When to Vary Exercises for Motocross

A common debate amongst motocross strength and conditioning coaches, is how often you should switch up your exercises in training. Should it be day to day? Week to week? Month to month? This ongoing debate has caused a ton of confusion for athletes and coaches worldwide. In this article we will discuss when and how you should change up your exercises to perform at your best on on race day.

There are two sides to the debate on how often you should vary your exercises in training. Some coaches say that you should switch things up all the time, while others believe that you should leave the same exercises in year round. When deciding what the best course of action is for your training, you need to answer the following questions. What is the purpose of the exercise change? How will changing this exercise get me closer to my goal? How will this change affect how I feel on the race track?

People switch up their routines for a variety of reasons. They get bored, they get injured, or maybe they just feel that something they’re doing needs improvement. These reasons are all fine, however, there needs to be a systematic way that you change up your routine to ensure that you perform optimally when you need to. Selecting and performing random exercises whenever you feel like it is never going to be a productive strategy for getting better on the track. On the other hand, you shouldn’t repeat the same exercises over and over because you may end up with an imbalanced program, poor posture, and less than ideal results on race day. So, how often should you change things around? To better organize this process, you can vary exercises based on the training age of the rider (how long they’ve been training in the gym), the time of year, and proximity to their competitive event.

One method for selecting what exercises a rider should perform is based on training age. For example, if I am working with a younger rider who has never trained before and I want him to squat, I may start him off with a bodyweight squat to a box or bench. This minimizes range of motion, ensures good technique, and makes it an easier exercise to control. Once he has built up an adequate amount of strength and movement competency, I may have him squat without a box while holding a kettlebell. Now, we’ve increased range of motion, increased the weight being used, and eliminated the stability given to us by the box or bench. Lastly, when the rider is ready to challenge themselves again, we may let him front squat with a barbell to further increase load and decrease stability, possibly making this the most challenging squat variation he will encounter in the gym.

Another way to switch up your training routine is by the time of the year and how close you are to competing. This is extremely important and if not perfected based on your needs, you may feel beat up and tired during your races. The further you are away from your competitive motocross season, the less you have to vary your exercises, especially, if the goal is to get stronger. If this is your goal, you’re going to need consistent exercises that you can use to track your progress and make sure you are improving week to week. This might mean leaving an exercise in for a month or two, maybe even three, depending on how important it is for you to improve your strength before the season. If you change things up all the time, you will never know if you are truly getting stronger.

As you get closer to the competitive season you will be able to make more frequent adjustments to your training routine, as the focus will shift towards increasing practice at the track and improving movement quality. The more exercise variation that you have in your program, the more likely you are to avoid poor posture patterns and keep movement quality high. This doesn’t mean making crazy changes every week, but switching and testing out new exercises that emphasize the same category of movement (i.e. replacing one row variation with another row variation) might be a good idea for your overall health.

Lastly, you are going to need to make changes to your routine during the competitive season. Furthermore, you’re going to need to decrease the frequency of your training to make up for the increase in racing and track practice. There will be a ton of mixed opinions on whether or not you should be varying exercises often, or not at all during the racing season. In my opinion, you should stick with the exercises you know have worked well for you during your preparation, and modify them based on injury. The more variables that you need to account for during the racing season, the more challenging it will be to manage training stress. You should, however, consider using strategies to decrease range of motion and minimize fatigue. For example, if you have been performing trap bar deadlifts and want to keep them in your program, it may be wise to let go of the bar and drop the weight at the top of the repetition. This eliminates the lowering portion of the lift where the most fatigue occurs. This strategy should not be used on every exercise, but it is a useful way to modify an exercise to maintain strength while minimizing fatigue and injury risk. Overall, keep things simple, move well, reach, rotate, and most importantly, make sure that you feel good on your bike.

Overall, making a month to month assessment to determine where you’re at and how to move forward in the weeks to come is likely going to be your best approach to perfecting exercise selection and achieving optimal performance. Assess the overall goal, determine where you’re at in the competitive year, and how long you’ve been training. These conclusions will help you make informed decisions about when, why, and how you should make adjustments to your training program. Make sure to keep your goals in mind and do not change everything just for the sake up breaking up the training monotony. If you adhere to these principles, there is no doubt that you will be in ideal shape come race day.