Training to win a SX championship: Resting up

By Aaron Hansel

The latest instalment in the Red Bull series looks at the vital importance of letting your body recover.

The importance of rest in fitness programs is often overlooked. After all, if you’re not working hard, your body isn’t gaining any benefits, right? Wrong. Aldon Baker, trainer to Red Bull KTM superstars Ryan Dungey and Marvin Musquin, explains why.

 Making it Count

“Fitness is all about recovery. If you don’t recover quickly, your fitness is useless. It’s the only time the body can really learn how to recover and do its job. If you don’t have that balanced out well, you’re just hammering on the body constantly, which can work against you. You can start to see negative results because your body hasn’t had the time to learn how to deal with, and recover from, that stress,” Baker says. “It goes hand in hand with nutrition too. If you don’t treat your body right, if it doesn’t have the right ingredients, it won’t recover in the right way. You train hard, but you also recover hard. When you’re not training you should be resting and letting the body do what it naturally does. You have to train that ability too.”

Disciplined Relaxation© Ray Archer/Red Bull Content Pool

Disciplined Relaxation

“It’s a constant battle in a way because you don’t want the athlete to have a boring life, but you can’t lose sight of what your goals are. Resting instead of having fun recreating takes discipline—it’s not easy. Especially with these guys. The way they have to train and live, they’re constantly on the move and when you’re not doing that, you have to understand that you have to recover. You have to be able to keep that balance. It’s tough, and I get that, but part of my job is to monitor that and to get the athlete to understand why you need to be doing that.”

The Balance

“Finding a balance is a constant battle with racing’s brutal travel schedule and sponsor obligations. There’s nothing you can do about the travel, you just have to make that work. It’s the same with sponsor obligations too, you just have to make that part work. It’s a matter of prioritizing, weeding out what you have to do and what doesn’t really have to be done. That constantly changes too. The sponsors are a very important part of racing, but they want a lot in return too – these guys have a lot of people pulling on them. It comes down to trying to keep that balance and focusing on what the priorities really are. And normally, you can get the whole system to gel. The sponsors can usually be pretty understanding. You just have to keep it all in balance.”