Mini-Study: Touch/Jump/Touch to Box Reps Increase 25% During Dryland Ski Training Cycle

By Emmett Shaul, MTI Strength & Conditioning Coach

BLUF

A 7-week Dryland Ski Training Cycle using an assessment based Touch-Jump-Touch to Box (TJT) progression increased 2 minute TJT scores for all six lab rats by an average of 26.3% (range 8.0–51.7%).

Heart rate data from the hardest TJT session showed athletes repeatedly working at high heart rates while still dropping an average of 4–9 bpm during ~30-second rest intervals, supporting our goal of improving recovery for downhill skiing.

Background

With little to no snow on the ground, some Jackson Hole resorts have already delayed their openings. Meanwhile at MTI, our lab rats have just wrapped up our 7 week Dryland Ski Training Cycle, now in its sixth iteration.

MTI’s Dryland Ski Training Plan is built around two exercises which direclty address the two major fitness demands of lift-assisted skiing.

(1) Leg Blasters train eccentric strength and eccentric strength endurance. When downhill skiing, gravity “bounces” the athlete down the hill, and in response the athlete’s legs must “brake” each impact to avoid being forced into the ground. Eccentric strength trains muscle shortening, not lengthening like typical loaded squatting movements.

(2) Touch/Jump/Touch to Box Intervals train Concentric Strength Endurance and Leg Lactate Tolerance. At the bottom of each ski turn, the athlete’s legs must raise up out of the lowered (squatted) position and rapidly reset for the next turn. This raising up from the squat is muscle lengthening and demands concentric strength. As well, for a long ski run, or a short run with multiple turns or bounces (moguls), the number of movements can be in the dozens for the run and thousands for the full day of skiing. This demands concentric strength endurance and the ability tolerate the lactate that builds in the quads and rapidly recover from it with either short rests or even a the brief fully extended position between turn. We call this leg lactate tolerance.

We use this fall cycle to prepare local athletes for the upcoming resort season and to test and refine our programming for our Pre-Season Skiing Training Plans. In previous Dryland Ski iterations, our TJT progression was built around fixed EMOM intervals over 20 rounds, with work:rest starting at 15:45 (15 seconds work, 45 seconds rest) and progressing to 30:30 (30 seconds work, 30 seconds rest). This structure worked, but it was not individually scaled and allowed athletes to push hard for several rounds and then effectively “take off” a round by doing minimal reps.

The goal in this iteration was to build an assessment-based TJT model that scaled to each athlete and attached clear numerical standards to every round. At the same time, we began laying the groundwork to move our long-standing Leg Blaster progression toward a similar assessment-based structure using jumping lunges.

Study Design and TJT Progression

Six trained local athletes completed the full 7 week cycle: Connor, Michael, Alison, Pheobe, Talora, and Emmett.

We used a 2 minute max rep TJT assessment at three points in the cycle: beginning, middle, and end. The assessment score determined each athlete’s rep target for the subsequent TJT progression. Each “step” or rep level in the progression was performed twice before moving to the next.

For the assessment, each time the athlete’s feet touched the top of the bench counted as one rep, and athletes were allowed to stop and rest but to then start and again and keep working for the full the 2 minute assessment.

Per each assessment block, the TJT progression looked like this. Athletes completed two sessions at each progression.

• Progression 1 / Sessions 1–2: 20 Rounds, Every Minute On the Minute at 25% of 2-minute max reps
• Progression 2 / Sessions 3–4: 20 Rounds, Every Minute On the Minute at (25% + 1 rep)
• Progression 3 / Sessions 5–6: 20 Rounds, Every Minute On the Minute at (25% + 2 reps)
• Session 7: Re-assess and reset targets (mid-cycle or final assessment)

For example, if an athlete completed 60 TJT reps during the 2-minute assessment, his progression steps would look like this:

• Progression 1 / Sessions 1–2: 15 reps (25% of 60) EMOM x 20
• Progression 2 / Sessions 3–4: 16 reps EMOM x 20 (15+1)
• Progression 3 / Sessions 5–6: 17 reps EMOM x 20 (15 + 2)

In this way the progression was truly scaled to each athlete: stronger athletes were assigned higher absolute rep targets, while those with lower assessment scores had lighter targets that still represented the same relative intensity and a clear standard to hit every minute.

