Joni Mäki plans to focus on training for normal trips. The collaboration with personal trainer Juho Halonen may end.
Medal hero of the pair relay of the 2021 and 2022 prestigious competitions Joni Mäki intends to change his practice significantly.
– The focus of training shifts more to normal trips. Of course, the sprint will be included. Let’s try to get the training volume where it should be, says Mäki.
– I believe that sprinting will be a means of achieving results in the next season as well, but normal distances must also be improved so that they are at a decent level in 2-3 seasons, he continues.
In his sprint career, Mäki has skied in the World Cup seven times to the top ten and once to the podium. At the Chinese Olympic Games a year ago, he was fourth in the free sprint.
The best standard distance finish from the World Cup is twelfth in Ruka’s 15-kilometer free pursuit from 2020. In the split start, he has been at best seventeenth.
Mäki is making a training change for three reasons: in the World Cup, the men’s shortest normal distance changed from 15 to ten kilometers, he wants to join the Finnish relay team in the prestige races, and in the future there must be better results in the mini-tours.
– When the little things are fixed, the training volume can be raised to the level required to be successful from one weekend to the next. There have been good performances here and there in my career, but consistency has been lacking.
Virus magnet
Joni Mäki told Vierumäki on Thursday that there will be training changes for next season. PASI LEISMA
Mäki’s 2022–23 season has gone drastically under the bench.
Corona and two common colds pretty much destroyed the basic training time in the summer.
– Yes, it’s annoying. But I already settled in the summer, when the training season was so bad, so there are no big expectations in the competition season. When the score should have been made, I wasn’t 100 percent on point. Value competitions are annoying.
During the competition season, Mäe has had a leg injury, a flu, an unknown respiratory problem in Planica, and a tooth infection after the prestigious competitions.
It has been estimated that the excessive load exposed the skier to a cycle of health problems.
– I don’t think the load has been too much. Training has been carried forward in a very controlled manner, Mäki commented.
– Because of the corona, everything was quite calm for a couple of years, and no diseases moved in any direction. Now, when society has been more open, I have had too many diseases, the skier continues.
The hill has been described as a virus magnet.
– Yes, I raked them too hard. I have to look in the mirror. You have to focus better on small things in the future, but I’m not going to open them up that much.
Will the coach change?
Juho Halonen has worked as Joni Mäki’s personal trainer for over ten years. Jussi Saarinen
The fact is that Mäe has great potential for success in sprints.
Another fact is that he has not been able to redeem his potential but a small part.
The third fact is that the 28-year-old skier’s years of success are at hand now.
Many skiing insiders question Mäki’s personal trainer Juho Halonen with.
Not because a hardworking number cruncher is necessarily a bad coach, but an athlete needs a new stimulus and new coaching skills.
Halonen has been Mäki’s coach for over ten years.
– Certainly quite a lot of people are of the opinion that the coach should be changed, Mäki begins.
– When we sit down after the season, if there are no ideas on what to do, at that point it would be appropriate. We’ll see how we proceed after the season, he continues.