[Complete Athlete] Understanding that motorsports is a sport...and you are an athlete
Think you don't have what it takes to succeed in motorsports? I strongly believe you do, especially if you approach it like a sport and work on developing as a complete athlete.
Our sport is stuck in the old school. We stubbornly hang on to the notion that it takes high innate talent to succeed. We assume you must be born with a special knack for braking hard, feeling side grip, and spinning the tire on exits and, if you’re not, the best you’ll ever be is mediocre. Innate talent helps, of course. But less than you think. Just like with everything else in life, the truth is that an athlete with less innate talent who outworks someone with talent will almost always go further.
All sports have fundamentals: a set of specific skills to learn and practice in order to achieve mastery. Part of the reason why motorsports has remained so old school is the lack of established consensus around fundamentals: what skills to learn, how to prioritize, etc. Anyone with experience in other sports — whether football, baseball, golf, cycling, or otherwise — recognizes that motorsports lacks the same kind of highly professionalized culture that establishes common standards and training/performance protocols for athlete development. Regardless, our sport is a sport, and anyone can learn to do it well if they understand that and approach the process as an athlete in training.
What does that mean in practice, and how can you create your own individualized complete athlete training program? We start by identifying the three core elements to being an athlete: 1) Technique; 2) Physical fitness; and 3) Mental fitness.
Technique: This involves your skills on the track — specifically, mastery of the six fundamentals of the Order of the Sport (1. Bike Placement, 2. Vision & Focus, 3. Motor Controls, 4. Brake Adjustability, 5. Turn-In Point & Turn-In Rate, 6. Body Position). A world-class rider is always trying to improve. They understand that consistent, deliberate practice of the fundamentals is what makes them better, and trumps simply relying on talent. This requires a feedback loop of routine evaluation to further hone the fundamentals as your skills advance, keeping you sharp and continually pushing you forward. Remember that opportunities for training technique happen off the track as much (or sometimes more) than on the track.
Physical Fitness: The more physically fit you are, the longer you can access and utilize your technique. The second your fitness drops, e.g. from fatigue or overexertion, your focus drops. Without focus, you are unable to apply technique correctly. Physical fitness in our sport starts with a good cardiovascular base to increase endurance, followed by core strength, flexibility, and overall strength training. Increasing your physical fitness with an emphasis on these areas will help you not only stay focused longer, but also move around on the bike easier and recover from injury sooner.
Mental Fitness: As with physical fitness, mental fitness and discipline are critical for accessing and utilizing your technique. Poor mental fitness is always the first thing to undermine technique, and it can result from a million different things, from personal to professional. Issues with mental fitness — distraction and focus problems, emotional reactiveness, lack of confidence, poor performance under pressure — are, by FAR, the number one training aspect I have to address with students. This is unsurprising, since mental fitness is widely overlooked as a core area of training, and the problem is further exacerbated by the constant distractions and attention fragmentation inherent to modern connectivity. You can begin working on mental resilience and better focus through simple meditation and mindfulness exercises, and creating a separate space for your motorcycle world that is insulated from external distractions. Another key tool is developing a personal ritual to help set your focus each time you get on your bike or behind the wheel to enter the track, as well as a re-focus trigger to bring you back when something disrupts your attention.
To reach your goals on the track, you must prioritize all three of these elements. You can have great technique and strong mental fitness, but lack the physical fitness to ride a full session and further work on refining your technique. Similarly, you can have great technique and be in top physical shape, but lack the mental fitness to take advantage of those abilities and apply them to your riding or driving. The best of the best are consistently dedicated to advancing in all three areas, and success on the track comes from combining the individual mastery of all three.
For a podcast refresher on this topic, listen to Podcast #83 - What Makes a Complete Motorcycle Racer?