Racing Fitness
February 8, 2009
I am not sure if anyone ever knew this, but my degree is in Nutrition and I started my professional career with Johnson and Johnson in Wellness. Fitness has always been a part of my life, which eventually led me to this wonderful sport of karting.
Karting presents some interesting challenges:
- Short anaerobic bursts of adrenaline due to stress (good and bad, the body reacts the same)
- Anaerobic “arm pump”
- Physical detriment in the ribs and knees due to slamming around in the kart
- blood pulling due to G-forces (like a fighter pilot), this stresses the heart and ancillary muscles to get the blood back to the heart raising blood pressure
- Aerobic demand for 10 to 12 minutes
- High reasoning skills in sub optimal conditions
So what does this mean?
It means you better do some other types of training if you expect to survive the long term in this sport. Here would be my recommendations:
3 to 4 times a week – circuit training of some type. Circuit training is a technique of combining strength traing via resistance without rest between sets going from opposing muscle groups or from upper to lower body.
3 to 4 times a week – 1 to 2 hours of steady state aerobic activity of 65% to 85%, mixed in with short intervals of max efforts (90% to 95%). Base your percentages on Heart Rate Reserve. Take your resting pulse for 60 seconds after one minute of waking naturally in the morning (this is your RHR – waking to an alarm in the morning elevates your heart too much to get an accurate measure). You can estimate your percentages without expensive tests and this techinique is accurate enough; Take 220 (max heart rate as a baby) and subtracting your age (we lose on average a heart beats capacity per year of life), then subtracting your resting heart rate, multiple the percentage and then adding back your resting heart rate. Do this for 65%, 85%, 90% and 95%.
Max Heart Rate – age – RHR (%) + RHR = Heart Rate Reserve You can also do a simple Max Heart Rate test on your exercise of choice, warm up for 10 minutes and then do 2 to 3 max efforts with 2 to 3 minutes in between. Take your highest heart rate, this is called anerobic threshold, the goal is to make this number higher as you get fit. This is why you always want to re evaulate every couple of months or so.
When you are working out, try to do complex math problems or figure out something that usually is hard to figure out when your normally focused and concentrating. This will help with high reasoining under severe conditions. Another way to achieve this is to work out and then go to the track and hop in the kart with some friends and simulate a race.
I have read some interesting articles on F1 drivers and top professional racers and they incorporate “simulators” such as video race simulators and other forms of racing like cycling and mountain biking which requires apex turning judgement. Interesting enough, they also talk about always looking at every turn as an opportunity to learn, no matter what your mode of transportation is. It gives us an opportunity to work out corners in a slower enviroment and estimate how it would change in a fast enviroment.
Does anyone care to share what they do other than karting for fitness?
This is what I normally do per week:
4 to 6 days on the road bike for 2 hours at steady state aerobic activity
2 to 3 times a week on a Concept II rower for 30 minutes to an hour at steady state
1 to 2 times in the gym super setting for a total time of 1 hour – approximately 50 to 60 sets of 10 different exercises (different opposing muscle groups)
I eat a lot! Hence why I’m not real skinny… My body type has never allowed me to be super thin, but I can lean down if I concentrate on my food intake too.
For all of our parents at the track- habits are modelled by our children. so your habits will more than likely be your children’s. I know there are several parents that have aspirations of their children being the next stars in motorsports, so look at the racers of today. The new racer is the epidemy of fitness. It would be a shame to handicap your kids.
Clayton Peck
