Thus, coaches and team staff acknowledged the need for adequate tests to assess performance and health. Regarding young athletes, coaches and team staff highlighted that their assessment depends on the athlete’s club or region and a lack of a system in place. Coaches reported that their tests for youth were based on a score scale across different tests assessed by coaches.

3.2.3 Monitoring as the Approach of Repetitive Testing All Season Long

While some test assessments occur once or twice a year, other measurements, framed under the umbrella term of monitoring measures, occur throughout the season at different timepoints. Monitoring was identified as continuous testing throughout the season by all the participants involved in assessing the athlete’s status. Monitoring methods include tools such as a subjective movement analysis, questionnaires and other tracking techniques to measure load data. These loads encompassed tangible physical and on-snow training loads combined with the self-reported rate of perceived exertion (before, immediately after and after some hours of training), sleep quality, overall feelings and mood, and fatigue (physical and mental).

3.3 Planning Before Doing: Goal Setting and Shared Decision Making

All participants, particularly athletes, coaches and team staff, mentioned that goal setting and planning involve two pillars: communication and shared decision making. They were united when foregrounding the significance of an athlete-centred process supported and driven by building strong relationships within the team and their influence on effective and open communication.

3.3.1 Test Data Informs on the Decision-Making Process

In this respect, they defined goal setting as the ongoing process that originates with the test results and ends with establishing the athlete’s goals. All the collected outputs on the athlete’s status are analysed and discussed by the coaches and team staff who work around the athlete, which eventually leads to informing further steps of the decision-making process. Communication and teamwork efforts were described as essential during the goal-setting stage. Coaches and team staff, in particular, underscored the power of baseline testing and monitoring data in goal planning, as they add valuable meaning in different dimensions, such as guiding future steps, athletes’ responses to training, guiding rehabilitation in cases of injury and baseline values in return-to-sport, and athletes’ fatigue.

3.3.2 Individualised Planning: Teamwork Effort Putting the Athlete in the Centre

Understanding the athlete and the snow sports context, explaining to athletes and helping them understand what, when, where, and most importantly, why they do so was pivotal for establishing a shared decision-making system. Altogether, they insisted on a continuous cyclic planning approach that embraces all stakeholders assisting in designing and agreeing on individual goals that meet the athlete’s needs and personal goals. Most of the time, the stakeholders involved in this steady and systematic course were athletes, head coaches or managers, on-snow coaches, S&C coaches and physiotherapists. Moreover, other professionals who may participate in the process include sports psychologists (or mental trainers), sports medical doctors, sports scientists and nutritionists.

3.3.3 Structured but Flexible: Planning Needs to be Adaptable

Depending on these individual goals, they described planning as being devised into different scenarios, which ranged from day-to-day to long-term macro plans. Participants also mentioned that gathering data provides a perspective on the individual context of the athlete, ultimately promoting continuous adjustments and adaptations to the athlete’s training plan, in which communications play a key role. The eventual outcome of the systematic sequence of testing and training is the development of a tailored and adjusted training plan for the athlete’s requirements, defined by and based on objective and subjective testing data, including, for instance, the weaknesses and strengths identified through subjective testing. Furthermore, they insisted on the flexibility of the training plan in terms of tailoring and fine-tuning it to the different stages within a season, travelling and changes throughout the season (e.g. calendar), weather and snow factors, access to facilities and equipment, and most importantly, to the constant athlete’s status and potential injuries. However, despite all these restraints, they stated that they “try to do and make the best for that scenario or context”.

3.4 Closing the Cycle: Implementing the Training Plan and Starting it Over

Coaches and team staff involved in training described the process as a cyclic pathway, which can be established in a short-term period (e.g. a whole season, including both summer and winter) and in a long-term period (e.g. an athlete’s career). Eventually, training planification informs for and leads to the starting point of the process, which is characterised by finding a balance between enhancing performance while protecting it and the ultimate goal of winning.

