So first off I'm back to blogging on here and taking questions. I have been on a bit of a hiatus as those of you who follow and are close to me know that I have been doing some work this year for the Portland Timbers professional soccer team, with strength ad conditioning and data analytic's. So without further ado...
Heart rate in the world of motocross is a very tricky and complex thing. It requires that you have some amount of understanding of the topic before you can fully comprehend why I make my argument. This is because your heart rate can respond to different things and deceive us with this simplistic number that we've all seen.
Physiology of Heart Rate
Your heart rate is the result of your heart beating and pumping blood through your system to transport nutrients, move oxygen and remove waste(CO2). During exercise at low intensities we have an aerobic response where our body is using oxygen as its primary energy source to fuel work and we tend to see heart rates generally around 55-80% of your heart rate max. Your heart is beating at that pace primarily to expel the waste and bi-product of activity and not so much to take in and move oxygen, although this is a vital component.
Then if your working very hard like intense sprinting or high speed middle distance running (that term is used broadly and not based on track specific competition distances) then you are most likely using your anaerobic energy source, depending on how fit you are. This type of energy is where your body uses stored carbohydrates to fuel activity, with an obvious limited supply. But the amount of bi-product produced and the concentration of it tends to be higher, causing a higher heart rate response to more efficiently pump that waste out of the body.
This doesn't inherently mean that your heart rate is going to get up to 90% of its max for sure. You could do a single sprint and potentially only hit 80% of your heart rate max. This is because there is an accumulation effect that is required in most cases to elevate your heart rate to those levels. One sprint wont do the trick, something more like 8-10 and now you'll be getting your heart rate there. So already we have some complexities to how the heart rate responds to activity.
Another way your heart rate can get very high, is something that all of us are most likely addicted to if you're reading this post....Adrenaline! We all love motocross because of how cool it is but, also because of the adrenaline and that high you get when you're riding. This chemical in our body is extremely powerful and is a natural response to our natural animal instincts, your response to fight or flight. When your body senses danger, it responds in a manner to prepare yourself to either run at incredibly high intensities or to fight with ferocity. The huge rush of adrenaline makes your heart pound and gives you the ability to do things that normally you wouldn't. Now lets get into some more of the complexities of all of this.
Mechanisms/Complexities of Heart Rate
The more fit you are, the more work you are able to do at lower heart rates. Additionally, you can sustain and use more aerobic energy at higher levels of your max heart rate (this is only occurs at a small increase of your % max HR but it is possible). Your anaerobic system can get more efficient and recover faster allowing you to repeat similar high intensity efforts for a greater amount of time. In addition, the waste removal process of exercise bi-products by the Lactate shuttle system, can become more efficient and improve high intensity repeated efforts.
When lifting weights you can be working the anaerobic energy system with the weights however, your heart rate may be in the general categories of aerobic level heart rates. I don't know many people that do a set of bench and their heart rate gets to 90% + of their heart rate max. Not that it isn't possible, but it's just not the most common response. Considering though, I doubt most anyone would argue that if my max bench is 225 and I'm pushing 205 (91% 1RM) for 5 that I'm working on my aerobic capacity, even though my heart rate only hits 152 (74% of my max HR). The last complexity is that adrenaline like any dopamine, can produce a natural tolerance depending on frequency of exposure. Also it is highly reactionary to multiple stimuli and it's not just 1 thing that will ever cause it to rise.
Your training itself can lead to different responses and reactions during competition. You can train and specialize your body in aerobic capacity (endurance), anaerobic (fixed amount of endurance + strength and power) or anaerobic alactate (strength and power only). If you are more aerobic, your HR may stay lower but you could fatigue faster from the intensity of each effort on the back end of it. Then causing a quick rise in HR because of insufficient ability to recover from these other energy systems required for high intensity effort. You could be highly anaerobic and do very well with motocross but just have high heart rates from the adrenaline + work. Last you could be an anaerobic alactate athlete who has great strength but fatigues quickly because you cant recover from repeated efforts in a short duration of time. This also would cause your heart rate to spike as it suffers from inability to expel waste efficiently.
