Ready for Action
ACTION SPORTS ARE THE ADRENALINE SOAKED WAY TO GET FIT AND FIND YOUR FLOW, BUT THE UNIQUE DEMANDS THEY PLACE ON YOUR BODY REQUIRE A TAILORED APPROACH TO CONDITIONING. MATT RAY SPEAKS TO SPECIALIST STRENGTH COACH DARREN ROBERTS TO FIND OUT MORE
From mountain biking to rock climbing, this is your blueprint for extreme-sport conditioning
Whether your favoured sport sees you throwing a mountain bike down a rock-strewn chute, carving giant rooster tails through powder snow, or dynoing from one move to the next on a boulder, you can be certain that you’re testing your functional strength and tness in new ways, every time you do it. Alternatively, you might have been inspired by watching extreme sports on YouTube and want to get in on the action. Either way, you’re going to need to prepare your body for the challenge, to perform and progress while reducing your injury risk. Action sports strength and conditioning coach Darren Roberts is responsible for training some of the UK’s top Red Bull extreme sports athletes (including Team GB boulderer Shauna Coxsey) at his Graystone Action Sports facility. As he tells MF, “You wouldn’t connect action sports with the levels of strength or tness similar to that of a rugby player, but that’s often the case. e forces that the athletes endure are signi cant, and the body needs to be able to accommodate those – especially if something goes wrong.”
By being properly prepared, you can maximise your time in your chosen action sport, whether you’re seeking to go pro, or just want to get your adrenaline kick at the weekends. Read on for Roberts’ advice on getting ready for action, as well as his exclusive functional strength workout…
BOIL DOWN THE CHALLENGE
If you’re used to training in the gym, you probably know where your strengths lie. But they aren’t going to be your focus here. Action sports di er from mainstream team sports in that they often involve tackling unpredictable forces and sudden, unexpected impacts, rather than the movements of an opposing team. You will need to be ready for the force of that breaking wave, or landing a mountain bike after sending a massive jump. Your entire body will be
“Your entire body will be tested in these crunch moments, cruelly exposing any weakness and possibly ending in a crash”
tested in these crunch moments, cruelly exposing any weakness and possibly ending in a crash. So, decide what you’re not good at. “ink about the demands of the sport, what capacities are needed, which ones you’re lacking in and what you’re already good at,” says Roberts. “If you’re already strong in the upper body, there’s no point embarking on a comprehensive programme to develop upper-body strength while completely ignoring your chicken legs.”
FOCUS ON WORK CAPACITY
ere can be a tendency with some coaches to look at an action sports move (jumping a snowboard, for instance) and try to replicate that movement in the gym. According to Roberts, that doesn’t really work. “When you’ve identi ed the key areas your sport needs, and what you speci cally need, work on developing that physical ‘capacity’ rather than replicating a certain move,” he advises.
So, if you have concluded that landing a mountain bike requires leg strength, but that’s a bit of a weakness, make sure you target that in your workouts, but don’t fall into the trap of just training for training’s sake. “If you need to develop maximum leg strength,” says Roberts, “do exactly that by hitting a leg press or building up to be able to do a perfect pistol squat. What you don’t need to do is spend hours a week squatting, just because that’s what most people who train legs do.”
Of course, if you can access a dedicated action sports training facility, like Graystone, then it does become possible to work on speci c moves in a controlled environment, with a trained coach.
MAXIMISE FULL-BODY STRENGTH
Taking a look at the Natural Selection snowboarding tour, or the X-Games, will show you that crashing out is a big part of any action sport. If you’ve ever wondered how athletes can ride away from hellacious slams, the answer is practice – lots of it.
“is is where full-body strength plays its part, helping with overall robustness,” says Roberts. “To put it very un-scienti cally, you need to be able to bounce whether you mean to or not. Ensuring you have this total-body strength won’t stop you from getting injured, but it will help you be more resilient to the impacts you’ll likely face, and help you get out of trouble when you nd yourself in a position you don’t want to be in.”
PRIORITISE MOVEMENT AND MOBILITY
Together with strength, mobility and movement matter for action sports. It’s no good having o -the-chart strength, or being hyper- exible, if you then lack either the mobility or the power to use it.
“In action sports you often nd yourself in a position you don’t expect, so having the control to get out of that position is key,” says Roberts, who has had to rehab extreme sport athletes back from some horri c crashes.
“I look at mobility as the range of motion you have available that you can
actually use,” he says. “Of course, some people are super exible, and that looks great, but there’s no point to it if you can’t use it. Being able to use your body with purpose, through the full range of motion available, is a key building block to performance.”
EXPLODE INTO ACTION
Many action sports require you to get up o the ground, either to cross a gap, or to perform a trick, and that requires the explosiveness that plyometric training and a bomb-proof core can give you.
“Explosiveness is something that a lot of action sports athletes will seek for the tricks they want to do,” says Roberts, “which is as much about being able to absorb the landing. No one hurts themselves taking o or spinning around: it’s always a problem with the landing. We spend as much time being able to absorb these landings, which is the same power that’s needed to be in the air in the rst place. Strength is the foundation for that; it’s very di cult to make someone who is not strong powerful. It all starts with a foundation of strength.” However, you don’t need a fully equipped gym to train for action-sports strength. “e body is an incredible tool that’s readily available to use for strength training,” says Roberts, “with whole-body movements that can be done at home with little or no equipment.” In fact, he thinks that managing your own bodyweight is crucial. “Most of the athletes I work with now have garage gyms, and that is working perfectly for them. Press-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, squats and single-leg squats can all be adjusted in every way imaginable – for all abilities.”
READY YOUR REACTIONS
When the ground is rushing up to meet you, it pays to have ne-tuned re exes. as well as the ability to take split-second decisions. Simply doing your chosen activity regularly will aid progress, but what about when you can’t reach your extreme sports playground?