3.4.1 Training Programme Itself

The underlying aims of training structures rely on increasing an athlete’s physical, skill and mental capacities while reducing health and injury threats that might be identified through testing or may occur during their training planning. Furthermore, coaches and team staff mentioned that the training structure could vary depending on the time within the season. For example, summer training is commonly characterised by large loads of physical training, also known as dryland training, combined with progressive on-snow training. This training block usually takes place overseas and in the Southern Hemisphere. In contrast, during the winter, on-snow training is more predominant than physical training. Coaching staff also highlighted differences between dryland and on-snow training. Whereas dryland training includes strength, endurance and power training, skill and movement patterns training (e.g. landings, tricks), and mental training, on-snow activities range from freeskiing, skill on-snow training, technical drills (e.g. in alpine skiing rotatory, edging and pressure drills), performing tricks, skiing patterns, and runs and equipment testing in different situations (e.g. terrain steepness, course design difficulty) and under varying snow conditions (e.g. icy, hard, soft). Connected with the challenges they faced during the whole season, all the stakeholders acknowledged the limitations they encountered, pointing out that those regarding physical training were less burdensome than those related to on-snow training.

3.4.2 Injury Prevention is Part of Training

According to all the stakeholders’ perspectives, testing and monitoring approaches, goal setting and training are also considered parts of injury prevention interventions to protect an athlete’s performance. Hence, the training plan also includes injury prevention strategies, including physical and skill training, with a special focus on the build-up period during the off-season, the aforementioned monitoring approaches and load management tools, and exercise-based interventions addressing the weaknesses identified in subjective testing. For example, physiotherapists and S&C coaches referred to an alpine skiing-specific injury prevention programme focusing on young athletes (e.g. “Injury Screening and Prevention—Alpine Skiing” (ISPA) intervention). They suggested that they make use of 11 + warm-up programmes from the football setting modified to their snow sports contexts. However, they also reiterated the need for additional research on injury prevention, especially concerning injury prevention guidelines or programmes, as they “make it up as they go”, trying their best with their knowledge and experience.

3.4.3 Training the Mind

Regarding mental training, participants mentioned that the ability to focus can be learned through daily practice with the primary help of a specialist (e.g. sports psychologist) or, otherwise, with other non-specialist team members. Furthermore, all stakeholders dwelled on risk-taking and risk-management behaviours. They acknowledged that the different disciplines of these competitive snow sports deal with different inherent and sport-specific risks. For instance, risk-taking behaviours rely more on trick performance in snowboarding and freestyle skiing subdisciplines, while in alpine skiing and some subdisciplines of snowboarding and freestyle skiing risk-taking behaviours relate to speed. However, they emphasised that athletes need to take risks to be fast or to perform the best tricks, while viewing it as a learning process in which communication and trusting relationships between athletes and coaches are essential.

3.4.4 Challenges Within the Competitive Snow Sport Context: Evidence Base and Contextual Factors

Participants reported a lack of evidence, guidelines and protocols related to training methods in competitive snow sports. Strength and conditioning coaches, coaches and other team staff referred to approaching such limitations as a “trial and error” cycle, in which they eventually overcome these challenges by using their own criteria and experience. Additionally, they underlined challenges they encounter in their daily practice, both in physical and on-snow training. These entailed shared factors for both environments, such as access to facilities, lack of qualified personnel, funding, equipment and injuries. In contrast, while decentralisation of infrastructures and long distances were described as issues in terms of physical training, on-snow training had limitations such as weather and snow factors, as well as travelling and training overseas.

4 Discussion

This qualitative study outlined testing and training practices and perspectives from athletes, coaches, head coaches and managers, and healthcare providers in the competitive snow sports context. Our findings describe how performance enhancement and health protection are intertwined within the systematic, cyclic, individualised, and flexible concepts of testing and training. These include an athlete assessment, goal setting and shared decision-making processes, and training plan implementation as key approaches to ensuring an athlete’s optimal preparation to perform in such sports settings.