What All of This Means
I've had guys go up to the line just for practice and their heart rate is in the low 180's from the adrenaline alone. They also weren't horribly unfit individuals. Now you take that and you go out on the track and you do a series of high intensity repeated efforts that strongly mimic weight lifting in their intensity and demand of your muscles. You can see how these two things put together add up really quick to a high heart rate. But how do you know what percent of the work you're doing is actually a direct response to the amount of work you are doing on the bike? Is motocross really an endurance sport?
I will say that by classical definitions of endurance sports, motocross most certainly does not fit. By the classic definitions you would expect sports like marathons, ultra-marathons, triathlons, adventure racing (off road running), other running sports similar and endurance racing (12 hour + races). These sports more directly represent the endurance notion, more particularly the running based sports. This is one of the classic requisites of an endurance sport, running at sub-maximal efforts for long duration's of time. The efforts in these sports are definitely not full out effort for the entire duration. So is motocross an Endurance sport?
Technically speaking, no motocross is not an endurance sport. I think with further research over the years we will show definitively that it is an anaerobic based sport and not aerobic by endurance standards. Nothing about motocross is sub-maximal. It is anaerobic, strength endurance/power endurance based sport. The aura of these insane heart rates showing it's an endurance sport and that it is the hardest sport in the world is very inaccurate. The high heart rates even as a result of adrenaline can cause high levels of fatigue and make it even harder to perform but, the reality is that it is not derived from an aerobic specific response (sub-maximal repeated efforts for extended periods of time).
No one will ever prove that a single sport is the most physically demanding sport in the world. Also people are limited to and make these claims based on the most popular and broadsports they can think of. People always seem to forget sports, like Iron Man triathlons (2.5 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride and a full marathon after), decathlons (arguably the most overall fit/athletic individuals on the planet) and some adventure races spanning entire continents. There is even a race, that I cant remember the name where a team of people compete, they have to swim an insane amount of miles, run 100's of miles, climb mountains, kyak rivers and do this all in a single event.
So in closing, is motocross extremely difficult? YES! Is motocross the worlds more physically demanding sport? No! Will anyone ever classify one sport as the most physically demanding sport in the world? Probably not! Is HR in motocross a good measure of the intensity of the sport? No! We just simply aren't at a point in science in the sport to defend any one side of the argument 100% without question. However, we do have many other sports to compare the type of efforts required and we can make very good educated claims when it comes to what the sport demands.
Motocross is not an endurance sport by classical definitions, although it may require the endurance of the anaerobic and sometimes anaerobic alactate system. Motocross is very intense and we all know this to be true but, we cant just say its the most physically demanding sport in the world without evidence (which may never happen for any sport). Otherwise you end up being like that guy at the track that thinks he's the best of everyone out there and talks himself up to everyone but, he can never seem to win anything...ever.
The goal of this blog is to bring new ideas in sport science to the forefront of motocross. The world of sport science in more traditional sports is years beyond the capabilities of motocross currently. The goal of this blog is to help bridge that gap with my education, experience and imagination. My goal is to bring real research and evidenced based science to the world of motocross.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Interaction of Your Brain, The Track and Your Race Performance
Your brain is an amazing thing. It controls everything we do and it obviously then impacts your performance on the track. The big question is to what extent? Wha is so different about the brain of Villopoto and Stewart that allows them to do such amazing things on the track?
There are many reasons why their brain may be better at motocross. However, we're going to take a quick peak into some great science that shows us, our brain makes it's decision 6-7 seconds beforehand.
I'm sure many of you have seen the movie Minority Report. In this movie Tom Cruise is a police officer of the future where they have a system called PRECOG. This systems see's when people are going to commit murder ahead of time. It see's their thoughts and warns the police when they are going to commit murder. The biggest issue with this is that they see the idea something like 30 minutes ahead. In reality, (at this point anyhow) we can only tell that the brain makes a decision 6-7 seconds before your motor cortex executes the action. So far we seem to be fairly helpless to this. To read more about this science you can go to the following website for a taste Exploring The Mind.
