Stamina & The Mental Game

Riding a dirt bike off-road is hard work, even when it looks slow. Studies of enduro and motocross riders find heart rates averaging over 150 bpm in a ten-minute enduro session and close to maximum in motocross, with grip strength falling after the ride. Enduro races last hours, not minutes. The endurance lesson has the numbers.

That's the problem this course solves. When you tire, your grip tightens, your standing position sags, your clutch hand gets clumsy and your line choice gets worse.

Fitness doesn't replace skill. A study of top-level off-road riders in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found enduro riders had "a maximum aerobic power similar to that of healthy normal individuals". The authors suggested that "the mechanical characteristics of the motorcycle and the technical and tactical skills of the riders seem to be more important for race success than the metabolic capabilities of the rider", and called for training programmes built around each type of rider's demands to reduce the risk of injury. So the aim isn't to become an athlete first and a rider second. It's to be fit enough that your skills still work at hour five.

You don't need a gym membership or a coach. You need consistency. A realistic week for a rider with a job looks like this:

• Ride once or twice a week, using the technique lessons. Riding is the most specific training there is.
• Two or three easy aerobic sessions of 30 to 60 minutes: cycling, running, rowing or hiking at a pace where you can still talk.
• Two short strength sessions of 30 to 40 minutes, at home or in a simple gym. That matches the World Health Organization's baseline for all adults: strength work for all the major muscle groups on two or more days a week.
• Ten minutes of mobility after riding and strength sessions.
• About ten minutes of mental practice, three times a week: breathing, or rehearsing a line in your head. The mental game lesson explains why that dose.

Put the hardest sessions on days after rest, not the day after a big ride. When time is short, keep the riding and the strength sessions and trim the easy aerobic work.

• Skills first. When your technique falls apart, stop and rest. Practising a skill badly while exhausted teaches the bad version.
• Build time before intensity. Most of your aerobic training should feel easy. Hard sessions work best on top of a base.
• Consistency beats hero sessions. Three moderate weeks beat one heroic one followed by a fortnight on the sofa.
• Train what the bike asks for. Hours of effort, a strong but relaxed grip, legs that hold a crouch, and a calm head.
• Recover on purpose. Easy days and rest days are when you get fitter. Two hard days in a row, or a hard session the day after a big ride, just makes you ride tired.