Maastohiihto.com found out about jump and bounding exercises and their benefits to fluid skiing with Tatu Peltonen, physio trainer of Tampere Sports Academy and Varala Sports Academy in Finland.

Tatu Peltonen is involved in coaching volleyball, canoeing, ice hockey, and boxing. He himself has been swimming competitively for twenty years.

“I have been involved in sports that require explosiveness and bounding. Specifically, I have been working in lower limb dexterity and power output.”

“Strong base skillset is the cornerstone of my own training,” Peltonen says.

A lot of things are based on transferring existing strength into sports performance in a way that one can benefit from that skill set. Peltonen explains:

“How can we be on one leg, and what things can we do in a controlled way on one leg? When looking at endurance, can we do it for a long time? Then there is also efficiency. It is really important that we are able to do a good power output with one leg or from difficult positions.”

Skiers can also bring the elements mentioned by Peltonen into their training, especially in summer, but in some way all year round, for example, as a part of their warm-up routine.

“Basic movement patterns such as double leg bounding, alternate leg bounding, and drop jumps are really good for developing power output. When the surface is snow, it will become a skill-building exercise as well. You can also start combining different jumps. One example could be how you can do an alternate leg bounding, then immediately transfer into a single leg squat and continue on the same foot again for an alternate leg bounding. Will the body stay in control? How about, are you able to land right when doing a lateral jump? Do you get control of your body? Do you get on your feet? Or do you lose the balance of your body either in a single-leg squat jump or in a new lateral jump? Whether it is an ankle or a hip if something “leaks”, you will not be able to make the next jump successfully in the new direction,” Peltonen says.

Peltonen sees bounding and jump exercises as very useful for skiers because skating, for example, is a constant effort on one foot.

“How you glide the ski, how you feel the ski, and how can you use it to your advantage. The reserve of speed and power output also supports your endurance; when in uphill, you do not have to use such a large percentage of your maximum power for one kick. When we get the strength levels up, then the movement is a little bit lighter and more economical.”

Peltonen gives a hypothetical example:

“If our effort force is, let’s say, a hundred kilos, and on an uphill, one needs to optimize every kick to get up to the hill. What if one could get to a point where the maximum effort was 120 kilos, but when one comes uphill, he or she only needs 80 kilos on every kick. That is proportionately lighter for the skier, and that is how we can also improve our endurance performance.”

For example, the bigger toolkit the skier has, the better he is at reacting to different conditions in different situations and coming up with different solutions. This is particularly important in skiing nowadays, where there is a lot of skiing in a group with rhythm changes and different situations in general.

“How, for example, one is able to maintain speed in turns in downhills, how to choose good lines in and also use the right techniques. It seems that explosive power output has become a more distinguishing factor in different situations, both in a sprint and a mass start. The individual 10-second stretches during the performance are where the differences are almost made,” Peltonen sums up his observations on skiing nowadays.

The key is to be able to train with low intensity and high volume. Intensity training is also needed.

“Then, if you think about what kind of exercises they could be, jumping and bounding become one option, and the second option is maximum strength training.”

How can all of this be implemented? Peltonen takes an example from volleyball. First, there are a lot of jumps in terms of quantity, which means a lot of different jumps. At low power, a lot of different landings. For example, jumping on both legs but landing on one with a turn or from one jump movement pattern to another. The movement is continuous and includes a lot of different jumps and turns with both alternate and double-leg jumps. 

This type of exercise with several different movement patterns can be done, for example, on stairs by bounding down the stairs and walking up.

“It is a pretty good low-intensity exercise, and at the same time, you can develop the skillset you need for the sport in a really easy environment. That is the starting point. First comes concentric efforts, then eccentric performances through landings. Then gradually we move on to power efforts, i.e., we seek a bigger angle on the jumps through power output,”  Peltonen says.

The second article to be published on ProXCskiing.com includes demonstrations of the exercises on video.