The majority of research in this area and replication of this type of research shows that we don't seem to be able to stop ourselves from changing our actions after this pre-cognition. We are helpless to our own precogs. So what is the real purpose of telling you this and why does it matter for yourself? Because, you may just be able to use it to your advantage.
If you cant change your actions after these precogs occur, why not just give your precogs some influence? Now the solution to this isn't rocket science. Study the tracks you are going to, study your competition and you may enhance your precogs. The reason I know this works is because we see it in every day life and especially in school. You study about something and become more intelligent about it. You increase your mental skills at a specific task. You practice on your dirtbike and you get better at riding and making better decisions of how to execute a corner. However we see track planning and this more traditional method of studying as medieval and pointless.
This traditional planning and studying of the track could be very helpful. The better you know the track and your opponent the better precogs you could incur. Since you cant change them you need to make sure they are better than before. 6-7 seconds means your decision to take the inside or outside on a turn is made 6-7 seconds before you really know you want to take it. That means potentially you have made a decision a straight and half before hand. How crazy is that?
How do you know your making the right decision? You don't but considering that you know things better since you studied up, your precogs have a higher chance of being more effective. Like I said, this may not be revolutionary, but it gives you some ideas of how much small things can impact your performance. Each little bit is a step forward, especially when the difference between the top guys in the world is only 1%.
There are many reasons why their brain may be better at motocross. However, we're going to take a quick peak into some great science that shows us, our brain makes it's decision 6-7 seconds beforehand.
I'm sure many of you have seen the movie Minority Report. In this movie Tom Cruise is a police officer of the future where they have a system called PRECOG. This systems see's when people are going to commit murder ahead of time. It see's their thoughts and warns the police when they are going to commit murder. The biggest issue with this is that they see the idea something like 30 minutes ahead. In reality, (at this point anyhow) we can only tell that the brain makes a decision 6-7 seconds before your motor cortex executes the action. So far we seem to be fairly helpless to this. To read more about this science you can go to the following website for a taste Exploring The Mind.
The majority of research in this area and replication of this type of research shows that we don't seem to be able to stop ourselves from changing our actions after this pre-cognition. We are helpless to our own precogs. So what is the real purpose of telling you this and why does it matter for yourself? Because, you may just be able to use it to your advantage.
If you cant change your actions after these precogs occur, why not just give your precogs some influence? Now the solution to this isn't rocket science. Study the tracks you are going to, study your competition and you may enhance your precogs. The reason I know this works is because we see it in every day life and especially in school. You study about something and become more intelligent about it. You increase your mental skills at a specific task. You practice on your dirtbike and you get better at riding and making better decisions of how to execute a corner. However we see track planning and this more traditional method of studying as medieval and pointless.
This traditional planning and studying of the track could be very helpful. The better you know the track and your opponent the better precogs you could incur. Since you cant change them you need to make sure they are better than before. 6-7 seconds means your decision to take the inside or outside on a turn is made 6-7 seconds before you really know you want to take it. That means potentially you have made a decision a straight and half before hand. How crazy is that?
How do you know your making the right decision? You don't but considering that you know things better since you studied up, your precogs have a higher chance of being more effective. Like I said, this may not be revolutionary, but it gives you some ideas of how much small things can impact your performance. Each little bit is a step forward, especially when the difference between the top guys in the world is only 1%.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
How Rest Improves Your Performance
So this topic became a big deal of conversation for me two times this past week. The idea of rest and unloading your body from the stress you are putting on it to increase performance. It was a shock to me to hear this lack of understanding of the importance of rest and recovery. But none the less lets start from the beginning.
