Jumping into Plyometrics, 2nd Edition
By Donald A Chu
1992 Human Kinetics

High-Powered Plyometrics
By James C Radcliffe and Robert C Farentino
1999 Human Kinetics

Ever since I read the strength section of Marty Hall's, "One Stride Ahead", I've been a believer in strength training for cross country skiing. It's only in the last few years that I've started believing that the weight room is not the only place to focus on strength. This year, it all came home to me: Torbjorn's training program includes many core and abs drills that do not use weights, and Justin Freeman's articles on spenst.

Why would a Nordic skier be interested in plyometrics? Both classic and freestyle skiing are power - endurance sports, and evolution in technique really push the need for power. If you've been following my training log, Torbjorn's writings from FasterSkier.com, or writings from the US Ski Team, you'll see the focus an quick, snappy movements. The snap is the application of strength with speed.

Plyometric training specifically links muscle strength with speed of movement to produce power. By training with plyometrics, you're training for increased power.

Jumping into Plyometrics

Chu's book focuses on plyometric jumps (vertical and horizontal), with upper body drills used to enhance jumping ability. After a fairly clear explanation of how plyometrics works, Chu describes warmup activities, then a classification system for the different plyometrics jumps. He also has a section of the different equipment you can use for plyometrics and on designing a training program.

Much of the description on training programs is not particularly or immediately  useful to the cross country skier. He describes specific-sport training programs for a synchronized swimmer, a baseball player, and a soccer player, then programs for increasing vertical and linear jumping, then programs for sports that require lateral movement and change in direction (i.e., tennis and basketball). Each of these programs includes suggestions for resistance training, core strength mainly using medicine balls, and plyometrics. (Most of the suggested resistance and core drills - even the ones using medicine balls - are not described in the book. The book only describes the plyometric drill suggestions).

The chapter on specific plyometrics exercises divides 77 drills into the categories described in the first chapter: jumps in place, standing jumps, multiple jumps, box drills, depth jumps, and bounding, plus medicine ball drills. Within each category, drills are ordered by increasing difficulty. Only 17 of the drills have an upper body or core component (and that may be stretching it).

For each specific drill, the book provides a difficulty rating, the sport or activities that would benefit from the particular drill, a list of equipment needed (if any), the starting position, and a description of the action, and drawing of a figure in the act of performing the .

I found it somewhat difficult to visualize what I was supposed to do from many of the drawings without reading the description closely.

The final chapter of the book matches suggested drills with specific sports. What sports? Baseball & softball, basketball, bicycling, cricket, diving, downhill skiing, figure skating, football, gymnastics, ice hockey, inline/speed skating, netball, rowing, rugby, soccer, squash/racquetball, swimming, tennis, track & field (jumping events), track & field (sprints), track & field (throwing events), volleyball, weightlifting, and wrestling.

So what's a cross country ski racer to do? Obviously, there are similarities between some of the above sports and Nordic skiing. You can pretty easily coble together some of the drills used for biking, rowing, soccer, speed skating,  and weightlifting and come up with a program.

This book is broad in scope, trying to cover just about every sport there is. There's quite of bit of interesting reading, and I learned lots how plyometrics are used in other sports. Overall, I had trouble trying to apply what I learned to cross country skiing without quite a bit of thought and effort. If you're a multi-sport person however, you may find this book very valuable.

High-Powered Plyometrics

After I finished reading Jumping into Plyometrics, I picked up High-Powered Plyometrics. Immediately, I noticed several differences between the two books: instead of drawings, High-Powered Plyometrics uses a set of very clear photos to demonstrate each drill, along with detailed instructions for performing the drill. The pictures and explanation are much better than what's available in Jumping into Plyometrics.

Secondly, the drills were evenly divided between lower body and trunk/upper body drills. Given the increasing importance of trunk (core and abs) and upper body strength required for cross country ski racing, this added emphasis is an advantage over Jumping into Plyometrics. These added exercises come at the expense of few change-of-direction type drills. But then again, skiers don't need change-of-direction drills - we want ski down the trail, not jump into the bank of snow next to the trail

 Finally, Radcliffe and Farentinos' High-Powered Plyometrics provides a specific program for the Nordic skier!

Similar to the Chu book, High-Powered Plyometrics starts with an explanation of how plyometrics works. The explanation is more technical and appears geared toward coaches or conditioning experts who have some background in physiology. I found the Chu book's explanations to be more accessible to the lay person (me). Radcliffe and Farentinos explanations are more complete.

For the do-it-yourselfers, there a great section on building an angle box, angle board, and a jumping box - include bill of materials and building diagrams. (No, you don't have to use these things to do plyometrics - they just let you add some other drills to your repertoire). The book does show how to use each piece of equipment introduce in the "Gearing up" chapter, something that the Chu book does not do.

The photos: Notice how the explosive the actions look in High-Powered Plyometrics compared to the drawings in Jumping into Plyometrics! You can feel the combination of strength and speed just by looking at the photos! (Just so you know, I don't looking anything like the photos when I do plyometrics - the athlete in these photos has obviously been doing these for years!).

The various drills are divided into two sections: (1) lower body, legs, and hips and (2) trunk and upper body. Within each section, drills are ordered by increasing difficulty.

Toward the end of the book are 12-week training programs for various sports, including Nordic skiing (the other sports for those interested are track and field, football, basketball, volleyball, baseball & softball, wrestling, alpine skiing, soccer, tennis & otehr racket sports, cycling, and weightlifting). The program begins with twelve "Program Basics" - general conditioning drills. These drills lead into more complex and sport specific drills ("The Desirable Dozen"),

If I had to choose only one book for the endurance athlete - especially cross country skiers, I'd recommend High-Powered Plyometrics. Two reasons drive my recommendation: the excellent quality of the pictures and text explaining each drill and a training program specific for Nordic skiers.