Because each session was rep based rather than time capped for work, the work:rest durations emerged naturally. Early in the progression, most athletes were working about 20–25 seconds and resting 40–35 seconds. At the peak of the final progression (25% + 2 reps, after several weeks of training), most were working around 30–35 seconds and resting 30–25 seconds. This pattern closely matched the work:rest structure used in our previous fixed-interval Dryland Ski progressions, but now with the added benefit of being individually scaled and tied to objective assessments.

TJT Assessment Results

All six athletes improved from initial to final 2-minute TJT scores.

Athlete	Initial 2-min TJT	Final 2-min TJT	Change (reps)	Change (%)
Connor	50	62	+12	+24.0%
Michael	40	48	+8	+20.0%
Alison	35	50	+15	+42.9%
Pheobe	25	27	+2	+8.0%
Talora	29	44	+15	+51.7%
Emmett	54	60	+6	+11.1%

Across the group, the average improvement was +9.7 reps, corresponding to an average relative gain of 26.3%. Improvements ranged from 8.0% to 51.7%. Athletes starting with lower or moderate initial scores (for example, Alison and Talora) saw the largest relative changes, but every athlete improved.

Heart Rate Response During Peak TJT Session

To better understand how this progression stressed and trained recovery, three athletes wore Garmin chest-strap heart rate monitors (Garmin HRM-Pro/Pro+ series) during the hardest TJT session of the cycle: Cody (age 53), Ali (age 25), and Emmett (age 30).

This session took place at the peak of the progression, where athletes had already worked through the 25% and 25% + 1 rep sessions and were now performing 20 rounds at 25% + 2 reps. At this point in the cycle, each work bout typically lasted about 30–35 seconds, followed by 30–25 seconds of rest before the next round.

Heart rate was recorded at the end of each work interval and at the end of each rest period. The table below shows the full data set.

Full Heart Rate Chart (Work and Rest)

Round	Cody Work	Cody Rest	Ali Work	Ali Rest	Emmett Work	Emmett Rest
1	83	130	101	114	118	142
2	147	142	156	145	157	150
3	152	147	165	154	163	151
4	155	151	166	159	168	156
5	159	154	167	161	172	163
6	160	155	170	163	176	165
7	161	157	172	167	179	169
8	163	157	174	168	179	172
9	163	158	176	169	183	174
10	165	161	177	172	184	176
11	167	162	179	174	185	177
12	168	162	180	175	186	178
13	164	160	181	175	185	173
14	167	162	180	170	187	179
15	167	163	180	176	189	182
16	165	162	180	175	190	176
17	170	164	180	174	189	180
18	170	167	180	170	191	184
19	172	169	179	176	192	183
20	171		182		190

(There is no rest interval after Round 20.)

To summarize the data, we focused on rounds 2–20 for work intervals and rounds 2–19 for rest intervals, since Round 1 primarily reflects the initial ramp-up from resting baseline.

Average working heart rate (Rounds 2–20):

• Cody: 163 bpm
• Ali: 175 bpm
• Emmett: 181 bpm

Average resting heart rate between rounds (Rounds 2–19):

• Cody: 159 bpm
• Ali: 168 bpm
• Emmett: 172 bpm

To quantify recovery, we calculated the heart rate drop during each rest interval as: heart rate at the end of the work interval for that round minus heart rate at the end of the following rest period. A positive number means heart rate decreased during the rest.

Across rounds 2–19, the average heart rate drop per rest interval was:

• Cody: 4.6 bpm
• Ali: 6.6 bpm
• Emmett: 9.3 bpm

Peak working heart rates during the session were:

• Cody: 172 bpm
• Ali: 182 bpm
• Emmett: 192 bpm

Using the simple 220 minus age formula, Cody’s estimated maximal heart rate at age 53 is 167 bpm, Ali’s at age 25 is 195 bpm, and Emmett’s at age 30 is 190 bpm. In that context, Cody’s peak of 172 bpm is over 100% of his predicted max, Ali’s 182 bpm is about 93% of predicted, and Emmett’s 192 bpm is about 101% of predicted. Cody not exceeding 180 bpm is likely more a function of age and formula-based max than a lack of effort; he was still working above his age-predicted maximum while Ali and Emmett were also operating very close to or above their estimated ceilings.

