If everyone knows these guys are overtraining why dont they change?

No one wants their competition to be doing more than they are doing. If X rider is training 4 days a week, I'm training 5 days a week. If Rider Y is training 5 days a week, I'm training 6 days a week. It's a viscious cycle and will catch up to everyone. This idea is coming from my competitive mindset of when I was a lot younger and in the Army. If someone was doing extra PT to max their run time, I'd do the same and then some, just so I could beat them. I didn't have a million dollars or a championship in front of me neither. 🤣 

Johnny O talked about over training,years ago.  I'll bet he has J n H Law on a perfect program.

Yep. Cheat day includes donuts. 

Hot dogs on raceday but I didn't see Hunter eating one.

If you watch the A Mart podcast on Gypsy Tales he says Monday is a bad day to hammer on the bike. Sunday is usually a travel day so no decent rest or meals there. 

Jett Lawrence said Monday was an easy day, stretching and maybe a bike ride then back into the grind on Tuesday. 

AP looked like shit. He looked scrawny. Your blood tests and all those tests might be good but how do you measure body  reserves on Saturday?

Are they worried they are going to forget how to ride a bike by cutting down from 4 to 3 days a week?

Have to have the knowledge and confidence to know that what you're doing is correct. As it is everyone errs on the side of doing too much because harder to criticize that approach. Other sports have guys in charge of their training that have studied training for that sport to the smallest detail and have phds in it. This sport has a lot of guys that "learned a lot over the years." 

This sport just doesn't value knowledge. It's that simple. Everyone thinks you just train and test and tough it out and that's how you achieve peak performance. 

Imagine how bikes would run if the manufacturers didn't hire engineers and just let a bunch of mechanics that "learned a lot over the years" design the bike. That's what this sport does with the riders bodies. 

AC, Broc Tickle, and Roczen have all talked about how depleted they felt at Baker's Factory.  Aldon got lucky with guys that were already champs, which gave him instant credibility.   I'd choose Peter Park any day of the week over that concentration camp if I was in their shoes...

So Aldon hasn’t figured this out yet over the years. I doubt it. 

Aldon has also said he'd rather guys have a short career and a lot of championships than the other way round. He don't care about burn out

When I was racing I did motos after work two days a week. In between , I drank beers and went fishing. Didnt hurt my two race day finishes on the weekends at all. I still finished mid pack in 125B and mid pack in 250C as well. No need to step up my training at all. It was perfect! 

This...

It’s here the confidence comes to play.

I often say the most important thing is that you believe in what you are doing and that that is enough.

You have some riders that get a mental block if they are not the ones that put in the most hours of all the riders on track. 

Then you got riders that can say: ”I have done enough I need to be able to win” and then go out and win..

Riders like Travis Pastrana that jumped in at Daytona and won the qualifying race on a privateer cernics suzuki years after he stoped racing professionally. That shows what the mental side of the sport.

The 90’s sure was the glory days for the riders, combining racing, free ride in the hills and some partying. And then came RC and Aldon…

No pro should be doing 30min full speed motos in the middle of season. You will just break down the body.

Exception is maybe if you coming of an injury.

Do some sprint laps, 10min heaters max, ride with one arm, ride only standing up at 70%, practise technique.

We get 1h zone 5 on race days. In other endurance sports at elite level 45min is max recommended, in total per week. Our nerve system gets hammered and it puts the body under constant drain.

Think it was DV12 who also said he never/rarely did 30s. Just practised technique during week. Endurance you get from other types of training.

Of course you will always have exceptions, guys that needs to be on the bike or they lose it. But they are not immune to wear out.

I forget which episode but Jase made an interesting point on Gypsy Tails - MotoGP riders don’t go out and ride one hour practice races each week.  Maybe you could argue that road racing isn’t as physical as MX but rugby players, to use one example, don’t play a full length practice game each week.

