To me it seems like every facility and trainer does the same thing, do motos and pound miles on the road bike with some resistance training using mostly bodyweight. Really, how much faster do guys get just pounding the same laps day after day? I remember hearing Travis (I think it was Travis at least) talk about play riding with AC and he had no idea how to ride without a stopwatch. Most other sports use drills for most of the week and only actually do the exact sport once a week at the most.
My revolutionary training technique is based on riding the bike 3 days in season.
Day 1: Ride trials bike in morning to loosen up and work on technique like throttle and clutch control and balance. The afternoon would be spent play riding on the motocross bike. Hitting larger hits and throwing the bike sideways and upside down to just get a feel for the edges of the envelope. I'm not talking freestyle ramp hits I'm thinking Bayle in the early 90's hitting cliffs.
Day 2: Work on sections in morning. Spend 20 minutes on one corner into whoops section or out of whoops into corner. Pick the track apart and work on sections until you have wrung every ounce of speed out of them. Take a corner and rail the berm, turn down soon or go deep and turn late. Afternoon work on situational in sections. Example do a rhythm section with cones in the preferred line or doing the rhythm section in the non-preferred rhythm. This would give you practice dealing with traffic or recovering from a mistake.
Day 3: Time for motos in the morning against the stopwatch. In the afternoon do a mock night show. Heat race, LCQ and main event against the entire team. Hell, maybe even bring in the lights to race at the actual time of day they will be racing.
As far as the physical side I would continue the cardio for the most part, but I would include yoga and either grappling or gymnastics or the both of them to help flexibility, body control and help learning to fall better.
Since it is different that what is the current norm I'm sure it will get ridiculed and obviously no trainer would want be gutsy enough for that much of a change but I think it's solid. Basically, since Aldon has gone to his program it seems no one is willing to stray too far but eventually there will be new breakthroughs or new styles.
Best in-season ever! 😎
I don’t think you too far away from what most teams do. Other then the trials riding. We only see what they want us to see.
Gotta keep it fun. And you have to vary your training regimen or you'll get stagnant.
Doing the actual sport is the best training for that sport. Cross training is way overrated and can actually be detrimental.
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Gymnastics and grappling is a great way to get injured.
Coming from BMX racing myself, both of these are very common as a training routine. Keeps you fluid on the bike and reduce injuries when you do crash
That’s wild. I’ve hurt myself numerous times grappling lol. Maybe I’m just bad 🤣
My training plan,
Day 1 HGH
Day 2 EPO
Day 3 steroids
Day 4 couple of rocks
You know how Dominicans got so good at baseball? By playing baseball.
My brother in law's son started in gymnastics pre 5 years old and of course I busted his chops about it constantly that he was raising a sissy and all that stupid guy stuff. Well, watching him get his ass kicked by a way better team in high school while he was playing quarterback, I could see a lot of proper falling technique. He stopped gymnastics after sophomore year in high school, now he's on scholarship as a pitcher and you can see those years of body awareness training still helps him as an athlete.
I wrestled for a bunch of years, and it still helps me, I may be a C class racer, but I am an A class faller. lol
I also think todays 4 strokes require a more muscular guy than the runners of the 80's. Obviously you don't want to haul around a lot of weight, but a lean muscular guy is less likely to get hurt than a lean lean guy. Think MMA fighter, not overly huge but enough muscle to hold the bones in place.
its all to do with muscle memory and the body being able to react no matter the position. gymnastics plays a big part. as crazy as it sounds, its part of a lot of sports.
more flexible you are less likely to be injured. probably why we see Jett not get injured after big crashes. its funny to think he comes from a dancing background hahaha
there's a segment on gypsy's channel where they talk about it
Sounds like you've never played a sport in your life.
What's better?
Dominican 1 is a centerfielder and he wants to get better by playing baseball. He plays 3 games in one day and has a grand total of 8 baseballs hit to him in which he can field and make a play on.
Dominican 2 is a centerfielder and his coach hits 30 balls to his left, 30 balls to his right, 30 balls short of his position and 30 balls over his head.
If you want to get good at a sport do drills. It is way more efficient; you get more work done in less time.
Another thing I thought about and forgot to add to my original is these guys practice on such pristine tracks it doesn't help them in a race. When A-Mart was on the Pulp show last week they were talking about Jeremy getting pissed and leaving because the tracks were too smooth.
If I'm Aldon the minute the racers leave for the weekend, I start watering the track and keep the water coming until it's soft but not muddy. When practice resumes, I invite about 10 privateers to practice. They get the entire track for the morning. In the afternoon when the track has hundreds of laps on it and has ruts everywhere I let the factory team out. I don't touch a dozer and do the same thing the next day.
I'm surprised more racers and trainers aren't working more with pilates exercises/equipment. I agree that lean muscular is better than lean lean. You have some meat on the bones to protect and stabilize the bones and protect vitals. I train throughout the week ~3 times, sometimes 4 doing a mix of light weights, cardio, and circuit training.
My biggest issue hands down is diet. Exercise is easy, eating right is hard.
