 Rider: Quinn Wentzel Photo: Zachary C. Bako Joel YounkinsHigh Performance Coach The year was 2019. I had wrote a JYT Blog at the time and shared it to Facebook. A guy named Bob Wentzel had came across it and read it. He recognized my last name and connected the dots that my dad was Gary Younkins, who Bob knew of from the racing world. As the story goes, he went back to his wife Dianne and son Quinn, who was a Pro Hard Enduro Racer. He suggested to them that maybe I could be someone of interest to work with Quinn to be in his corner to help with his physical performance on the bike and someone who actual understands what Quinn did.
I'm not going to lie. In 2019, I had no idea that Hard Enduro even existed in the United States. I just knew there were these two big races in Europe, one being Ezrberg Rodeo and the other being the Romaniacs. Besides that, I would have just started following the WESS Series when Red Bull would put out a video coverage of the race, so I was familiar with this type of off road racing. But at the time, when I first spoke to Dianne about Quinn, I didn't even realize it was happening right here in the United States. I had no clue where they were being held, what the format was, and honestly I think the name of the sport was changed a couple times since then. I remember some promotors calling it "Extreme Enduro" or "Tough Enduro" and later became adopted with "Hard Enduro." When I first met Quinn in person at my facility, he only lived about 20 minutes from it. And after us talking for 30 minutes or so, we seemed to really be on the same page since day one. I heavily sensed his professionalism, focus, and standards, and I believe he sensed the same for me. I told him that the only negative to this moving forward, was that it took so long for us to finally realize we both existed just miles away! Hard Enduro 101 I haven't done specifically a blog on Hard Enduro yet, but I have done a podcast episode on it on my Motocross Training Podcast. If you have no exposure to this discipline of racing, it goes well beyond the off road of deep water holes like the days of Black Water or Howards Hole at the GNCC Snowshoe. In fact, Hard Enduro has very little mud and deep water unless they get a lot of rain. It's built more on ravines, huge rocks, goat trail hill climbs. Essentially, they ride where it's hard to walk on foot. The technicality of it, is so far from normal riding reality, that motocrossers want no part in it what so ever, and GNCC riders, turn into spectators. The racing format and structure varies from race to race, which also makes it its own challenges too. I always joke with my Quinn and my Hard Enduro guys that I wish they could agree on the same format so I can provide a hydration and fueling protocol for them. But instead we operate based on parameters because one race can be a one day format. Others are two day formats. Some races are just one big race. Others have qualifiers and prologues. Some tracks, you do one big lap, others you do multiple laps and have to deal with lappers. So for someone like Quinn, it's just a constant demand to get in fluids (electrolytes/sugar) and calories (primarily carbs) in as often as possible, on the bike and off the bike. Hard Enduro Racers in my opinion have every right to boast about their sport being the most technical dirt bike racing on the planet. Almost all of the top A Riders and Pro's all have some experience on a trials bike. Majority of their skills comes from trial bike techniques that they have to mimic on a dirt bike. Between racing the hardest tracks in the world, sometimes being out there racing for 6 hours in the middle of summer, they still need to have laser tight technique to just get through the course. All of these variables, makes preparing for Hard Enduro, HARD! Identify Hurdles Quinn is a pro's pro. Ever since the first time we've met, I could tell Quinn was born to be a pro racer. He truly lives the racer's lifestyle, it's not just what he does, it's who he is. With those details, I knew right away that we'd be able to make a good amount of progress for him in a short time period just on how he commits to things when it comes to his racing. Because of his racing and work ethic, Quinn already had a decent level of general fitness and a large work capacity. Doing some squats and push ups wouldn't wreck him. Therefore, we could get right after it and I didn't need weeks to build up his general fitness first. We could dive into hard training that would begin to move the needle for his performance on the bike. He used to have stability issues with his one shoulder when he would ride that would give him problems every once in a while. That was something that we easily knocked out with some direct shoulder work, scapular work, and stability exercises that no longer gave him any problems with it. Quinn also suffers from some low back pain from time to time. I'm usually really confident with fixing low back pain and or at least almost eliminating it completely. But for Quinn, it's something that we still deal with today as far as managing it. It's something I feel that we have a decent handle on, but we keep a close eye on it and have heavily reduced the amount of "flare ups" over the course of a competitive season. I believe it's due to the nature of the sport for his case, along with bike work, trials riding, and being put in tough positions out on the trails. We do our best by strengthening his glutes, hamstrings, core, and back muscles to help bulletproof his back. But like with all low back pain, not all pack pain is created equally. There's a lot of nerves in that region and individual biomechanics involved that complicate that area of the body. Semi-regular trips to a chiropractor who uses an Activator for adjustments, belt squats/hack squats variations to minimize stress on the spine, and being mindful of trials sessions (this stresses his low back) around when he does these around his riding and racing schedule. Nature of the Sport I think sometimes people forget, that even though you train super hard, racing isn't supposed to be easy. When you give 100% effort, either if you're in great shape or you're out of shape, you should pull off the track feeling a sense of strain and challenge from pushing yourself and extracting as much as you possibly can out on the race track. If not, did you really even try? This is very much the case with Hard Enduro. This sport is designed to mess you up within the first 10 minutes of the race. It's not a matter of, if you'll get tired, but instead, it's a matter of what you do and how you respond when you are tired.
