Pro Hard Enduro Racer: Quinn Wentzel Photo: Zachary C. Bako Joel YounkinsHigh Performance Coach If you know me and my background, a former D1 collegiate player, a competitive powerlifter, and an avid enthusiast for strength training (yes I ride too), you may think that I'm fairly biased when it comes to this topic.
And the truth is, I am! Not necessarily because what it has done for me and my life, but for what I've seen it do for others. And for the sake of this blog in the context of the Moto Industry, I've seen careers be revived and dreams been made because racers decided to strengthen their bodies for the sport that they love. Strength training isn't just for football players, powerlifters, bodybuilders, etc...It's for everyone, and it especially for racers too! In this blog, we're are going to get into the depths of these details so that you can feel more confident in either your current strength training program or maybe to simply gain perspective on why you should begin incorporating it so that you can become a better rider. Putting the Myths to Bed There was a time, not very long ago, that a lot of people in the racing community thought that lifting weights caused arm pump for riders. Some may still be living in that false reality today, but the world has moved on...Top world class racers, amateurs, and VET racers all strength train now without the fear of arm pump. People used to think that lifting weights would make you too big and bulky to race. That it would hinder your performance on the bike and you would simply "bulk up" and the weight gain would give up too much horsepower. However, years have gone by and racers who participated in strength training over the course of their career had never gotten "super bulky" and a lot have even improved their body composition and decreased their body weight by losing body fat from strength training alone. Another myth was, that if you strength trained, that it would mess up your endurance. Over time, we've learned that proper strength training only will help your overall endurance. If your endurance on the bike is lacking, it's not because you are strength training. It's because your aerobic conditioning sucks and you don't know how to practice for your sport. Back in the day, when the old school trainers were saying that I was doing it all wrong because my riders were lifting weights, my riders were loving it! The more they lifted, the better they felt riding, and the more they bought into this strength training stuff...There was even a point in my career, where I had riders asking for EVEN MORE STRENGTH TRAINING VOLUME...Because that's how important they found it to be. If they felt strong, their riding was good, and when blended with the right conditioning methods, they felt unstoppable. Understanding the Rules to the Game As I sit here to tell you how awesome strength training is for racing and that racers all along should've been doing it too, there are some ground rules to follow so that you get the most out of your strength training. Just because something is good, doesn't mean more of it makes it better. It's a tool in the toolbox and you have to know how to use it. You can't just go HAM in the gym and expect things to work out for you. Strength training is a powerful tool that must be properly used, if not you can wind up in trouble real quick...This is why I believe so many people used to advise against it for racers, because they never actually took the time to educate themselves on what real strength training actually is and how to properly apply it. This is why we're going to cover 5 (important) Rules for Motocross Training, here very soon. Key Benefits Before moving into the 5 Rules, lets quickly cover why you should be strength training in the first place and how it will improve your performance as a racer. First and foremost, strength training will improve your injury prevention. It won't make you immune to injuries, but if you properly strength train, you will help reduce your chances of getting hurt every time you hit the dirt (call me Dr. Seuss). Strength training not only builds your muscles and tendons, but it strengthens your bones too. Any added muscle mass can act as extra body armor to your skeletal system. We covered this in the last blog, Why You Need to be Training for Motocross. Secondly it's going to help improve your riding technique. We ride in a world now where the bikes are super fast and so is the pace. Everyone is a "shredder." Riding with good technique is more important than ever or you'll be crashing your brains out. Proper strength training will allow you to hold your technical positions on the bike. Your bike produces forces both in acceleration and in deceleration and you also have to heavily account for the physics the ground forces coming back at the bike and yourself. The third reason is going to improve your reaction times on the bike. When you properly strength train, you train your nervous system (brain, spinal cord, nerves) to fire faster and more efficiently with better coordination. When that happens, it allows your brain to send signals faster to your body in which will improve how fast you can respond to any situation in split second reaction times. Think, your body can keep up with your mind. Overall, if there is a strength component involved in sport, it must be trained, not neglected. That's why I said in the last blog, even golfers strength train because there's a strength component happening in their golf swing. If it's a variable at play, it can and should be improved on, if you take this racing stuff seriously. 