 Photo: Zachary C. Bako Joel YounkinsHigh Performance Coach Currently as I write this, it's the middle of March here in North East Ohio. If you live in the Midwest like my family and myself, or anywhere where you get to experience all 4 seasons that nature has to offer, you've experienced down time from riding from inclement weather at one point or another. Some people get to ride indoor facilities, some travel south to warmer clients, some ride in the winter with studs, but it is extremely common for riders to put the bike away over the winter, and then kick it back up again in the spring.
Whether it's due to winter keeping you off of the bike, an injury, or an off-season with some needed down-time, there will be a time where seat time will come to a screeching halt. And that means that you'll need to get back on the saddle after a long layoff from riding. This is what this blog is going to be about. In regards to, off of the bike training, some do none at all, some riders try to do their best on their own, and some riders hire coaches like myself to prioritize their physical performance year long. Whether you do a lot or none, everything that we'll cover in this blog, will all be relative advice. You may be anticipating me telling you that if you train, you won't need to worry about "riding into shape." But the reality is, because riding is a specific skill set, there will still be a specific conditioning element to each riders program that will be essential for everyone's preparation. It's just the speed or curve of how fast you'll get to your "A-Game" is what will ultimately be different or how much higher of a ceiling that you'll have to work with. I'm not a riding coach, I'm a High Performance Coach who specializes in Physical Preparation. Majority of people think, physical performance = gym workouts & diet. And that's certainly the ground floor of it all, but beyond that, Physical Preparation expands into all domains of overall performance, especially including Sport Skill (riding the bike). There are many elements and factors that require physical performance on the bike that I specialize in. I don't specialize on telling a rider how to hit a triple coming out of a turn, or how to skim whoops, but I can help with how they can physically perform on the bike. Things like, a pre-race warm up, breathing, relaxation, managing emotional stress, and helping manage training volume and sport practice structure are all things that are very well in my wheelhouse of tools that I have. I share this because you may know me as the "fitness guy" but the reality is, I'm a coach who can see the whole pie and not just one slice of it. Quality First It's super important to understand, that anytime after a substantial layoff from riding (anywhere from 4 weeks or more), it is to accumulate high quality riding. Because you want to get back to your A-Game as soon as possible, you want to ride as close to that A-Game feeling as possible and avoid sloppy technique. If you ride around and accumulate low quality riding, you're simply reinforcing bad technique and a bad feeling for the bike. This will start to become "normal" to you if the volume of low quality is greater than high quality. Racing dirt bikes is a highly technical sport that takes years to develop and refine. Anything that is a high technique sport, is a sport based on feel for the athlete (racer). This is why you want to re-establish "feel" on the bike as soon as possible. The best way practice method I prefer for returning to sport is what I call, Quality Motos. This is creating motos that only allow for your highest quality riding (in that current moment). When the quality of riding drops off, that's when the moto ends. This can be 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or 20 minutes plus, just depending on the context of the situation. This works because the seat time that you are getting, is that of only high quality work which will get you back to normal operational outputs on the bike. It's key to reinforce good laps on the bike. If you ride for a total of 60 minutes, its better to break up that 60 minutes into 6-10 minute motos of high quality riding than 3-20 minute motos where the last 10 minutes of each 3 motos, the quality of riding begins to drop off. Breaking practice up in this fashion allows for more recovery time that leads to 60 minutes of high quality riding versus 30 minutes of high quality riding and 30 minutes of subpar riding. This is just an example, but in the real world, this can easily happen when you just want to get back at it. Have Fun I know this sounds obvious, but the concept of enjoying being back on the bike will only speed up the return to full race speed. If your attitude is negative around not feeling like your old self, you will not ride from a place of your heart and passion while being on the bike if frustration is overtaking your emotions. If you're riding with gratitude, passion, and enjoyment, you will feel alignment with your bike sooner than that of being negative. Your attitude, mentality, and where your heart lies, sets the tempo for your return to the sport. Many riders get back on the bike after a lay off, and they are discouraged because they don't feel as well as they remember and feel dread of having to rebuild their skills and feeling on the bike again. The longer you stay in a lowered vibration state of being, the longer it will take to return to your A-Game. "The suck" of riding back into shape will be over before you know it, and you will be back to your old self again. Having fun will return you to your core reason of riding in the first place. The sooner and the longer you put yourself in that world, the sooner you will return to your true self on the bike. When you're having fun, you'll be more likely to ride like your true self and will be free on the bike. Being free, allows for you to breathe and better utilize your energy on the bike. Better energy = more seat time of feeling good. Respect the Recovery Since you've been off the bike for quite some time, when you do return to riding, it's important to understand that riding itself will be more stressful to the body then it previously was when you were regularly riding and racing. Therefore, the first few times you take the track again, the recovery times will be extended. What you don't want to do, is hop back on the bike, ride, and then try to ride again before you're recovered. Like we covered above, we want to focus on high quality work to reinforce good technique and proper feeling on the bike. If you rush the physical recovery process, when you get back on the bike too soon and push, the fatigue and more importantly, your Central Nervous System will throw off your timing and performance on the bike. The faster the rider, the more you should be cautious of this reality. If you're in a situation where you're in a time crunch to get back on the bike to accumulate enough seat time to return to racing and you have to start riding day after day, it's important to understand consolidating stressors. Meaning, placing more stressful riding days together and less stressful days together. So the days that you need to recover from, you can still ride and do drills that don't take a lot of stress and high demand of focus and threading the needle. Doing things like starts, sections, or turning drills could be a great idea if you're recovering from riding the day before. Speeds Vary The speed to return to race pace will highly vary from rider to rider. There are so many different variables at place that there are no strict rules to go by. I can outline some guidelines though that can help you predict what will allow a faster return time. Factors that will speed up race readiness pace
If you need to increase the return time to racing, I highly recommend riding specifically to the conditions and format of what you will be competing in. The further away from racing, you can take your time with being more creative with general drills, tracks, and practice structure to create a wide variety of comfort and then build specific race skills later on as the race season gets closer. Returning to racing is about driving up quality first, quantity (volume) second, and maintaining a positive outlook the entire time. There are many roads that lead to Rome, but certain roads will take you there faster. Having a strong physical preparation plan in place (even when you're injured), will drastically help your overall experience on getting back on the bike. It doesn't replace riding, but it helps support your riding and gets you back to race speeds faster!
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