The first thing you need to understand is the Theory of Supercompensation. This theory states that you start at a certain baseline. To take from Patrick Ward we will refer to this as the starting point of our stress bank account. We start at a base line level and we invest that money into some product for our workout. That investment then puts us at a low in our bank account until we get some return from that investment. It then puts us in the positive once it begins to pay us back.
The real take home points are this, plan yourself some rest time. It is important to improving your overall performance. This doesn't mean quit exercise completely for a whole week, just scale back the total volume of work. Think about the type of stress your body is undergoing and better plan your training. You can use the chart above with the different times as a general guideline to improve your training. Then go ahead and start adapting this chart to fit you and create some personal zones based off your own intensity and observations. Then you're able to better plan your overall training and better plan your rest to improve performance.
The first thing you need to understand is the Theory of Supercompensation. This theory states that you start at a certain baseline. To take from Patrick Ward we will refer to this as the starting point of our stress bank account. We start at a base line level and we invest that money into some product for our workout. That investment then puts us at a low in our bank account until we get some return from that investment. It then puts us in the positive once it begins to pay us back.
So if we apply this directly to the model above we get the following. We start at baseline and we apply a stress to our body like a workout, riding or racing. This stress then depletes our reserve to a certain point and now our body compensates to that stress and we then have a slightly greater capacity. If you put this into light of a workout its really simple. If I want to improve my bench press, I lift and challenge myself. The next day my arms and chest may be sore and a bit weak but, a couple of days later I'm just a little bit stronger.
Now a big thing to recognize is that there are different kinds of stressors and of different intensities. These different stressors can impact the length of time it takes to come back up above baseline. Below is a good example of this extracted from Olbrecht (2000).
The chart here shows how these different types of stress impact the time that it takes for your stress bank account to go positive from your physical investment. The big thing you need to disseminate from the titles on the chart are this. Extensive refers to a greater amount and duration but maybe not as intense for your overall capacity. Intensive refers to very high intensity like big heavy lifts or a max but, you cant do these for a long duration or for many reps.
Now there are an insane amount of what ifs and modifications that can be made to this model and idea based on your own genetic abilities, your physical fitness and quality of life related to stressful events not directly associated to physical activity. For now just assume that you meet the this chart at it's very basic level.
Each time you go riding the stress that your body endures can be pretty severe. A full race weekend is equivalent to the last box of Intensive/Strength Training/Competition. It can take you between 48 to 72 hours to fully recover. Now when you ride really hard even when training, you incur this same kind of stress. However most of the time your not riding at 100% all out effort which means you may be more along the Sprints/Short Sets on medium intensity riding days or in the Extensive/Anaerobic to Intensive Anaerobic range; depending on your intensity of riding that day. So riding at a decent pace to help improve your ability to race will land you somewhere between 30 to 60 hours to fully recover. Don't think that just going out and riding the track and hitting some jumps for fun meets this. We all know when we're riding hard and when we're just letting the bike work for us to hit some jumps and have a good time.
So now back to why does rest matter so much? You have a necessity for rest every day and I think we all understand each week also. Most people leave 1 day as their rest day. However us motocrosser's don't have that same luxury. We ride Saturday and Sunday just to get any amount of track time and then we return to the stress of the regular week. Now think about that accumulating day after day, week after week and month after month. Now your trying to work out during the week to get your fitness up to get faster. How do you think that looks over time?
Eventually if you compile this together across time you realize all that stress adds up. At a certain point your body cant return back above its baseline and adapt to make you better. This is when we apply an unload week. In strength training periodization this is a very formal process that occurs somewhere around the 4th or 5th week depending on different variables. However if you think about it, we work out maybe 2 or 3 times a week and ride maybe 1 or 2 times in the week for a total of about 4 of 5 days of training focus; then we try to get some rest. We just did 3 or 4 weeks of hard work why don't we get a week of rest just the same?
This doesn't mean that we take a whole week off by any means but we definitely reduce the overall volume of our work. We still give it some stress to make sure that we don't lose our progress we just achieved, but we allow our-self to fully recover and improve. This becomes a huge factor long term because of how intense motocross can be.
