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

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

Table 1 Concepts, subcodes and exemplary quotes on the ultimate goal of training is winning: balancing performance and healthTable 2 Concepts, subcodes and exemplary quotes on the essential role of assessing the athlete’s statusTable 3 Concepts, subcodes and exemplary quotes on goal setting and planning through shared decision makingTable 4 Concepts, subcodes and exemplary quotes on closing the training plan and the ongoing process3.1 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.