 Rider: Caden Mitchell Photo: Zachary C. Bako Joel YounkinsHigh Performance Coach We train year round because I really enjoy it, so I make my racers train all of the time; just kidding...
In a perfect world, I prefer racers to do some sort of physical preparation every week of the year except for two weeks completely off. The two weeks off, is built around mental and emotional recovery more so than physical recovery. After a long grueling season, I'll tell a racer to take two weeks and do nothing. And almost every time, after one week off, they're usually texting me to get back at it. Once they experience the benefits and confidence of training year round, they understand how important it is that it keeps them sharp, ready, and on top of their game. They don't want to go back to feeling anything less than physically confident in themselves. They feel good when they train, and they don't want to ever get too far away from that feeling. On the flip side, many racers will train hard leading up to their season and really prioritize their fitness for the racing, and then once they get going in the season, they'll start to slowly abandon their physical prep work during the week. I've talked to these Racers who struggle with this. This happens for a couple reasons...
However the case of why they stop their physical preparation, keeping physically active and either developing or maintaining physical fitness/abilities/systems throughout the race season has many advantages.
Use It or Lose It Training is really a use it or lose it game. It's a lot like daily hygiene, just because you go to the dentist every so many months, you still need to brush your teeth daily to maintain proper dental hygiene. The same goes with your physical fitness. Training abilities that take months to years to develop and build, can begin to decay within 2-4 weeks of neglecting those areas if you stop training them. That doesn't mean they disappear completely, but the longer time goes on, the more and more they drop off. Training year round allows your body to remain in a high readiness state. When you only race on the weekend, your body will begin to go dormant as it spends more time being in a sedentary state than in a heighten readiness state. So when you show up to race and your heart rate increases and your body goes to work, it will actually be a shock to your body to get it going again. Your body wants to be prepared for the stress that is coming (aka the race). The best racers train all year long, they understand that it's MAN & MACHINE. They take care of their body just as much as their bikes are being taken care of. You wouldn't stop doing maintenance work on your bike halfway through the year because you're tired and don't feel like it. The same should be applied to your body. Being in "race (riding) shape" is the bare minimum to being a good rider, be better than just your version of good. In today'd landscape, being "good" doesn't land you where you want to be anymore. How to Train Year Long I know that the idea of training year long sounds like a great idea and everyone would do it if they could. Coach Vince Lombardi said it best, "fatigue makes cowards of us all." Most racers due to their extreme adrenaline filled thought process, when left to their own decisions, usually they go all out. And before you know it, they're left beat, not wanting to even race, so they fall off their program. There's no way possible that you can go "all out" every weekend on the track, and come home and go "all out" again Monday-Friday. Training happens on a spectrum and you must be able to understand, respect, and be willing to work within that spectrum. My advice for all of this is to go right back to my Phasic Training for Motocross blog and take some notes. Most plans fail because there was actually no real plan to begin with. If you knew of every detail and variable I consider when writing a program, you would find it exhausting. For me it's fun and I live for this. But real racers live for racing. These are the types of racers I work with, and let me tell you, they will do whatever it takes to be at their best. If you want to be an Elite Racer, you need to be doing Elite Things all of the time, not just when you have energy, time, and when it's convenient for you.
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