How Your Strength Affects Your Riding
Piloting a 250lb dirt bike at speed requires a substantial amount of strength and stamina.
Rider: Justin Clackler. Photo by Trey Deason.
The importance of strength training for a particular rider is largely based on three factors:
- How serious you are about maximizing your potential
- How much of a strength disadvantage you are already at due to your stature
- How much your experience level can offset your need for fitness
Often, a less experienced rider uses more energy to accomplish the same task on the bike as a more experienced/skilled rider. While inexperienced riders tend to tense up with uncertainty—leading them to exert more energy throughout a ride—highly skilled riders can anticipate what the bike is going to do, affording them the chance to relax and conserve energy for a greater percentage of the time. Very experienced riders who are clearly out of shape can often out-ride their fitter but less experienced counterparts: the “why a fat man kicked your ass” phenomenon.
Of course, an experienced rider who is also a serious competitor knows the importance of endurance and the ability to sustain a correct (and physically demanding) riding position, and for them, strength training is a no-brainer.
For less experienced riders, the benefits of strength training can be significant: from improving your safety to enhancing your enjoyment of the ride to accelerating how fast you can learn.
Before we dive into how that works, let’s touch on the second consideration: whether or not you are at a strength disadvantage.
In many sports it’s possible for competitors to tailor the weight of their equipment or the strength of their opponents to their own strength and weight, creating a level playing field. In dirt biking, though, we all—largely—ride bikes of the same weight. Your bike doesn’t care how big you are. For a smaller rider, controlling a big machine is like competing in the heavyweight division as a featherweight.
The smaller or less physical you are, the greater disadvantage you are at, and the more important building additional strength will be for you.
That said, virtually ALL riders can benefit from being stronger. Dirt bikes are objectively heavy, and the better able you are to wrestle that weight, the more capable you will be. Yes, good technique can somewhat offset the need for brute force, but some of the most advanced techniques actually require significant power on the part of the rider. There’s a reason the top riders are all very strong.
For the weekend warrior or non-professional dirt biker, setting aside the time
and
energy for off-the-bike fitness training can be a big ask. After all, it’s just a hobby…do you
really need to hit the gym for that?
Keeping it on two wheels in the mud is imperative. Picking up a bike covered in 30lbs of muck can sap your strength in a hurry.
Photo by Laura Davis.
Consider this chain of events:
→ The weaker you are, the more your muscles are taxed during a ride.
→ The more your muscles are taxed, the more quickly your precision fades.
→ As your precision fades, you start making costly mistakes that burn yet MORE strength.
→ As your strength evaporates, your precision continues to plummet…
…mistakes mount…and you spiral downward in fatigue.
Sound familiar?
On the other hand...
Let’s look at some specific changes you might see in your riding if you carve time out of your schedule to pump some iron.
Endurance
Being stronger doesn’t just make you better able to hoist your bike off the ground, it actually prevents you from having to get it off the ground in the first place.Keeping it on two wheels in the mud is imperative. Picking up a bike covered in 30lbs of muck can sap your strength in a hurry.
Photo by Laura Davis.
→ The weaker you are, the more your muscles are taxed during a ride.
→ The more your muscles are taxed, the more quickly your precision fades.
→ As your precision fades, you start making costly mistakes that burn yet MORE strength.
→ As your strength evaporates, your precision continues to plummet…
…mistakes mount…and you spiral downward in fatigue.
Sound familiar?
On the other hand...
→ The stronger you are, the more precisely you can ride.
→ By riding precisely, you avoid making mistakes.
→ When you don’t make mistakes, you conserve your strength.
→ By conserving your strength, you can keep riding with precision…
…which keeps you riding better for longer.
Learning Rate
Learning new techniques requires putting your bike and body in new and uncomfortable positions. The more strength you have to control the machine if things don’t go according to plan, the more able you will be to experiment and take risks on the learning journey.Suppose that for a strong rider, a certain technique requires 45% of their available strength to execute. For a smaller rider, let’s imagine that the same technique requires 90% of their available strength. The confidence required to commit less than half of your available strength to a new move is far more reasonable than the amount of confidence it would take to commit nearly all of your strength.
Instead, the smaller/weaker rider will have to work up to the technique in small increments (give it 35% effort...now 40%...now 50%...). The continued repetitions are exhausting, and the practice will likely have to be broken up over a course of many sessions.
Furthermore, the closer the rider gets to committing the full 90% of their
strength, the
fewer repetitions they can execute before losing the necessary precision to succeed (discussed
in more detail below). When you’re getting close to success on a move that requires such a high
percentage of your strength, it can feel like your progress is suddenly coming to a halt.
The amount of confidence, energy, and commitment it takes to master a technique that requires only 45% of your strength is markedly less than for the weaker rider, and the stronger rider will progress faster.
Imagine trying to eat with a fork that weighs 20lbs. It would be difficult to accurately pick up your food and get it to your mouth, right? Can you imagine your wrist shaking as it tries to stabilize the awkward and heavy utensil?
The amount of confidence, energy, and commitment it takes to master a technique that requires only 45% of your strength is markedly less than for the weaker rider, and the stronger rider will progress faster.
Precision
Controlling a motorcycle requires increasingly more precision as the terrain becomes more complex and the techniques become more advanced. How long you can maintain your precision is often what separates the best from the rest.Imagine trying to eat with a fork that weighs 20lbs. It would be difficult to accurately pick up your food and get it to your mouth, right? Can you imagine your wrist shaking as it tries to stabilize the awkward and heavy utensil?
The more of your muscle capacity you use to execute a certain action, the less precise your movement will be, and the faster your precision will fade. In other words, the heavier your dirt bike is relative to your own strength, the less precise your control as a rider will be, and the faster your control will disappear with fatigue.
How precisely you can control your bike is often the difference between hitting the deck and flying up something technical.
Photo by Larry Mayo.
Confidence...and success!
Is it realistic for a rider to double their strength, though (to go from 90% utilization to 45%)? Of course not, but those are made up numbers anyway.Even a 10% increase in power can make a huge difference in your confidence, which can have a bigger impact on your riding than the strength gains themselves did.
So much of riding is mental, and tackling something new with confidence is going to boost your chances of success…which in turn boosts your confidence further…which boosts your chances of success even more…and suddenly you're capable of things you never dreamed of, all because you put in some time at the gym.
When you ride stronger, you ride better, and when you ride better, you have more fun. Get the most out of your time on the bike and start working toward being a stronger and better rider today.
Interested in learning more about how to get fit to ride? Check out our dirt bike fitness resources below for exercise ideas or to get a custom training plan.