Motocross Racer: Carter Gray Photo: Zachary C. Bako Joel YounkinsHigh Performance Coach If you race, you've been in situations at some point in your career where you feel like you need to keep sucking in oxygen but can't get enough. Your legs and arms start to go away and you just have the feeling that you need to sit on your bike and drop your arms. Your vision and your focus start to dissipate. Your only two options are this... #1: slow your pace down, or #2: know you're eventually going to make a mistake and crash because you simply just can't ask yourself to push anymore even though your reciting David Goggins quotes in your helmet...
In my line of work, we call this "gassing out." Your body runs on different fuels to supply energy to the body. Oxygen is the primary/preferred fuel source to supply the body with continuous energy, especially in moments of physical exertion that lasts longer than 90 seconds or more...You know, like racing a motorcycle. Like I've mentioned in the past, physical preparation isn't just about trying to train fatigue levels, it's about building and developing systems in the body to run more effectively and efficiently. And when it comes to conditioning for motocross and off-road racers, we need to specifically discuss training the aerobic system...The system in your body that is responsible for utilizing oxygen as it's primary fuel source. The one that doesn't let you gas out, that keeps you powering all the way to the finish line. Having a proper well conditioned aerobic system provides a lot more benefits than just minimizing fatigue on the track. It helps with things like...
In the last blog post, The 5 Rules for Motocross Strength Training, I discussed how it takes a long time to build strength and that it is actually hard to build it as a racer; it's a long game approach. On the flip-side of things, conditioning is a short game approach. Assuming that you're not going from the couch to the track, getting your aerobic system to perform at a competitive level can take weeks to months whereas strength takes months to years to develop. The only downside to aerobic training is that it decays faster than strength levels do. Popular Moto Misconceptions A lot of sports are like this, but motocross definitely is guilty of having its flavor of the week. Whoever is winning and finding success, everyone just starts to copy what that racer is doing. Something becomes a thing and we think that thing is what catapults racers up the ranks. This type of mindset, will ultimately always leave some unsettled dust when make decisions off of popularity instead of logical educated decisions. There's been a big push and belief that in order to get the most out of your conditioning for motocross and off-road, you either need to road bike or run to make it effective for the sport. Both of those options can be really solid means of aerobic training, however there is nothing set in stone that says you need to do either. If that was the case, we could just recruit cyclist and runners and turn them into racers. But to expand on this, I've had racers who had started working with me who road biked for their primary training before hand. They struggled with some of my aerobic conditioning methods, and later sold all of their cycling equipment. Not because I told them to, but because they didn't have the need for it anymore. Many roads to lead Rome. A lot of racers used to struggle with this next one, and some still do this...Racers will have a habit of setting up their conditioning workouts to mimic their races. For example, they would perform a workout at a specific heart rate and try to do it for however long their moto/race is by performing the sessions in some sort of continuous circuit training mixing strength work and cardiovascular exercises in some sort of hodgepodge approach. First things first, you cannot mimic a race without actually racing. Secondly, this is not at all how you train your aerobic system for sport preparation. This actually trains the lactic system (another system that makes your anaerobic system). If you try to replicate a race inside of the gym, you will get some brief upfront results when you're an untrained athlete, and yes you'll get really-really tired (more so than racing itself). But after the honeymoon phase (2-8 weeks) the results will begin to flatten out and the accumulation of fatigue will actually start to decrease performance on the bike and will hold back your true potential of what your conditioning could actually do for you. Lastly, one thing we really need to get squared away before moving on with the 5 Rules of Conditioning, is to realize that heart rates on the race track, will simply always be higher due to increased adrenaline levels during competition. So the same exertion level output on race day, will have a higher heart rate than if you were practicing alone on your own track, and even more so than your heart rate on a stationary bike. It's the exact same concept as if you were sitting in a movie theater watching a scary movie. Your body is sitting at rest, but because you're nervous (adrenaline kicking in) about what's going to happen, your heart would be higher than than what it would be at actual complete rest. If your body was really working at a true 90% or higher of your heart rate max, you wouldn't be able to withstand that intensity for longer than a couple brief minutes. You're not an alien from another world who can bend the rules of reality (bio-energetics), you're a racer from planet earth. The Rule Before the Rules I do want to add, that I highly recommend using a heart rate monitor while you are performing aerobic conditioning. Not to see how many steps you take or how many calories it says that you burn, but to be sure that you're training in the proper heart rate ranges. If you're not using one, you're simply guessing workouts. This is the same thing as just throwing some plates on the bar and lifting it without knowing what exactly is on the bar during a strength training session. With enough experience, you can get away without using one in certain situations, but at the very least, a Bluetooth heart rate chest strap connected to an app on your phone will go a long ways to help dial in your training. This will confirm that your either going hard enough, light enough, or recovering enough. 