Hasse Melin is the team leader for the Swedish junior national team. A translation of Hasse Melin's Training Ideas is at:

http://www.geocities.com/okansas.geo/melin.html

What do you think about Hasse Melin's Training Ideas?

-- Michael (meglin@juno.com), March 05, 2000

Answers

"Humility about your sport and your environment are essential if you want to succeed." Forgetting to punch in at the last control is humility. . . Trying to run goat races without training is also. . . . . .Success must be around the corner.

So Hasse says F20s need only to run 300 hours compared to M20s needing 400 hours. Female runners must learn more in a shorter amount of time.

-- MeanGene (gwm@ukans.edu), March 05, 2000.

The idea of working hard for years to achieve goals is of course reality.

I didn't see anything really unusual about his ideas (but it was nice to read the article anyway). In this country, most people have to train alone a lot, and go to relatively few competitions. If those are important keys to suceed in orienteering and it takes many years for someone to become good in Sweden (where there is a lot of o'), then it could take a very long time for orienteers the US to improve. One must be patient.

It seems that 100% dedication to a sport is not necessarily a good thing. Not for me anyway, because it could become stale after a while. There is time for some cross-training and time to spend on activities completely outside of sports (for people who want to become the best). Of course it's a good idea to earn a living as well! I'm sure that the best orienteers in the world have o' as their main thing in life, but I bet they do something different too. I can't imagine spending something like 16 hours/day on o' (say 3 hours physical training and 13 hours doing map study/mapping/ etc.?) That would be too weird!

-- Mook (everett@psi.edu), March 06, 2000.

There's an ancient Chinese saying that goes something like this...

You may keep a foot in the forest, but always keep one foot out of the forest too.

I've seen various versions of that saying from time to time, but have never understood it completely until today.

-- Mook (everett@psi.edu), March 06, 2000.

Mr. Melin makes many informed and insightful comments. One just wishes he had perhaps addressed the peculair needs of the "heavy user", and maybe even that he had made an observation about the importance of grabbing the chalupa through the window.

-- Lemon Moraine (lemonmoraine@yahoo.com), March 06, 2000.

It seems that 100% dedication to a sport is not necessarily a good thing.

I wouldn't say 100 percent dedication means that all you do is orienteer. It might mean that you make decisions by thinking about whether it will help or hurt you reach your orienteering goals. For example, if you're thinking about going back to university in Sweden or Missouri, you'd pick Sweden because it'd give you better O' opportunities (not to mention that you couldn't stand going to a school with as disagreeable a basketball team as Mizzou).

-- Michael (mike_eglinski@kcmo.org), March 07, 2000.