1.) Strength Train at Least Twice a Week If you're a serious racer, that means that you race most weekends and you practice a couple times during the week. This doesn't leave a lot of time (and energy) left for gym work. A general rule of thumb, you want to be in the gym, strength training at least twice a week to get optimal results and benefits. I have a Pro who has made a career out of being deadly consistent with two gym workouts a week. He's strong and very fit because of his consistency and execution. If you're only doing it one day a week, it's not going to cut it. You won't have enough time to cover all your bases and too much time will go by to create a stimulus that will make enough physiological changes to the body. Three days is almost always the sweet spot for most racers. This provides even work to cover all areas, keeps the sessions to 45-60 minutes, and allows for proper recovery time. Pro tip: Structure the three sessions in high, medium, and low intensity days. Or two high intensity days and one low intensity day. The most I would ever recommend would be 4 days a week of strength training. This would only be for special cases like an advance trainee and if they had enough time for conditioning, riding, and most importantly had the capabilities to recover from all of the work so that they could perform at 90% or better readiness on race day every week. 2.) Use Progressive Overload If you actually want to get stronger and improve your performance, this means you need to cause disruptions (stress) in your body. If you go to the gym and lift the same weight for the same reps, after a certain point, you will no longer adapt and you will stop getting stronger. Over time, you need to either increase intensity (external weight/load) or increase volume (total number of reps session/week) to cause a disruption to your body. When your body sees stress from strength training, it only sees it as a threat to its survival. So that next time it sees that stress, it will be prepared for it by improving the strength of the organism, called your body. Pro Tip: It's better to add volume first before you add intensity. 3.) Strength Train all Year Strength training is a long game approach. Unlike cardiovascular training where you can gain and lose progress fast, strength training comes slow and leaves slow. Because of that reality, you want to strength train at some kind of capacity all year long. Because gains come in slow, and you can't dedicate a ton of time to strength training, and you only have so much energy to strength train in each session, it's imperative that you leave strength training in your program all year long. Strength training doesn't have to be this balls to the wall approach where you're constantly grinding out each rep/set/session, I actually heavily recommend not doing this 90% or more of the time. There's multiple levels and layers to strength training so you want to keep the ball rolling, versus trying to slam dunk every gym session. A general rule of thumb, the less you're racing and riding, you can crank up of the volume and intensity. The more you're riding and racing, you'll want to dial back the volume and intensity during those times. But strength training is a flywheel that should keep moving to get the most out of it so it can work for you. 4.) Focus on Compound Movements When it comes to using strength training to increase your athletic performance on your bike, you will want to focus on using compound movements like, squatting, pressing, deadlift (hinging...AKA "unlocking hips" LOL), and rowing variations. These types of movements not only provide the best bang for your buck, but because they are multi-joint exercises, you can generate a higher degree of neurological adaptions to increase strength levels, movement efficiency, and coordination in the body. These are general fitness abilities that when you improve in the gym, will transfer very well to your specific abilities and make for big improvements for when you're on the bike. You can and should still perform single joint exercises and abdominal training as secondary exercises to help with body structure, posture, bring up weak areas, and to add some muscles mass in specific areas that are needed. 5.) Use Both Heavy Weight/Low Reps & Light Weight/High Reps There always seems to be this weird fitness debate between heavy weights/low reps VS light weight/high reps in any conversation around strength training. As if we need to pick just one or the other? Both rep ranges and intensities are good, and they have their place and time. Heavy weight with lower reps, builds increased strength levels in the body. This is actually really good for motocross racers as this is what really drives performance. Whereas lighter intensities with higher reps creates volume, which is better for building muscle size/mass. Both are technically good, it comes down to a time and a place on how you want to incorporate these methods into your training. This is also where as an athlete, you can make huge strength improvements while not gaining much weight at all. So for the riders scared that they'll get too big and rob horsepower from the bike, you can certainly train in a style to minimize muscle mass size but still drive up overall strength. And on the flip-side, if you need to gain 5-15lbs of muscle mass, you can utilize this information in the other direction to place your focus on size. But there is a crowd that likes to use lighter weight with very-very high reps, like the 20-50 rep range per set to build muscle endurance. When it comes to racing, this will almost always be a waste of your time. We call this splitting the difference. The reps are so high per set, that he intensity (external load/weight) is so low that it just creates fatigue and no real strength adaptations. You would be better off hopping on a rowing machine, ski erg, or airdyne bike and perform an aerobic conditioning method instead, or just go practice on your bike. If you're going to strength train, use the tool as it's meant to be used. Pro Tip: Low reps means the 1-6 reps/set. High reps mean 6-20 reps/set. Strength Training is Moto Training If you're someone who is even playing with the debate of "should you strength train for moto" than you're already light years behind. Strength Training for Moto/Off-Road is here to stay, the only questions remain are how to do it, how much to do it, and when to do it. Above, I outlined 5 Rules to Strength Training for Motocross that cover these questions and more. What's important to realize is that strength training isn't just about being a meathead trying to lift as much weight as possible and doing as many sets and reps as possible. Strength training in and of itself, is a very broad world of potential, progression, and development for all racers. Like with all else inside training and preparation, the strength is in the dosing. I stared down the barrel of a gun for years training and coaching my riders with utilizing strength training from day 1 of my career. While many others advised heavy against lifting heavy weights, I stood my ground and delivered to my racers what they wanted, and what they needed-and that was results. Pro/A level racers all have one thing in common- they will do whatever it takes to make themselves better.
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