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BMX Training It’s Now Or Never

By admin | August 4, 2008

With the ever growing popularity of BMX racing, and the fact that it is now an Olympic sport their is a giant lack of good training information on the Internet. As we progress as a sport our tracks are getting bigger and faster and it seems our athletes are lacking 3 things, strength, power, and injury prevention. these qualities are a must for any BMXer wanting to take a chance at competing and succeeding at a higher level. In this article I will shed some light on these 3 qualities and their overall importance in your program.

Strength:

Strength is the foundation on which your speed will be built. The best way to think of strength is your only as good as the size of the motor in your car, take for example lining up at a stoplight in your moms Geo metro versus a brand new mustang Cobra. Although you can outfit the Geo with all the latest gadgets. the bigger motor will always win. If you are lacking in the strength department there are numerous ways to bring this up, some can be done on the bike and some in the gym. Some of my favorite ways to build strength are:

Sled Dragging- heavy weight short distances.

Squats of different variations- Front, Back, Kettlebell, sandbag, Barbell

Resisted Sprints on your bike- Drag empty tire or weighted sled strapped to your seat.

Heavy Lunges or single leg squats

Sprints on bike with a larger gear

As you can see their are many options, most dont even require any fancy equipment or gym memberships. So dont let anyone tell you need fancy stuff to achieve results just get out there and do something.

Power

Power is the next important piece to our strength and conditioning program. Power is often refered to as explosive strength, this is what will shoot you out of the gate like a rocket. One of the main mistakes I see in our sport is lots of explosive training but no foundation of strength. Once again refer to my geo metro, he can jump up down all day but will always be limited by the size of his motor. In BMX the most important explosive quality to work on is your reactive ability, this will give you the ability to apply constant force to each pedal stroke. Reactive ability can be trained numerous ways some of my favorites are:

Repeated jumps onto a medium to high box(Ex. jump up and down as fast as possible for time or desired reps.)

Jumping Rope

Depth Jumps off medium box

Hurdle jumps of 5 or more

Once again reactive ability can be achieved without fancy equipment, all of these can be trained with something as simple as a picnic table at the local park, and a jump rope that can be purchased for no more than $10.00. Once again leave the excuses at home and make it happen.

Injury Prevention:

Lets face it BMX is an extreme sport and your gonna get hurt, with this being said your body needs to be able to withstand a little bit of punishment. What better protection than a well muscled power producing body. Now before you get ahead of yourself and think training will make you invincible, take into consideration that studies have shown that regular training with weights will strengthen your joints and connective tissues as well as give you a nice layer of protection called muscle.

Another major factor in injury prevention is flexibility. You must treat your body like a well oiled machine therefore engaging in some Dynamic and Static stretching before and after your training session . This will keep your joints and muscles working like they were designed to do as well as giving a little extra edge provided you take a fall that leaves your body in a compromising position.

Consider these 3 areas next time you are assesing your training goals and planning out your next training cycle. Keep in mind that each of these things are piece to the overall puzzle, so dont focus all your energy on one while forgetting about the other. Take the time to develop all of these qualities and you will take your riding to new levels so until next time stay strong and ride hard.

P.S. There are still 5 T-shirts left in the FREE offer so pick up your copy of BMX STRONG here.

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