1.) Keep Your Conditioning Aerobic In order to get the most out of your conditioning, you want to train the aerobic system of your energy system in your body. Remember, aerobic (using oxygen) means sustained energy for a long time, while anaerobic (using glycogen and ATP/PC) is great for producing higher/more powerful outputs of energy, but those are short lived bouts of effort that require focused recovery that take minutes to recover from. So from an application standpoint, we never want you to be in a predominant anaerobic state, this is where racers go to wreck their lap times. Knowing this information, you want to develop your aerobic system so that it runs efficiently, has what feels like an unlimited capacity, and is so powerful that even when you need to grab another gear (meaning yourself), your heart can keep pumping blood and oxygen to your working body. You train this way by performing sessions with heart rates mostly in zone 2 and 3, or 120-150 BPM. these sessions can last anywhere from 20-60 minutes depending on the goal for the session. 2.) Condition 2-4 Times/Week Just like discussing strength training, you want to keep a pulse (see what I did there) on your conditioning levels. You're either in a state of untrained, developmental, maintaining, or overloading. During each of those times, it should determine how much volume you do a week. Generally speaking, think of it as a continuum, as you move from untrained to overloading, you should prioritize more volume and effort to bring up the aerobic abilities if you're in an untrained state. If you're towards the overload state, you should do less volume that should mainly be focused around recovery heart rate zones. You can get in extremely good aerobic shape when dialing in proper aerobic conditioning methods by training 2 days a week, 3 days a week, or 4 days a week. One day a week probably won't cut it, and doing more than 4 days a week along with a racing schedule you will likely accumulate too much oxidative fatigue to recover from. 3.) Utilize Whatever Equipment That You Have Conditioning is a lot less about what you're doing (cycling, running, rowing, etc.) and everything to do about how you manipulate various aerobic conditioning methods with volume and intensity (heart rate). Placing enough time at specific heart rates for specific time-frames will produce the results you want on the bike. Not whether you choose to run or cycle. You can make the argument that certain pieces of equipment hit various targeted muscle groups more than others, and I would agree with you. But it's not important enough to stress about those minor details in the grand scheme of things if you don't have access to specific pieces of exercise equipment. There have been many times in my coaching career, that racers have felt unstoppable, won championships, and felt recovered by only pushing a sled and using a rowing machine. There have also been times that they did cycle, mountain bike, or run to achieve the same outcome of preparedness. What I'm trying to tell you, it really isn't going to make or break your career. There's a lot of other things you're probably doing wrong than being worried about buying thousands of dollars of cycling equipment or stress because your past injuries don't allow you to run. Remember you're a racer first, all of the equipment is just your body's tools in the toolbox to get a specific job done. The magic isn't in the equipment, it's in you! 4.) Use Both High and Low Intensity Heart Rate Zones Your aerobic system is a wide window that operates at complete rest or at higher intensities like in a heated battle out on the track against your biggest rival. There are different qualities and abilities that make up your entire aerobic system since it serves multiple functions in your body. Training at lower heart rate intensities builds aerobic endurance, capacity, and even promotes recovery. And when you train at higher aerobic intensities closer to your anaerobic threshold, it builds aerobic power (strength of the heart), lactate threshold, and VO2 Max. Lower heart rate zones can be trained at lower heart rates like 120-135 BPM, and you can train these types of sessions 1-3 times a week. Whereas higher heart rate zones you work more towards higher aerobic heart rates like 135-150 BPM and these sessions should be performed 1-2 times a week. Pro Tip: Heart rate intensities vary depending on factors like age, fitness levels, and genetics so the ranges above are averages that I referred to. 5.) Riding is Specific Conditioning Practicing on your bike/quad, is what we call specific conditioning. This is where you take your off of the bike aerobic development that builds general aerobic adaptations within your body. From here, we fine tune this with sport skill, technique, and capacity for whichever discipline you compete in. The general fitness abilities drive up the specific conditioning protocols on your bike. If you don't properly train the general ground floor systems of the body and you're more worried about wanting to crush yourself because you think it will make you "tough," you'll just left with fatigue and no added performance on the bike. When you practice on top of a high performing aerobic system, you'll actually be equipped with the proper tools to operate with and get more out of practicing and ultimately racing. Pro Tip: Many pro racers have poor conditioning programs and end up relying on racing themselves into shape. The first couple rounds they come out flat and fatigued and it takes the 4-6 weeks to gain some traction. Conditioning is Holistic I have provided 5 Rules to Motocross Conditioning here for you in this piece. These 5 Rules are all based around ground floor parameters to develop a powerhouse aerobic system. Once you have taken the time to do that, you've been given the keys to start opening up lock doors in your performance. The fun doesn't stop here... What we have yet to uncover is that once we go beyond this layer of preparation, you will find that every part of your racing, will dictate your conditioning. Your aerobic system, your maximal strength, strength endurance, your ability to handle stress and recover, riding technique, riding skill, bike setup, mental perception of the sport, nutrition, hydration, supplementation, sleep, travel, life stress, past injuries and so on and so on will determine how far your conditioning can take you.
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