Training is not a checklist

Joel Younkins

Physical Preparation Coach

Motocross Racers like have a sense of completing a Monday-Friday checklist to feel confident on race day.

Usually they word it as “I like to know I did enough during the week so that I know I’m ready to race on the weekend.”

At first this seems like reasonable logic and I always applaud the willingness to give effort and to put in the work.

But training/preparation is way more comprehensive than completing a checklist.

If your checklist doesn’t make sense, it's too much volume/intensity, or you don’t recover from it during the week, you can easily impact your race day performance in a negatively way.

Day to day, your body fluctuates its levels of “how ready are you to go” based on overall stress loads from the previous day(s) of training, recovery, and general life events.

The goal is to land on race day feeling at least 90% or more ready to go.

Why 90%?

Well like in school, 90% is an A. So we want you to bring your A-Game to the race! And it unrealistic to expect to be your true 100% for the course of a full season of racing, but 90% or better will be good enough to put forth your best effort that day.

There have been countless times where I had to tell my racers to take one or more days off or even limit their normal weekly workload.

At first they think I’m crazy because of the “checklist mindset” thought process. But once they go out and race and actually feel rested and energized on race day, they change their tune real quick!

Working hard, checking off checklists, and out working your competition is cool and all! But what’s really cool is planning it all appropriately so that you show up on race day with your A-Game!

So what are a couple things that will give the best chance to show up with your A-Game on race day?

1.) Give yourself at least a 48 hour window to recover for your race. This doesn’t mean you do nothing, but all hard training should be completed for the week within 48 hours of competing.

2.) Make sure you’re recovered from your previous race before training hard again. If you do ignore this advice, you will string your stress from the last race into your next race.

3.) Prioritize your sleep, hydration, nutrition, and supplementation on a daily basis. This will allow you to not a dig yourself into a deep recovery hole during the week that you’ll need to climb out of right before the race.
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