I don't know this for a scientific fact but I assume that guys racing outdoor nationals can take up to 5 days to fully recover. The reality is that certain types of stress can go beyond the models above for time of recovery. Doing a true max lift for something like squats or deadlift's could take you up to 5 to 7 days to recover completely. Now think 30 minutes +2 laps twice while its 100 degrees out, you better believe that's equivalent.
The last major thing is that people don't realize your body makes its adaptations during rest and especially sleep. When you sleep your body is able to fully repair itself. The other really cool thing that happens when you sleep is the movement patterns that you just practiced or learned become ingrained into your permanent memory bank. All sorts of cool things happen in our sleep. Just check out this Discovery Channel excerpt below.
The real take home points are this, plan yourself some rest time. It is important to improving your overall performance. This doesn't mean quit exercise completely for a whole week, just scale back the total volume of work. Think about the type of stress your body is undergoing and better plan your training. You can use the chart above with the different times as a general guideline to improve your training. Then go ahead and start adapting this chart to fit you and create some personal zones based off your own intensity and observations. Then you're able to better plan your overall training and better plan your rest to improve performance.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
5 Step Strategy to Teaching Skills (FSS)
Yes there are real strategies to teaching someone how to learn a skill and execute it effectively. The Five-Step Strategy (FSS) was originally develop by sport psychologist Robert N. Singer in 1988. According to his research in physical education and sport psychology, this strategy was most effective for teaching skills. This method has been used for middle aged early learners and also applied with success to older individuals.
Steinberg (2000), defines the FSS as the following:
Steinberg (2000), defines the FSS as the following:
- Readying
- Imaging
- Focusing
- Executing
- Evaluating
Readying - as a period before hand where the learner preps
themselves mentally. They identify stressors and emotions that may
negatively impact performance in order to achieve the correct mental arousal
state for performance.
Imaging – The person visualizes the intended outcome of the
act and (here’s the key) visualizes proper execution of the task. So the person
visualizes themselves accomplishing the goal and also doing the task/skill
correctly. How can you accomplish the goal without executing the skill correctly? However, this is overlooked by many.
Focusing – This is where the learner will focus on the
relevant cues to completing the task/skill correctly. Focusing on these correct
cues and not diverting attention to irrelevant internal and external stimulus’. A focus on external cues in relation to the body help someone better execute a movement. Internal focus is intended for helping someone to pay attention to the things only related to themselves and not objects or other factors outside of their control.
Executing – Performing the task/skill with a clear mind.
According to Singer, Lidor & Cauraugh (1993), improvement in performance is
found when the person reduces their mental awareness of mechanics during
execution of the skill. However, don’t be fooled by this because the person has
to be at a relatively advanced level of proficiency before something like this
can be done effectively. You must progress from 1)unconscious dysfunction to 2) conscious dysfunction then 3) unconscious execution.
Evaluating – The learner must evaluate their performance of
the skill in order to create their own independent ability to evaluate later
on. This can become complex though based on age, skill level and other factors.
Feedback mechanisms and evaluation are something that will be addressed by a
individual posts later on.
This concept doesn't seem very hard but, sometimes it has to
be spelled out and reiterated over time to ensure its use. I truly think that
this method laid out above is something that is more appropriate for your 250
junior, intermediate and up to all pro racers. I truly don’t expect a beginner
or a 65 jr kid to understand or even effectively complete the first three steps
in the FSS. So be smart with the application of this and understand that it
truly will work more effectively for older aged individuals and is merely a
basic strategy to guide your coaching.
Monday, February 10, 2014
The TRUTH About Energy Systems in Motocross
So here it is guys, the real whole truth about energy system demands in motocross. This is a long one but reading this in its entirety will change what you know about motocross. I know it's a big leap to say that this is the truth and what everyone else is saying isn't but, I truly feel that people have not dedicated their mind well enough to this sport.
