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Perianne Jones - The Making of a Champion: Chin-Up Challenge
By:  Perianne Jones   (2006/08/21)

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Perrianne Jones is a member of the National Ski Team. Peri is from Almonte and grew up skiing with the various local ski clubs. She is now living in Canmore (AB) where she shares a house with Olympic Gold medalist Chandra Crawford. They should be a deadly duo at Vancouver in 2010.

In this series of articles she shares some insight into her life for the Ottawa ski community on the Fresh Air Experience website, and reprinted here with permission.

As the end of the Summer is quickly approaching, I'll talk a little bit about strength since come the fall the focus will shift away from strength and volume, and towards intensity.

Strength is one aspect of training that people generally love or hate. I personally like going to the gym to pump some iron. As cross-country skiers we don't tend to lift crazy amounts, even so when I'm in there I sure feel pretty intense. The thing I like most about going to the gym is the improvement that you see from week to week. It's enough to keep me motivated week after week to see just how much I can squat, or just how many chin-ups I can do.

Now, some of you are probably thinking "I can't even do one chin-up, what is she talking about many!?" Well, I was the same way only 3 years ago I would hang on the chin-up bar during our strength test and flail my legs around hoping that somehow it would help me pull myself up over that bar. It was then that I decided I was going to learn to do chin-ups if it was the last thing I did. It started out with my teammate and I helping each other by holding the other persons legs as they did some assisted chin ups, and eventually we could each do one with no help at all! Soon that one was two, then three and so on…

I'm happy to report that we can now do 15 chin-ups respectively without any help, and you can do it too! It really isn't that hard once you get started. That first unassisted chin-up is the hardest part, but it opens the door for the rest. Give it a try!

 
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