You still have to train all of the same dynamics that we've been covering all along with racing. A couple considerations for Hard Enduro racing like for Quinn, is that I prefer to Box Squat them to build up more hip and glute strength since they're put in a lot of awkward positions in rock gardens on their bike. Hip flexor strength and mobility is critical. And for conditioning, you obviously want to have a huge range of aerobic capacity, but you also need to have a lot of aerobic power to recover fast from hard sections. These are all things we've focused on with Quinn over the years. We work a lot of maximal strength to make the bike feel as light as possible. Each dirt bike weighs pretty much the same amount, give or take 10-20lbs. The lighter the bike feels, relative to your maximal strength outputs, the less energy a racer like Quinn will use when he needs to pick it, position it, and manhandle it while executing Trials/Hard Enduro techniques. We do this by lifting heavier with compound movements with Squat, Bench, and Deadlift variations in the 1-5 rep ranges. Sometimes physical preparation isn't as much as, train to perform on the bike, it's more of a mindset of, train so that you can survive the event to allow you to keep pushing when it seems impossible to do so. It's about being prepared to handle the demands of the event and to be able to still do your thing on the bike for the whole time with physical confidence. Recovery is Critical If you monitor the sport closely enough, you'll quickly find that it takes a lot longer time to recover from motocross and even GNCC's, especially in those 2 day weekend events in the middle of the summer. After those races, you can almost be certain that racers won't be back to somewhat normal operating outputs until Thursday or Friday that following week. After those long weekends, we do heavily account for longer recovery windows for Quinn depending on how grueling the race format was. If it's an event where he only races one race that's around 3 hours or so, he won't need that long and he will be good to go by Tuesday. In those long two day events however, things can get tricky. Sometimes qualifying on Saturday is hard enough to wreck you for Sunday, which is the harder of the two days. So we use a "top secret trick" to help him refuel for Sunday that has worked really well. It's an old school bodybuilding and powerlifting trick when training gets really taxing. You slam a whole medium/large pizza the night before a big session (a race in this scenerio) . Pat the grease off and get the carbs and calories in to give yourself a fighting chance to be refueled the next day. There's no way that you're going to be able to refuel with enough chicken and rice after a long hot day or Hard Enduro. It's not the so called "healthiest" thing in the world, but it's an Ace Card that we use and when it comes to performance, "being healthy" doesn't always cut it in hard conditions. Don't believe me, also look at other extreme endurance events, they use the same tactics to drive up performance... Evolution One thing that I've been really proud of Quinn over the last 6 years of working together, is seeing his own commitment, intensity, and focus elevate and raise. Like I said before, Quinn is a true professional, but true professionals know that there's always room for growth. He remains open to possibilities for improvement. He's stepped up his practice by increasing intensity for the faster race paces that have increased over the last few years. That's something we've collaborated on and I've bounced ideas off of him for him to implement into his practice sessions. It's a respectful professional relationship that Quinn and I have. I ask questions, he gives feedback, he asks questions, I give feedback, and so on and so forth. Because high performance is a holistic approach, all pieces of the puzzle must be on the table and in the right places. We cover as many of the pieces to make sure that they're where they need to be for Quinn. Practicing, his race schedule, recovery, nutrition, hydration, and making sure he's physically confident for racing. The version of Quinn today, would absolutely crush the version of Quinn back in 2019. Even though he was getting 2nd's and 3rd places back then, the depth of the field has increased 10 fold at least, and he's still a regular top 10 factory racer. An OG in the Game As I write this, Quinn is now 30 years old. He was one of the first pioneers of Hard Enduro here in the states, and has been at it nonstop since the day we started working together back in 2019. Because of Quinn's effort, commitment, and dedication to himself and the sport, he gets to sit in the driver seat of where he wants to go from here. Does he want to continue racing, does he want to focus on being a race promoter, does he want to focus on his graphics business, or does he just keep doing all three? He's earned the right to be able to choose his path now. One thing that I know, is that he is still really hungry and motivated for results against a very young and fast top 10 Hard Enduro field. Each year, the field gets a little harder, but so does Quinn! When you put in the work and effort that someone like Quinn does, you get to write the chapters of your story the way you want them to go.
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