What I mostly hear or so is the following; motocross is an endurance sport, motocross is a "mid-range strength sport" and a host of other things. Now I'll start off by saying I'm not the only one with this same view on the demands of the sport. My theory has been backed up by Dr. John Azevedo from Chico State University and one of his friends and professor at another California State University (a former professional racer). Here we go......
Motocross is truly derived from power movements. Think about each time you jump and land, hit a large bump, pre-load off a jump, scrub the bike or hit the whoops. These are very fast movements that require a lot of power and force output in a short amount of time that is repeated for 30 minutes plus two laps. Now think about how your suspension works, it goes both ways. Many time you have to put a lot of strength into your suspension to deal with the terrain, pushing against 100's of lbs of pressure in your forks. Then when you are responding to terrain reversely, you're absorbing 100's or more lbs of force into your body. If you took that analogy and transferred that straight to training you would be somewhere between a power and Olympic lifter. However, that's not the whole equation.
You have to execute these actions 100's of times in a single race and then do it a second time that day. For this reason some people consider this for lack of a better term "a mid-range strength sport". From this people try to tell you that you need to be doing crazy circuits and that these are the answer to motocross because it directly mimics what your doing on the bike. This gets at the idea of specificity of training. While this is great it misses a huge factor that we'll address in the endurance section later.
Now I'd like to quote a man who is considered one of the greatest in strength training and physical therapy in the world. Charlie Weingroff is a world leading expert and one of the most progressive men in the science of the body. In 2013 Charlie said this during a conference,"I don't do sport specific training, I do athlete specific training. The only person who does sport specific training are the coaches of that sport." This is something incredibly true about strength coaches and something many wont admit. They think too much about mimicking the sport rather than focusing on the true demands occurring in the persons body
Many people will still argue this high intensity circuit training focus and nothing else. They argue that it's important for buffering lactic acid and that's a big deal in this sport. Unfortunately lactic acid doesn't exist in the human body, if your up to date with research. We produce LACTATE as a result of breakdown of glycogen (sugars roughly) and it helps to shuttle out the build up of hydrogen ions from the breaking of bonds during natural process of cellular respiration (cells using energy). This lactate can actually be re-used by the body as an energy source more easily than other sources in the body. Excess free hydrogen ions that are not shuttled out by lactate, cause a burning sensation in the muscles as they Decrease your PH levels to more acidic.
Following all of this the endurance equation comes into the mix. The reality of heart rates in the sport is this; you have multiple factors that are not typically aerobically based, contributing to the increase of heart rate. When you lift a really heavy weight, your heart rate increases in the moments following the completion of the exercise. This is part of your bodies natural compensation to rid itself of Co2 bi-product build up. The heart rate also increases as a result of increased motor unit recruitment to supply necessary resources for the bodies output. The heart rate increases for a period of time but, this is not an aerobic specific response despite your heart rate being in those aerobic target zones. During a race you are doing this 100's of times with a short time length between the next effort, causing a recycle in this process. This compounds one upon the other without sufficient time for recovery, keeping a sustained high heart rate.
Now here is the REALLY IMPORTANT part. All of this lactate and complex motor unit recruitment stuff is all dependent upon one major aspect. It is all dependent upon your overall strength and why I referenced early in this piece why Olympic and power lifting is so crucial. THE SINGLE DETERMINING FACTOR OF MAX POWER IS MAX STRENGTH. The "mid-range strength sport" is what is referred to a specialty strength. All specialty strengths are dependent upon MAX STRENGTH. The stronger that you are, the more power you can put out. The more power you can put out and sustain, the easier the stimulus from racing becomes. Resultantly, your required effort from your overall capacity decreases and then the range of effort where you use more precious lactate and build up more excess hydrogen ion decreases. It really is that simple. Then you just need a strong aerobic base in order to recover better between individual efforts and each race, to be more efficient at expelling bi-product from exercise.
