Coach Seiji works with top pro motocross and supercross racers and wants to help you advance your riding through smarter training.

Part of the powerful allure of dirt biking is the challenge of getting faster. You have no doubt put in endless hours on the trails and at the track and you may spend endless efforts training for cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength and flexibility. The average dirt bike fanatic is not at all afraid of hard work and a common “training plan” is “go harder, get faster.” This credo can produce results in the short term especially to those new to the sport; but the more interested you are in producing sustainable improvements, the more imperative it is to use the most powerful tool in your training arsenal: your brain! Once you have transitioned from not just training harder but training smarter, improvements to your riding become planned and expected, not just a haphazard wait and see game.

The first step in training smarter is actively seeking out knowledge about training and you are already on your way browsing through the many excellent resources available on the internet (lots at my site at www.coachseiji.com). This search for knowledge usually begins with the how’s and what’s of training but you should really search for the why’s. You can easily find training regiments to follow and exercises to incorporate into your program but it is the smart rider that also knows why things are done. This deeper understanding of your training will provide clarity and direction in your training as you will know how each training activity contributes to your goals. Your long term motivation will be much improved as the path to your goals will be much clearer and you will be assured that you are moving in the right direction every day.

Training may consist of riding woods loops or laps at a track, lifting weights, running, cycling and other activities. All these components that could make up your program must follow the same scientific principles in order to continually improve your overall riding. Broken down into the simplest terms training pretty much looks like this:

The Overload Principle and Workload

Apply stress to body → break down body systems → accumulate fatigue → recover from fatigue → supercompensate → apply higher levels of stress to body → repeat cycle until reaching peak of fitness

The stress you apply to your body during training is called workload. Workload is composed of the following elements:

Frequency: how often you work out. The correct frequency depends on both ability level and where you are in the training year. A beginner may ride dirt bikes twice per week and an expert may be able to ride four times per week. In both cases, the frequency is correct for that particular rider. Frequency goes up as the training year progresses to increase total workload but goes down before a big event to allow proper recovery.

Duration: how long you workout. This varies by day of the week, by time of the training year and by ability level. Early in the training year you may want to ride trails for a long duration to stress riding endurance. At other times of the year closer to your peak you may want to ride 3 laps on a track at faster than race pace which is very short duration in comparison. All this depends on what specific area of fitness you are working on that day.

Intensity: The most important element of workload to hit correctly. Simply stated, this is how hard you go. During cardiovascular activity it is measured by heart rate or power output (in cycling). In the gym it is measured by the weight you are lifting. Intensity is the element that can cause the most positive change when administered correctly but can also cause the most damage to your season should you have an intensity overdose. You can have the correct frequency, the exact right duration, but if you blow intensity it won’t matter. Beware!

A successful motocross training program consists of:

Planned cycles of the overload principle where the three elements of workload are progressively changed to produce an increasing fitness level leading to a season peak.

Training Intensity

Intensity is the element of training workload that is the most easily abused and the most difficult to administer correctly. Think of intensity as a powerful drug: the correct dose at the correct time can produce the desired result. Too much of it or incorrect timing can produce detrimental effects. How much intensity, when it is applied in relation to your important events and how to recover from bouts of intensity are the most crucial pieces in the training puzzle.

One of the most important rules of training is to train moderately.  This is to ensure that you can go really hard on your hard days because you are actually going easy on your easy days. The most common error that athletes make in training is that they go too hard on the easy days turning the hard days into mediocre days at best. Quantifying intensity is the only way you can consistently use the correct intensity of training so you can make expected performance gains by making those hard days really count.

Intensity and Body Fuels

Measurement of training intensity is really an estimation of the ratio of fuels your body is using to perform at that moment. There are two fuels that your body uses for energy production: Fats (FAT) and Carbohydrate (CHO). Similar to the air/fuel mixture your engine uses, FAT and CHO are used as a mixture in various ratios depending on how hard you are going. These two fuels are used by your muscles to produce something called adenosine triphosphate (ATP) which is the actual energy providing molecule your body needs to perform work. ATP is the energy “currency” that can be used by all cells in your body. The food you eat and the air you breathe are converted to this universally accepted energy currency.

