Book Review - Fitness
Cross-Country Skiing (S. Gaskill)
Date first posted on eCommunity - 10
December 2006
Fitness Cross-Country Skiing
By Steven E. Gaskill
1998, Human Kinetics
ISBN 0-88011-652-8
WRITER
Steve Gaskill is extremely well-qualified to write a book about ski fitness. For 10 years he served as head coach
for the cross-country skiing and Nordic combined disciplines within the U.S. Ski Team.
He coached at three Olympic Games. He has written many articles on XC skiing, and since the publication of this book
he has gone on to co-write a couple of major volumes on sports physiology and coaching.
CONTENTS
The book has 169 pages and 14 chapters. It is organised into three parts.
PART I sets the scene and makes it clear that the main emphasis will be on track skiing. The author's expectation is that the fitter
readers will want to enter races (rather than go on long mountain tours). There will be emphasis on both skiing to get fit
and on getting fit to ski: on-snow and off-snow training will both be covered.
Chapter 1: Skiing for Fitness gives a useful summary of the main aspects of fitness in general and of the fitness benefits of XC
skiing in particular.
Chapter 2: Getting Equipped is a brief run-through of kit and clothing, written for newcomers to the sport.
Chapter 3: Checking your Fitness Level gives a brief but useful self-test of your readiness for physical activity. There is also a test
of aerobic fitness based on a 1.5 mile run/walk.
Chapter 4: Skiing the Right Way - rather ambitiously for a short chapter - tries to describe not only the main techniques of XC
skiing but also the main types of off-season ("dryland") training.
Chapter 5: Warming up and Cooling Down. This is an excellent and well-illustrated summary of the rationale and methods for warming up
and cooling down the main muscles. (However, the author's recommendation that we should bounce (albeit gently) during static
stretching is controversial.) The chapter's emphasis is on muscles - mobilisation of joints is not covered.
PART II contains six chapters, each of which lists a number of training workouts. Each chapter focuses on a particular "Training
Zone" and these zones are colour-coded. The progression is from Green (easy) through Blue, Purple, Yellow and Orange to Red (very
hard). (In laying out these chapters the book designer has erred emphatically on the side of garish).
Part II begins with a good discussion of how to measure and control the intensity of your training. If you are new to Rate of Perceived Exertion, Borg Scales and Heart Rate Monitoring then you will find this useful.
PART III is called Training by the Workout Zones. Three broad levels of training ambition are described: basic fitness and maintenance,
moderate fitness and improvement, and competitive. There follows an excellent chapter on the overall principles that should guide you
when setting up a training programme: variety, alternation of hard and easy workouts, the importance of rest, the need for specificity
in exercise activity. This leads into a good outline of how to plan and sequence the various training phases (first build the endurance
base then work on strength and speed). Then comes an outline of how to structure your entire year's training programme. Gaskill prefers
the reader to work out his or her own individual routines and schedules, based on the general principles. But he does provide
sample programmes – using the workouts listed in Part II. The final chapter talks about how to keep to your programme and how to chart
your progress.
COMMENT
I really like lots of sections of this book – there is good, sound coverage of many aspects of fitness. And I like Gaskills' style of
writing, which is clear, concise and accessible. But the book's overall structure seems not quite right. For example the
introductory chapters about ski technique and equipment are aimed at absolute beginners, but it would be unusual for absolute beginners
to want to work on their fitness in a structured way through skiing. (They will more likely prefer to concentrate on technical
improvement.) More significantly, on first reading the book many readers will struggle to understand just how the author intends them
to regard the 58 individual workouts that make up Part II of the book. Are they meant to be complete programmes, or components from
which you are expected to assemble your own programme, or just ideas that you might use when thinking about a programme (and which you
might vary to suit your own requirements)? All is finally made clear in Part III – and not until quite late in Part III. Readers who get
that far will enjoy the book and will want (as I did) to re-read the whole volume several times. But I fear that some might not get that
far.
The book has been around for a few years and it looks as if the publishers are now discounting the price in a push to clear their
remaining stock. Amazon for example are currently offering it for £7.60 plus P&P. That is a bargain. It would make a good stocking-
filler for skiers who are already fitness-oriented as well as for skiers whose current level of fitness might call for a little
resolution in the New Year.
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