in-house fitness classes, and one-on- one fitness, wellness, and nutrition consulting services for its employees – many of whom lead active lifestyles (despite working at a tech firm!). One of his fitness classes is a pre-season training course for skiers and riders. “It starts in late September/October,” Bevins says. “We try to help them build mobility, strength, and resilience. We definitely incorporate plyos.” Plyos, says Bevins have relevance for skiers and riders in several ways. For starters, they help train the muscles to handle some of the strong forces muscles have to deal with in snowsports. Terrain changes and moguls create strong forces that act on the leg muscles, says Bevins. “Plyometrics can help train the muscles to absorb that energy and return the energy in the opposing direction,” says Bevins. To frame it in another way, imagine making short-radius turns at high speeds on your board or skiing zipper-line bumps when your skis must make lightning- quick direction changes and your legs flex-then-extend-and-flex-then-extend over and over and over. Riders and skiers whose muscles have been trained to fire quickly and explosively will be at an advantage. “Being plyometrically trained gives you greater
resilience within the
tissues and, therefore, more staying power, for example, in bumps,” says Bevins. In addition, many plyometric activities
actively engage such core muscles as the abdominals and the obliques. “Te core must be involved [in these exercises] in order to maintain a strong stretch and reflex,” Bevins says. (While reflexes, per se, can’t be trained, Bevins refers to the many super-fast adjustments and movements that we make in snowsports as if they are reflexes.) Imagine a weak core; when bounding or jumping, your upper and lower body would lack integration, leading to slower response. As skiers and riders, we know how much a strong core influences on-snow performance. In Bevins’ pre-season training program
at
Dealer.com, he first builds up the tensile strength in participants’ tissues (i.e., the amount of force the tissue can withstand) by running and jogging for a few sessions before getting into lower- impact plyometric exercises like jumping
74 | 32 DEGREES • FALL 2015
I FELT LIKE MY LEG MUSCLES FIRED JUST A HAIR MORE QUICKLY THAN LAST SEASON.
rope and jumps of minimal height. (Remember: Any regimen incorporating plyos assumes a certain base level of fitness.) Many of the exercises Bevins focuses on with his groups – particularly in the early going – are lower impact and high frequency. Once participants build up some resilience in their tissues, he might introduce box jumps – exercises that are higher amplitude and lower frequency.
A SORE CORE PROVES PLYOS WORK You don’t need to be a collegiate racer or work at a hip tech firm to do plyos. Both Smith and Bevins point to the Internet, which has hundreds of articles and YouTube videos outlining plyometric exercises. I will always remember my Tursday morning group’s first plyo workout – or, more accurately, how I felt an hour after that first workout.
Te workout itself was not strenuous.
First off, we dove right into six or seven low-impact activities – skipping Bevins’ recommendation to run for the first few sessions. (Ours was a group of marathoners, half-marathoners, and triathletes; we had done our
running already.) Following
Smith’s advice, we warmed up by jogging around the track four or five times. Ten we did tuck jumps, star jumps, one-footed hops, some zig-zag hops (which reminded me of slalom racing), and a few others. We generally did a few minute-long sets of each exercise, and the workout took barely a half-hour. “Tat’s it?” I said. Fast forward to an 8:30 a.m. early
season supervisor’s meeting I had at Stowe, my home mountain. I’m sorry to admit this (and I hope my boss isn’t reading – and if he is that he appreciates that I was out there trying to improve and prepare my own skiing abilities), but I tuned out most of that meeting. Rather, I focused on my abs and core, which really felt out of sorts. First off, the muscles below the lowest rung of my rib cage were tender to the touch. My upper abs felt like I had done 10,000 sit-ups. And my lower abs
felt hard as rocks. As a runner, my legs weren’t very tired or sore, but my core was as sore as I’ve ever felt. I had no fatigue, but I did feel that I had done a workout that had an effect. In short, I felt like a superhero! We continued weekly plyo
workouts for six or seven weeks (and continued running, biking, and swimming too – remember, plyos are just one component of a comprehensive regimen). Here were my impressions. Tey were fun; they were a wonderful change of pace from what I usually do; they were quick; and they made a difference. In the nearly two months we did plyos, we stayed mostly in the realm of what I would call greens and blues; we ramped up our difficulty level by adding resistance and increasing our duration. Te longer you do plyos, the more you might then ramp up to more black-level activities (see the accompanying table for a sample workout).
And then Stowe opened, and I soon learned what effect my off-season endeavors would have on my on-snow performance. My skiing on unchallenging terrain stayed the same. But in short- radius turns and bumps, I felt like my leg muscles fired just a hair more quickly than last season. I certainly skied with more confidence too.
FINAL PITCH FOR PLYOS Many snowsports enthusiasts complain that the winter season can’t come quickly enough. Well, when fall days get shorter and you start to feel the itch, I have some advice. Rather than staring at the mercury in your thermometer, get outside. Do some dryland training. Incorporate plyos. Tey’re fun, World Cuppers do them, and they’ll help the endless fall move more quickly into winter. Skiing and riding are sports, and plyos and other forms of exercise will help you be that much more prepared when the snow does finally fly.
Mark Aiken’s PSIA-AASI resume includes Level III alpine, Level I telemark, and Level I snowboard certification and membership on the Eastern Division’s Advanced Children’s Educator (ACE) Team. He and his wife are endurance athletes who are fully immersed in an exciting new endurance sport – parenting. Website:
markaiken.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124