At lower levels of exertion your body can produce ATP via aerobic metabolism. Aerobic means “with oxygen” and this combined with a fuel mixture of mostly FAT and less CHO produces ATP for your working muscles with no harmful by-products. As your intensity increases the proportion of CHO in your fuel mixture increases while the proportion of FAT decreases. The faster you ride, the more “rich” your mixture becomes with CHO and “leans” out on the FAT proportion. One goal of a training program is to increase the efficiency at which you produce ATP via mostly FAT metabolism and increase the intensity at which you can continue to ride using this metabolism and push back the level at which you start to need a more CHO rich fuel mixture. This allows you to perform using the fuel that has more storage capacity and does not produce harmful by-products.

When you reach a very high level of intensity your body switches from aerobic metabolism to anaerobic metabolism. Anaerobic means “without oxygen” and at this high level of exertion your body’s need for ATP surpasses its ability to produce it with only oxygen. Your fuel mixture is heavily biased towards CHO and very little FAT is being used to produce the ATP. This anaerobic metabolism produces a by-product called lactic acid which is dumped into the muscles and produces the burning sensation and heaviness which if not counteracted will eventually cause you to drastically slow down or stop. When the lactic acid leaves your muscle cells and enters your bloodstream it loses a hydrogen molecule to become lactate. A major goal of a training program is to increase the efficiency at which your body can remove the lactic acid from your muscles and neutralize/use the lactate in your bloodstream.

The measurement of training intensity must be consistent from day to day in order to be useful. This means the smart rider must practice measuring intensity daily and be honest with him/herself during the measurement process.

Measuring Cardiovascular Exercise Intensity

Training intensity during cardiovascular exercise is easily measured by heart rate. Intensity during cycling can now be measured in power (watts) due to the advent of power meters. Both of these intensity measuring methods requires that you create your own personal intensity scale (training heart rate zones or training power zones) by administering a test to find out at what heart rate or wattage your body currently starts accumulating lactate in the bloodstream faster than it can neutralize it (Lactate Threshold; an example of this test was covered in a prior installment to Virtual Trainer).  With the tools of the RPE scale and your heart rate monitor or power meter you can now measure and moderate the most important factor of training workload during all your motocross training activities.

Measuring Strength Training Intensity

This is the simplest mode of training when it comes to measuring intensity: it is simply the weight being used and the repetitions per set. The higher the intensity, the higher the load and the lower the reps required to reach failure at each set. Remember that in strength training the goal is to reach momentary muscle failure and this means being unable to do another repetition with correct form.

Measuring Riding Intensity

Riding intensity is not “metered” during training because of the neuromuscular (nervous system plus nerve/muscle communication system) component of riding ability. One of the challenging things about dirt bike riding is that it is an equal combination of skill and fitness. The skills required takes precedence and training on the dirt bike has to accommodate this most important aspect of overall riding ability. The science and methodology of this is beyond the scope of this article (look for a future article on digitaloffroad.com!) but here is the short version: all riding needs to be done at the fastest speed that your current skill level and fitness allows. You need to be practicing at your fastest speed so that you get better at going your fastest! Riding at a slower speed only gets you better at riding slower. Those, again, are the simplest ways to state a very complex process that your brain, nervous system and muscles are “programmed” for the multitude of actions required to ride fast.

Hopefully this article has provided a big “why” of training as well as an important “how” to go with it. Understanding the overload principle and the measurement of intensity are cornerstones of a solid training program and will serve you well into the future as your riding improves. You are well on your way to training smarter, not just harder!!! Keep that helmet on to protect that valuable training tool that lurks inside!

Seiji Ishii is the head coach of www.coachseiji.com. Coachseiji.com provides online coaching and personal training services to motorsports athletes. Coach Seiji has worked with both pros and elite amateurs including: Heath Voss, Ryan Clark, Matt Lemoine, Hunter Hewitt, Austin Stroupe, PJ Larsen, Johnny Shafe, Drew Yenerich and Rusty Potter. Learn more at www.coachseiji.com or contact Coach Seiji directly at seiji@coachseiji.com