I don't think very many factory pros play ride in season either. I brought up trials riding because it is very low energy and would be a good recovery day ride and because speeds are so slow it's tougher to get hurt. If you can balance a trials bike and ride on a railroad tie you can probably go through the whoops like Kenny did in Indy, just using all the balance that you learned but at a higher speed.
I can ride a trials bike on a rail road tie and I can promise you I can’t blitz whoops like Kenny.
Not many can, but I'd be willing to bet you have far better balance than the average shlub off the street. The point I was getting to is in Indy where there was that groove/rut down the center of the whoops it took incredible balance to stay in that groove/rut.
I can't remember where I heard it but some pro or trainer criticized the Baker factory for only doing motos and not working on technique. Jalek Swoll was struggling in the whoops but never had a chance to just work on whoops because he was made to pound out motos every day.
It all depends on the rider... a good coach/training program should adapt and help the rider work on their weaknesses. It seems like these compounds are trying more and more to just make a one-size fits all program. "This program worked for rider x and rider x won a championship, therefore every rider who comes here needs to do the same."
Pit Row
Dean Wilson on Gypsy talks about it.
Doing drills for that sport counts as playing that sport to get better. Doing football drills to get better at baseball would not.
So practice the whoops on his own time and still do all the motos at the Baker factory. When I was playing basketball, I would shoot in the morning before school for an hour because I knew there wouldn't be enough time during practice to shoot as much as I wanted and needed to. In baseball season, I would go to the cage a few extra times a week with my dad outside of practice to get more swings in the cage because I wanted to work on my hitting. Actual scheduled practice isn't the time to be working on technique. That usually happened in the offseason, after hours in season, or over the summer in camps. Practice time was very limited and we were on a super tight schedule from drill to drill, and scrimmage to scrimmage. We barely had time for water breaks. You don't get time to work on in depth skills/technique during scheduled practice with most sports. That has to come outside of those times. So you make the time and put in the extra effort. It pays off.
Bakers factory have a strict full day/week training schedule, from sun up to sun down.
Finish motos and off to a cycle or gym etc or vice versa
Can you show me one place where I suggested that? Every example I gave where I thought it would help. Tell me where I'm wrong and not just throw out some trite cutesy answer. You may prefer pounding laps to my suggested drills but every racer cross trains somewhat and all of the disciplines I suggested have crossover applications that I mentioned. Doing football drills to help at baseball wouldn't help but lifting weights sure would, doing flexibility work sure would.
You must have multiple premier titles
So, you are one of the factory teams and you've groomed this kid since he was 14 to be a star and you hope he gets a little whoop practice on the side?
I'm hiring the best whoop rider I can find to work with my guy day in and day out.
Extra work is great but as a coach if I have players doing that much work after or before practice I'm going to increase their workload. I never played a sport where we didn't practice drills during the week. Hell, I don't think I ever had a single practice where I didn't hit the sled.
Just as many as Bill Belichick did as a player.
You could have just scrolled by instead of being a dick, just saying, that was an option.
If you think hitting the sled was for skill development, then you missed the point of the drill. Sure, athletes run tons of drills in any sport and yes those drills do help the player improve somewhat, but if a person wants to really accelerate their skill development as an athlete, it takes extra effort and focus outside the normal grind / program. During the summer, we were challenged to shoot 1000 shots a day. Baseball, hit the cage with a fungo bat until your hands bled. As a catcher, blocking drills for for an hour a day. Same for framing drills. You can't get that kind of repetition during a normal practice day schedule. There's too much to accomplish in too short of a time frame and the drills just aren't enough. Anybody that's done it and gone through it, knows it.
There are no short cuts. You get out of it what you put into it. At the end of the day, nobody cares about the excuses. Work harder.
I think you're assuming too much.
Id say a guy like Aldon knows all he needs to know about base, aerobic & anaerobic training on & off the bike.
They'll be doing sprints, drills and endurance at different times as & when its needed.
Pretty sure at this time of year they're doing short sprint laps- 3/4 laps at a time, and nailing down technique with drills, aiming not to fatigue the body. Whereas in October/November, its all about smashing out 25 lap motos again & again & again to fatigue the body, eat, rest, repeat.
Like someone else said- we only get to see a small selection of what they want us to see.
Pro cyclists post their training rides on strava at times, almost always not showing HR or watts, so you never really know what they're working on or how strong/fit they are or aren't.
OFFS seems you just want to argue. I mentioned the sled as just something everyone would understand, but at the same time if your coach is just having you push the sled around the field and not have you working on hand positioning and body positioning you have a shitty coach.
Why would you pay a coach if you are doing all the fundamentals without him?
Always work on your weakness’s as an athlete…. If a golfer has a poor drive, he spends hr”s at the driving range. What I find is most practice tracks where you pay to ride are laps only, no space to have a figure 8 or rut track. So guys end up pounding laps all day. Always work on your specific skills related to Moto, then when you do hit the track it starts coming together…. Side note: I had a trials bike 20-25 years ago, I had access to trails & spots where I could use it whenever I wanted, many times I would just hop on it and spend hrs in 1-2nd gear just working on slow speed stuff. Initially I thought this would be boring but it was just the opposite, I had a very large rock formation close to my house, I would spend hrs just trying to master that section without touching my feet to the ground. That made me a much better rider on my MX bike….
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