KEEPING FIT OVER WINTER

It won’t be long before the sunny seasons are back upon us, so Dean Ellison talks us through keeping the mince pies off, and how to be ready to ride come 2020…

Winter in the UK can be a long time without riding and it’s all too easy to fall out of your routine when the booze and food starts flowing – and it won’t take long to start losing your race fitness. Keeping on top of general fitness and staying healthy is very important for a racer and track day rider, and like I’ve said in another article, a 7 x 20 minute track day session at maximum effort is a proper workout. So, keep your hand in with some winter training to preserve some of the strength and fitness you’ve built up over the season.

I’ve been asked to write this based on how

I used to keep fit as a pro racer, but the hours I put in each day would be a bit overkill for a track day rider. Yet the type of exercises I did meant I could stay lean, strong, sharp and have the endurance needed to ride superbikes for long periods of time, and easily manage two long races at full effort on the main day.

There’s no substitute for riding a bike, but with the right training you can strengthen the key areas and more importantly, comfortably zip your leathers up when it comes to your first outing of next year.

I’m not going to type out specific training programmes, just break down the areas you should focus on and what type of equipment will help. As mentioned here though, there’s no substitute for riding and I always had an MX and Supermoto bike (sometimes the same bike), which is great for increasing your bike feel and keeping that competitive edge whilst everyone else is eating mince pies. Nowadays you could also consider indoor pit biking and flat track riding.

Strength

It’s not about being strong enough to physically lift or carry the bike, it’s about having the strength and flexibility to move yourself around the bike whilst doing

150+mph. Once you start pushing the bike a bit more you will soon realise the importance of shifting your bodyweight, and this can’t be done unless you have strong leg muscles and a good core. So, skip the bench press and work with smaller weights and body resistance exercises to keep your overall body strong. I would spend almost an hour each day working on conditioning my muscles. I’d use a Swiss Ball to improve my core strength, cycling and rowing to work my legs and a few times each week I would go bouldering (indoor rock climbing) and that really kept my muscles strong and light, simply working with my own bodyweight and not a rack of weights. Look out for a Swiss Ball, Bosu Ball, rowing machine and even just a pull-up bar if you don’t have access to a climbing wall.

CV or Cardiovascular training

This is all about strengthening the heart. Every time you do some physical exercise and get out of breath and slightly uncomfortable, then you will be making your heart stronger and fitter for the next time. Improvements won’t be noticeable over individual sessions, but after just a few weeks you will start to find the exercises you started out with are getting too easy. I would always split my CV sessions between interval (sprint) and endurance training; a typical interval session was made up of short bursts at maximum effort and endurance was a little less effort for much longer durations.

One obstacle in the way is your own willpower, so make sure you are set up with a few key components so that you can’t blame the gym timetable, a flat tyre or bad weather as a reason for not being able to train. A good pair of running trainers will cost approximately £100 and a decent skipping rope is about £30. Those two items are the lowest cost towards a high level of fitness. If you have a gym membership, you should hunt out the Concept II rowing machine and then visit the Concept II website for some training tips. If I could only choose one piece of gym equipment, it would be the Concept II rowing machine. Cycling is a good training tool as well and your bike doesn’t need to be made from carbon fibre in order to get out of breath.

Interval training

I really miss this type of training, and it is mind blowing how quickly you can improve your heart’s recovery rate with just a few weeks of interval training mixed in with everything else you are doing. Running up and down hills, sprinting between lamp posts on the streets (Google Fartlek Training) and interval and pyramid training on the rowing machine will help you better manage your breathing and pretty much strengthen every muscle you will use for riding. If you have a gym membership then speak to one of the trainers for advice, but you want to build your heart rate high, let it lower and then blast it back up again. For example, 30-60 seconds of rowing, running, cycling or skipping at absolutely maximum effort, followed by 60 seconds at low effort, straight back into max effort and repeat for 15 mins, 20 mins or 30 mins, each week pushing for more effort.

Endurance training

For me this was normally an afternoon or evening session, either swimming, cycling, MX or Supermoto, and I’d maintain a good amount of effort for two-plus hours. A few times a week I would also head out for an early morning 12-mile run. If your knees can handle the impact, running is one of the most effective ways to improve fitness and burn fat. Remember that variety is the spice of life and mixing up the tools you use for training will prevent boredom.