4.1 Performance and Health as Pillars to Shape Athletes’ Winning Paths

The current study provided insight into the integrated relationship between athletes’ performance and safeguarding their health, as a single concept. While snow sports are well known for their performance-driven environment [1, 19], whose ultimate goal is winning, protecting an athlete’s health has also become paramount [4, 16, 27, 39]. Such a balanced approach not only enhances performance but also helps to preserve health and minimise the risk of injury. In this direction, participants described an integrated approach motivated by performance-centred goals yet using health-driven strategies [17, 39], focusing on physical and mental training, protection and prevention [40]. In addition, the previous literature has shown that injuries have a detrimental effect on performance and athletic success [41]. To best serve athletes, an integrated performance system can assist in ensuring performance success and the athlete’s development both in the short term and long term, as remarked upon by participants. For instance, in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games, the UK Athletics developed “The Integrated Performance Health Management and Coaching Model”, where health and performance departments operated in synergy [17]. Considering that athletes and their staff highlighted that the main goal is to be optimally prepared to perform and win, the medical team staff and the coaching and performance team staff must work closely. Likewise, the medical team and coaching staff acknowledged no black-and-white separation but a greyscale continuum regarding injury risk mitigation strategies and performance development. Both constructs operate conjointly, targeting physical and mental aspects, as they are part of the training structure itself [4, 40]. In this regard, Gabbett proposed the “training-injury prevention paradox”, suggesting that hard and smart training may act as a “vaccine” to protect against injuries [13]. Therefore, intertwining and managing athletes’ performance and health is imperative to stepping onto the top of the podium. Future research should explore this relationship in greater depth and how it can be optimised in testing and training within the snow sports context.

4.2 “It All Begins at the Starting Gate”: Athletes’ Assessment and Monitoring

Our findings showed that data on athlete status are gathered through assessing and monitoring them. Knowing who the athlete is from a performance and health perspective was considered central because it eventually informs athletes of individualised goal setting and goal planning. Hereafter, the process moves toward developing a training programme, covering all the dimensions of the athlete, from the physical to mental aspects, from basic to sport-specific aspects and from performance to health. Accordingly, it has been advocated that setting goals in sports settings leads to enhanced performance [42]. Indeed, monitoring was defined as a constant and regular form of testing both performance and health, differentiating between external and internal loads or between physical, psychological and social loads [6, 9, 11, 43]. Recently, including in snow sports settings, athlete load monitoring has become a regular practice for determining the “dose–response” relationship to competition and training loads, considering objective measures, subjective outcomes, psychological measures and lifestyle-related factors [4, 6, 43]. All these monitoring tools were employed to inform practitioners about practice, and they were defined as extremely valuable as they guided future actions. In this respect, West et al. outlined five overarching levels in which training loads communicate about an athlete’s status, which ranged from long-term to short-term decisions (e.g. long-term use, season planning, day-to-day planning. in-season adjustment, and feedback) [6]. In contrast, Dijkstra et al. presented a continuous health monitoring system in which health and performance risks are graded as a result of an athlete’s health status [17]. Hence, monitoring athlete loads can assist in increasing stakeholders’ knowledge of their responses and adaptations to improve and adjust athletes’ training plans while enhancing performance and reducing injury risks [3, 12]. While some data are available for specific disciplines and contexts (e.g. Austrian and Swiss alpine ski racers and snowboarding) [9, 21, 44], as arose by participants, there is a lack of specific understanding of the physical and mental demands and training requirements of sport-specific demands. Consequently, considering the relevance of this topic and the uniqueness of the context, there is a need for appropriate tests, criteria, and normative values for testing and monitoring in the snow sports context.

4.3 Goal Planning and Setting: A Cornerstone Leading to the Training Plan

Before implementing the training plan, the last step hinges upon establishing a shared decision-making process driven by communication among all team members to meet the athlete’s needs. As a result, different aspects come into play when designing and developing a training programme, particularly understanding the athlete’s individual needs, contextual factors, communication and shared decision making [1, 19, 39]. Therefore, planning should be adjusted to meet the needs of athletes to cope with their physical, psychological, and social loads and to adapt to travel loads and tight schedules [6, 11]. For instance, a biopsychosocial and interdisciplinary approach may put athletes at the centre of the process and imply interprofessional communication and collaborative actions across different team members [45]. Furthermore, the context and changing environments and conditions characterise and influence competitive snow sports. As such, various contextual factors may play a role in training. Athletes’ plans should be contextualised in their environment to inform their process. In this regard, data collection through assessing and monitoring athletes continuously contributes to building an athlete’s holistic picture. Embedding both physical and mental athlete periodisation into the daily structure of the action plan nourishes and provides dynamism and flexibility to the training plan, which was highlighted when tailoring it to an athlete’s needs [46]. Factors related to athletes (e.g. physical and athlete characteristics), coping strategies, the environment, and racing and training facilitate the shaping and further implementation of such a comprehensive plan [6, 40]. In addition, the strength of communication and shared decision making relies on fitting and fine-tuning the training plan and on the team around the athlete and athletes themselves, who all together make informed decisions about its structure and periodisation [19, 39, 46]. Hence, through effective communication, teamwork and an integrated decision-making process, every team member has a role and contributes to the unified goal of preparing the athlete in their best condition to perform and win.

