 Photo: Mitchell Kendra Joel YounkinsHigh Performance Coach Moto performance isn’t about finding the next missing piece, it’s about building a system that leaves nothing exposed. One of my goals in 2025 was to write a moto-specific blog every week for both my website and my Sunday Moto Success Newsletter. I enjoy writing. I had gotten away from it for a while, and I wanted to bring it back into my work as a way to create and reflect.
Writing allows my world to slow down. It gives me space to process my thoughts and reconnect with what I truly believe and live by. While my intention is always to help you, to break down complex topics and make them easier to understand, I also write for myself. It allows me to take one step back so I can move two steps forward. And that’s exactly what happened this year. I wrote every single week. I started this weekly series the week before the 2025 New Year with the Rachael Archer Blueprint blog. From there, I covered a wide range of topics, some tactical, some perspective-driven. My wife, Kelly, even contributed a few blogs of her own. Along the way, I sprinkled in other Blueprint pieces, including Jeremy Hand, Quinn Wentzel, Carter Gray, and my son Levi. In this final weekly blog of the year, I’m bringing in one more Blueprint, my own. This is the Blueprint of how JYT got here, and where it’s going in the moto space. How I Got Here I love moto. I love all things dirt bikes. Every bike is cool to me. I don’t have a favorite brand or model, it’s honestly too hard to choose. My only real dilemma right now is finding time to ride for myself again. Even though racing was never my primary sport or top priority growing up, I understand what it feels like to line up. I know the feeling of being unstoppable on a bike, and the opposite feeling, when nothing seems to go right. I've also competed in other high level environments in other sports when the pressure is cranked sky high. In 2008, Anaheim 1 was about to come on TV. I was playing football at Youngstown State University and earning my degree in Exercise Science. Like always, Supercross was on. They ran a feature on James Stewart, who had just hired Aldon Baker after Ricky Carmichael retired. I remember my dad saying, “Hey, maybe you can train Supercross racers one day.” That was probably the first time I really considered life after football and that one sentence opened up a possibility in my mind. It made something feel achievable. If you can visualize it, you can start moving toward it. My Philosophy We tend to put people and systems into boxes because it makes life easier to understand. Because I played football at a D1 program and later became a high-level powerlifter, people often assume they know how I train just based on that background. The reality is very different. When it comes to improving performance, I’ve turned over every stone well beyond just physical training. Topics like conditioning was something that I went hard on in my early to mid 20s. Over the years, I’ve studied and pulled from nearly every realm of fitness and performance:
In the recovery world, I’ve studied hydration, nutrition, supplementation, and a wide range of active and passive recovery methods. Beyond the physical side, I’ve spent years studying human and sport psychology, social dynamics, leadership, and how people respond under stress. So when someone assumes I train my clients like football players or powerlifters simply because they squat, bench, or deadlift with a trap bar, that’s short-sighted. It usually means one of two things:
I’ve taken the best from all worlds, applied them in real environments, refined them through feedback, and built my own philosophy for training motocross and off-road racers. Some racers train like cyclists. Some train like endurance athletes or CrossFitters. I train racers like racers. What Really Matters In moto, like most things, people are always searching for the one thing that’s going to separate them. I’ve been guilty of this myself. But the truth is, it’s never just one thing that catapults a racer forward. Everyone asks questions like:
What actually matters is the details, and the intention behind them. It’s not about this or that. It’s about using the right tool for the right job in every area of preparation. Being really good in one area isn’t enough. A great rider with poor fitness will suffer late in races. A skilled rider with a bad attitude or broken culture will eventually struggle as well. Here’s the cold truth: it starts with genetics. You either have them or you don’t. We can’t change that, and while it’s not exciting to talk about, it matters. From there, everything comes down to culture and identity. Do you genuinely believe you belong up front? Do your actions reflect that belief? This is why you sometimes see talented racers winning despite obvious holes in their preparation. As competition tightens and more riders believe they can win, the variables in your program matter more than ever. Performance becomes a game of stacking advantages. It’s About Being Prepared To be a complete racer, you have to cover a lot of bases:
You must be prepared across all of them. One shining area isn’t enough to reach your full potential. That’s why my work has evolved so much beyond gym workouts and fitness programs over the years. Many people see me as “the fitness guy,” and that’s fair, fitness is the foundation. But fitness alone doesn’t fully serve racers. My lane has always been wider than most people assume. The System Behind It All What started as “training riders” eventually became something much bigger. I noticed that the riders who performed best year after year weren’t chasing intensity, trends, or constant change. They were prepared across the most areas, at the right times of the year, without burning themselves out. That’s where the Younkins Moto Performance System was born. Not from one workout or from one method. But from understanding how all aspects of performance work together and how they must evolve depending on the season, the rider, and the discipline.
None of these exist in isolation. When one is overemphasized, another usually suffers. When they’re aligned, performance becomes repeatable, and repeatable performance wins. This is why I don’t believe in one-size-fits-all programs or “just train harder” approaches. Performance isn’t something you force. It’s something you build, protect, and express. Why Most Riders Miss It Most riders don’t fail because they aren’t tough enough. They fail because their effort is misdirected. They train hard when they should be recovering. They ride more when they should be sharpening. They chase fitness when they should be stabilizing performance. They confuse being busy with being prepared. At the top, the margin is razor thin. Sloppy preparation erases it quickly. The riders who separate themselves aren’t always the most talented, they’re the ones who understand how to stack small advantages consistently. That isn’t luck. That’s a system. There's a lot of pieces to the puzzle, and putting them all together is what separates great programs from average to mediocre programs. This is where most people and teams hit their hard roadblocks. Where This Is Going This blog isn’t the end, it’s the foundation. Everything I wrote in 2025 lives under one roof: The Younkins Moto Performance System. In 2026, that system will be laid out clearly and completely, not as scattered blogs, but as a unified performance framework built specifically for motocross and off-road racing. If you’ve followed along this year, you already understand parts of it. If you’ve trained with me, you’ve lived it. If you haven’t yet, now you know exactly what I believe in and how I operate. Final Thought Being prepared isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t always show up on social media. And it doesn’t happen by accident. But when the gate drops, preparation always reveals itself. This is how JYT got here. This is what it stands on. And this is where it’s going.
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