I’m no expert but I’ve trained for a bunch of endurance events and again, no part of the program involves simulating the full event - it’s way too draining.

Motocross seems quite quirky in that regard - even though the riders are contracted to a team it appears they (mostly) really do their own thing.  Apart from maybe some testing during the week they just turn up on Saturday, race, then don’t see the team until the next weekend.  I’ve probably over simplified it but there doesn’t appear to be much oversight from the teams on the details of what the rider is doing.

Neither does F1, NASCAR and so on and you can argue that they would benefit more from being Intune with their sport since its such high speed, small margins and fast reaction times needed.

A marathon runner dont run marathons leading up to big competitions. They run 3k, 5k 10k max etc. It's rare you train at full pace for anything else than sprint related stuff. 

Not even soccer or hockey players do 20 vs 45min games during week.

Sport science has evolved way beyond just doing “what you believe” is good enough.  Any pro taking that approach is going to be left in the dust of the guys who are training in a specific and tailored way.

These days it’s not enough for an elite MX rider to just be good at twisting the throttle.  You need to arm yourself with the right knowledge about fitness, training, diet etc.

Yet the best rider in the world seems to have a more relaxed view on it than the guys behind him and is still winning?.

Real confidence will always get you longer than fitness and no confidence. 

I am not saying that you should not train at all but if you do enough and believe in it, that will get you longer than doing more and don’t believing in it.

Poor elite MX riders like AP, JL, ET, HL, RH, etc.  My heart breaks for how hard it must be.

If these guys are struggling with fitness, endurance, etc., then how should we feel about guys that ride the Tour de France or climb Everest?  No, mx riders aren’t the most elite athletes on the planet.  Yes, I know 17 + 11 + 3 is hard.  Sorry, I’m not even the least bit sympathetic.

Let me find a box of tissue.

It seems that something is being done wrong. I've heard more than one rider say they "ran out of steam". Pre-1985 the moto's were 40 minutes plus 2 and the fit riders would say the last 10 minutes were when they would hit it harder. 

"Over training" sounds much better than "haven't put in the work"

And they probably ate like horses.   You have to eat food.   This shit of burning 2500 calories while they eat some carrots is a slow march to death. 

And most tendon injuries are from overuse which causes tendonitis and makes the tendon weak.  I've torn 2 achilles and blown out the same knee twice from overtraining because I'm a slow learner.   

Confidence is great, but there's another word for it if you're that confident in beating your head against a wall. 

This was kind of my original point. There's believing and there's knowing. These guys need people who truly know telling them what to do based on evidence of what works. That's what other sports have and that's far more confidence inspiring than just believing something to be true. 

Aldon gets way to much credit, everyone talks like he is a god. He just got a few riders that was going to win with or with out him cause champs are champs.

I personally know one pretty successful pro who wouldn't ride motos any other day than Wednesday's, 2-30's and as many sprint laps as he could do. Light gym work 3 days a week, and a casual bike ride 4 days a week to spin the legs out and do light cardio work.

Plenty of time was spent in the hills play riding though, and I think that's what's being ignored the most. Proper nutrition and finding a way to keep the fun in doing the job. The Hunta brothers seem to have this down to a science.

Aldons program tends to do better with, no disrespect intended, chunkier riders. The dudes that have a little thicker build and can carry some weight equals having some reserves in the tank. The thinner riders like AC and AP are left with nothing at the end of the day and over the course of the incredibly long season their bodies break down more. Look at the guys that have run his program with multiple championships, RC, RV, RD and CW intermittently. They have thicker builds. He does tend to burn them out though. 

That's because they knew they couldn't sprint at 100% for the entire moto.  Surviving 45 minute motos took more than just fitness.  It required pacing and strategy.  It was one of the main things American riders had to learn from the Europeans in the 70's.

Must have missed the posts by guys saying they felt sorry for the top pros. All I saw was a discussion about maximizing training. Keep on with your bad self. Super edgy