When we split the session into early (Rounds 2–10) and late (Rounds 11–20) phases, we saw the expected drift: average working and resting heart rates rose over time for all three athletes as fatigue accumulated. However, the size of the heart rate drop during each short rest period remained relatively stable within each athlete. Cody’s average drop went from about 4.8 bpm early to 4.3 bpm late. Ali’s drop went from about 7.2 bpm early to 6.0 bpm late. Emmett’s drop stayed almost unchanged, about 9.4 bpm early and 9.1 bpm late.

Even as overall heart rate climbed throughout this high density session, each athlete consistently pulled their heart rate down several beats in roughly 30 seconds of rest. That aligns with the training goal: under repeated, near maximal efforts, we want athletes to be able to recover quickly enough between bouts that they can sustain hard efforts across many “runs” or intervals, not just one or two.

Leg Blasters and the Jumping Lunge Assessment

Leg Blasters are one of the two main drivers in MTI’s Dryland Ski programming, paired with TJT. They build the eccentric leg strength and strength endurance needed for repeated downhill turns. As described in our Different Skiing Intensity, Different Fitness Demands article, the problem has been that everyone—from a hard-charging 26-year-old skier to a 60-plus groomer skier—has followed the same fixed Leg Blaster progression, regardless of how hard or how often they actually ski.

In this cycle, athletes still progressed from 8 rounds of mini Leg Blasters to 7 rounds of full Leg Blasters, but we started moving toward a scalable, assessment based model using jumping lunges. That earlier work identified the jumping lunge as the key eccentric driver and estimated what a “good” total rep count should look like for a fit skier. To ground that in reality, we had athletes perform a 40-rep jumping lunge effort for time at the end of the cycle, when their legs were as prepared as possible. The times clustered around a duration that supports using a 2-minute max jumping lunge test as our formal assessment. The next step is to build a percent-based jumping lunge/Leg Blaster progression off that 2-minute test—similar to what we now do with TJT—so eccentric leg training can be scaled to the actual skier instead of forcing everyone through the same fixed progression.

Discussion

This Dryland Ski iteration had two main experimental components: the assessment based TJT progression and the initial steps toward an assessment informed Leg Blaster progression. The TJT piece was fully implemented; the Leg Blaster piece was partially implemented and used to inform future design.

On the TJT side, the data are straightforward. When TJT volume and density were scaled from an objective 2-minute max assessment and progressed systematically (25%, then 25% + 1, then 25% + 2 reps, with two sessions at each step), all six athletes improved their 2-minute scores by an average of more than a quarter over seven weeks. The progression also naturally produced work:rest patterns that lined up well with our previous interval models while more accurately reflecting the capacity of each athlete. Instead of prescribing the same work to everybody, the training load now rose and fell with individual assessment performance.

The heart rate data from Cody, Ali, and Emmett give additional context to what those sessions felt like physiologically. At the peak of the progression, working times of roughly 30–35 seconds and rest windows of 30–25 seconds produced sustained high heart rates, often in the 170s and 180s, with peaks into the low 190s and, in Cody’s case, slightly above age-predicted maximum. Yet even under that load, athletes consistently dropped several beats during each short rest. The combination of high peak effort plus reliable, modest recovery in about 30 seconds is the type of response we want if the goal is to ski longer runs, string multiple runs together, and still recover quickly when needed.

For Leg Blasters, the cycle confirmed that our longstanding 8-minis-to-7-fulls structure still does what we expect it to do in terms of eccentric fatigue and local muscular endurance. But it also underscored the limitations of purely volume-based progressions. By tying a late-cycle jumping lunge test to earlier internal calculations about what “good” should look like, we now have a clearer target for a formal 2-minute jumping lunge assessment and the percent-based training progressions that can follow from it. The next iteration of Dryland Ski should bring Leg Blasters up to the same assessment-based standard as TJT.

Next Steps

1.) We plan to implement a full assessment-based jumping lunge progression. This will start with a formal 2-minute max jumping lunge assessment and progress into percent-based intervals for Leg Blasters and related eccentric work, similar to how TJT is now structured.

2.) Once local resorts open, we will collect on-snow feedback from these lab rats, focusing on run-to-run fatigue, the need to stop mid-run, and how quickly they feel ready for the next hard descent.

Questions, Comments, Feedback? Email emmett@mtntactical.com