Fitness and Injury Prevention
Most 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 not considered as improving performance is not an issue since they are out just to have a great time. Nothing wrong with that at all but it should be noted that improving general conditioning can not only improves health and wellness, it can drastically reduce the risk of injury during riding. Nothing can end the enjoyment of the wonderful sport of motocross like an injury! Here are 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 a crash just like riding on the edge of your technical ability. The more fit you are, the lower in your fitness capacity you can ride and still maintain your enjoyable level of speed. Riding at a pace that is well within your physical limits allows your mind and body to focus efforts on correct technique and maintaining your timing and reflexes thus leading to less mistakes and safer riding.
2) Joint injuries occur when a limb is taken past its usable and injury free range of motion. This is due to two factors: flexibility and strength, both of which are increased through improved fitness. Greater flexibility allows a joint to move in a greater range without damaging soft tissues and connective tissues like ligaments, muscles and tendons. Once a joint gets to the end of a range of motion, your muscular strength must resist continued motion to prevent these injuries. The combination of increasing your range of motion through increased flexibility and your ability to resist further motion through increased strength will drastically reduce the incidence of joint injuries.
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 in increase in density. This reduces the rate of fractures in these bones. The increase in muscle mass that accompanies increases in strength also drastically increases the shock absorbing ability of the body and thus spares the bones from receiving much of the impact forces of crashing. Muscles are your bodyís 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 healthy is being physically fit. Being healthy 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 more major injuries.
5) Physically fit individuals are good healers! When the unfortunate happens and you do get sidelined by an injury, the better your physical conditioning at the time of injury, the quicker your body will heal and the less permanent effects you will have from the injury. The greater your physical fitness, the higher your relative metabolic rate and the healthier your tissues are at the time of injury. This means that your cellular metabolic rate is higher so 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. The healthier tissues that fitness can promote are damaged less at the cellular level as well thus decreasing the amount of repair that has to occur to get you back into action. Motocross is dangerous enough as it is. Maintain or get into better physical condition to reduce injury, increase enjoyment and improve your health.
This article was originally published on Racer X Virtual Trainer