Yes, that is what it means.
In fact, in my seminars I address this specific issue.
For a long time, coached believed that power work (plyometrics, explosive lifting, throws, etc.) could be a good hypertrophy stimulus due to a high recruitment of fast-twitch fibers.
It’s true that FT fibers are recruited during high velocity exercises, which is the first condition for making a rep “effective” at stimulating muscle growth.
However, the tension imposed on the recruited fibers is low when the speed of movement is high (because of the momentum created and the rapid cycling of the actin-myosin bridges). Making explosive work very far from optimal to stimulate growth.
Extremely sedentary individuals can gain some size from explosive work because their trainability is so high that they don’t require a strong stimulus to grow. But besides that, you really won’t put on a lot of muscle from explosive work.
But that’s not the purpose of such work anyway.
Should you eat more than maintenance on power days? That’s a very restrictive view of things.
Nutrition isn’t just important for growth and it doesn’t only affect the workout of the day. For example, after a proper hypertrophy workout, protein synthesis in the trained muscle(s) remains elevated for up to 36 hours. This indicate that your body is in “muscle-building mode” for 36h after a workout is completed.
As such, nutrition for maximum growth isn’t only important on the day you are training for hypertrophy but for 1.5 day after the workout is done.
For example, if you lift (for hypertrophy) Monday at noon, your body is in enhanced growth mode until midnight on Tuesday, making your nutrition key during both Monday and Tuesday.
Furthermore, power training might not stimulate much muscle growth but it does:
- Have a fairly high energy expenditure
- Increases muscle insulin sensitivity
That second point is very interesting as the power session could be seen as a stimulus to increase glycogen storage for future workouts. So by increasing carbs intake on that day you could “carb load” with less risk of fat storage which could be beneficial for the next workout(s).
But in the grand scheme of things, it depends on your ultimate goal. If you want to add a significant amount of muscle, it’s best to stay in a caloric surplus on most days. Certainly on all training days (you can have control days to limit fat gain, but these lower calorie days should be on off day(s)).