4.4 Implementing the Training Plan: The Last Piece of the Puzzle

The final stage of the cyclic process described by participants is developing and implementing the training plan. This wheel pattern has also been shown with the “training-process framework”, where adaptations in the training plan constantly take place [19]. As mentioned above, collaboration and open communication among team members promote integrated performance support, which is of the utmost relevance in establishing technical and tactical strategies while safeguarding athletes’ physical and mental health [17, 39]. Furthermore, the recent literature highlighted the need to introduce risk management strategies as part of the injury prevention behaviours included in training programmes [47]. This risk management approach is described as the final stage of a decision-making process. In this regard, the integration of physical and mental interventions by improving athletes’ knowledge, awareness and skills (e.g. body and mind), health, injury prevention, risk taking, and the balance between pushing limits and safety leads to the shaping and implementation of risk management behaviours in their current practice [47]. In connection with the particularities of each of these competitive snow sports, their on-snow and off-snow (or dryland) training activities may differ between them. In freestyle skiing and freestyle snowboarding, athletes seem to place less attention on strength training and more onto physical and mental skill and technical training, thus more orientated to developing their skills and tricks [46]. In contrast, in alpine skiing and the other speed disciplines among freestyle skiing and snowboarding, athletes and their supporting team prioritise strength, endurance and skill training. Taken together, athletes across all disciplines deal with a particular risk-taking component [46, 47]. Hence, these findings can contribute to setting the stage for future work in terms of on-snow and dryland training, both from the perspectives of performance optimisation and prevention efforts. Thus far, although physical and mental training periodisation has been documented in competitive alpine skiing, snowboarding and freestyle skiing [1, 7, 46], little is known about competitive snow sports, accentuated by the different demands across disciplines. Therefore, acknowledging the importance of flexibility and how contextual factors can affect the training structure, further research should focus on elaborating on-snow and off-snow training plans and structures and understanding each discipline’s physical and mental demands to develop and implement more sport-specific interventions.

4.5 Strengths and Limitations

The use of diverse methods strengthened the trustworthiness of our findings [48]. Data and investigator triangulation were applied for credibility by incorporating different stakeholders, such as athletes, on-snow and off-snow coaches, managers and healthcare professionals. The data analysis process included researchers from various backgrounds and cultures. We recognise that one main researcher providing contact (JS) might have coloured the sample and influenced the data collected and the study results. Nevertheless, applying qualitative methods facilitated uncovering nuanced insights into testing and training practices in such a context. Initially, three independent researchers (OBM, CB and PB) conducted the initial part of the data analysis. After that, two researchers (OBM and CB) conducted the remainder of the data analysis. Multiple meetings and discussions took place to evaluate the analysis and its relationship to the previous literature to increase confirmability and demonstrate the quality of the research. Regarding transferability, study participants included elite alpine skiing, snowboarders and freestyle skiing athletes/staff competing in FIS events from international teams from the European, Asian, North American and Oceanic continents, including countries from both hemispheres. The study sample included mostly male individuals, while female individuals were underrepresented. According to resources and sports culture, this scenario coincides with the reality of competitive snow sports staff. However, such a diverse sample with different experiences, backgrounds, countries and cultures about testing and training thoroughly describes the topic. Furthermore, this study only included three disciplines among all competitive snow sports disciplines. Therefore, we acknowledge that our findings are context specific and circumstantial and that comparisons with other sports contexts should be cautiously made. Dependability was accomplished by creating an audit trail in which memos were written to record the development and reporting of the findings.

5 Conclusions

The ultimate goal of testing and training practices in competitive snow sports is winning. Our study provided insight into the role of testing and training within the competitive snow sports setting. Performance and health act conjointly toward optimally preparing an athlete to achieve their ultimate goal of winning. The derived concepts provide a comprehensive view of the development process of the systematic, cyclic, individualised and flexible training plan, starting with assessing an athlete’s status and finishing with the eventual training plan, where monitoring tools, communication and collaborative decision making play major roles.