Fitness and Injury Prevention for the Vet Class Rider
Most vet class participants in motocross or dirt biking are not competitive; they are simply pursuing it as an enjoyable and sociable hobby. Physically training for recreational riding is often considered unnecessary since the goal is just to have a great time and hang out with your buddies. Nothing wrong with that but it should be noted that improving general conditioning not only improves health and wellness, it can drastically reduce the risk of injury during riding. Vet class riders can be more prone to injury and take longer to heal due to the limitations of advancing age so they have even more reason to pursue general conditioning and fitness. Here is my top five list of how physical fitness can keep you safer while partaking in the greatest sport on earth!
1) Riding on the edge of your physical ability increases the chance of making a mistake that can lead to an injury. The more fit you are, the lower within your physical capacity you can ride and maintain your enjoyable level of speed. Riding at a pace that is well within your physical limits allows your mind and body to focus on correct technique and maintaining your timing and reflexes which leads to less mistakes and safer riding.
2) Joint injuries can occur when a limb is taken past its usable and injury free range of motion. This is due to mobility and strength, both of which are increased through improved fitness. Greater mobility allows a joint to be used in wider range without damaging soft and connective tissues like ligaments, muscles and tendons. Once a joint gets to the end of a usable range of motion, your muscular strength is used to prevent injury by slowing, stopping or escaping further joint motion.
3) You can actually decrease the possibility of breaking bones through increased fitness; specifically by strength training. The loading of bones perpendicular to their long axis that occurs in strength training causes the bones to increase in density, reducing the rate of fracture. The increase in muscle mass that accompanies increases in strength also expands the shock absorbing ability of the body and spares the bones from receiving much of the impact forces of crashing. Muscles are your body’s number one shock absorber and force reducer. More muscle mass equals more shock absorbing capacity and less broken bones and other injuries.
4) Part of being physically fit means being healthy and this means that you have healthy tissues. These healthy tissues (among them ligaments, bones, tendons and muscles) are better able to resist shearing forces, compressive forces, impacts and other attacks on them that create an injury state. Ligaments and tendons are especially affected by overall state of health. Healthy tissues are simply injured less and minor injuries such as slight ligament sprains and muscle strains are more quickly healed so that they do not progress into major injuries.
5) Physically fit individuals are good “healers.” When the unfortunate accident occurs, the better your fitness is at the time of injury, the quicker your body will heal and the less permanent affects you will have from the injury. The greater your fitness, the higher your relative metabolic rate and the healthier your tissues are at the time of injury. This means that the processes of healing (building new tissues, breaking down and eliminating damaged tissues, fighting infection among others) is faster than if you were not fit. Less cellular damage occurs to these healthier tissues as well thus decreasing the amount of repair required to get you back into action.
Motocross is dangerous enough as it is. Raise your fitness level to reduce injury, improve health but most importantly, increase your enjoyment of our wonderful sport.
This article was originally published in Racer X Illustrated