So you need to do your cardio and build up your baseline capacity without question. Then you need to get strong, really strong! After this you build up your sustained high intensity capacity and recycle through these processes. All of a sudden, everything on the track feels easier and so smooth. I can vouch for this because I've been there and felt it and it's like you've never felt on the bike before.
What I mostly hear or so is the following; motocross is an endurance sport, motocross is a "mid-range strength sport" and a host of other things. Now I'll start off by saying I'm not the only one with this same view on the demands of the sport. My theory has been backed up by Dr. John Azevedo from Chico State University and one of his friends and professor at another California State University (a former professional racer). Here we go......
Motocross is truly derived from power movements. Think about each time you jump and land, hit a large bump, pre-load off a jump, scrub the bike or hit the whoops. These are very fast movements that require a lot of power and force output in a short amount of time that is repeated for 30 minutes plus two laps. Now think about how your suspension works, it goes both ways. Many time you have to put a lot of strength into your suspension to deal with the terrain, pushing against 100's of lbs of pressure in your forks. Then when you are responding to terrain reversely, you're absorbing 100's or more lbs of force into your body. If you took that analogy and transferred that straight to training you would be somewhere between a power and Olympic lifter. However, that's not the whole equation.
You have to execute these actions 100's of times in a single race and then do it a second time that day. For this reason some people consider this for lack of a better term "a mid-range strength sport". From this people try to tell you that you need to be doing crazy circuits and that these are the answer to motocross because it directly mimics what your doing on the bike. This gets at the idea of specificity of training. While this is great it misses a huge factor that we'll address in the endurance section later.
Now I'd like to quote a man who is considered one of the greatest in strength training and physical therapy in the world. Charlie Weingroff is a world leading expert and one of the most progressive men in the science of the body. In 2013 Charlie said this during a conference,"I don't do sport specific training, I do athlete specific training. The only person who does sport specific training are the coaches of that sport." This is something incredibly true about strength coaches and something many wont admit. They think too much about mimicking the sport rather than focusing on the true demands occurring in the persons body
Many people will still argue this high intensity circuit training focus and nothing else. They argue that it's important for buffering lactic acid and that's a big deal in this sport. Unfortunately lactic acid doesn't exist in the human body, if your up to date with research. We produce LACTATE as a result of breakdown of glycogen (sugars roughly) and it helps to shuttle out the build up of hydrogen ions from the breaking of bonds during natural process of cellular respiration (cells using energy). This lactate can actually be re-used by the body as an energy source more easily than other sources in the body. Excess free hydrogen ions that are not shuttled out by lactate, cause a burning sensation in the muscles as they Decrease your PH levels to more acidic.
Following all of this the endurance equation comes into the mix. The reality of heart rates in the sport is this; you have multiple factors that are not typically aerobically based, contributing to the increase of heart rate. When you lift a really heavy weight, your heart rate increases in the moments following the completion of the exercise. This is part of your bodies natural compensation to rid itself of Co2 bi-product build up. The heart rate also increases as a result of increased motor unit recruitment to supply necessary resources for the bodies output. The heart rate increases for a period of time but, this is not an aerobic specific response despite your heart rate being in those aerobic target zones. During a race you are doing this 100's of times with a short time length between the next effort, causing a recycle in this process. This compounds one upon the other without sufficient time for recovery, keeping a sustained high heart rate.
Now here is the REALLY IMPORTANT part. All of this lactate and complex motor unit recruitment stuff is all dependent upon one major aspect. It is all dependent upon your overall strength and why I referenced early in this piece why Olympic and power lifting is so crucial. THE SINGLE DETERMINING FACTOR OF MAX POWER IS MAX STRENGTH. The "mid-range strength sport" is what is referred to a specialty strength. All specialty strengths are dependent upon MAX STRENGTH. The stronger that you are, the more power you can put out. The more power you can put out and sustain, the easier the stimulus from racing becomes. Resultantly, your required effort from your overall capacity decreases and then the range of effort where you use more precious lactate and build up more excess hydrogen ion decreases. It really is that simple. Then you just need a strong aerobic base in order to recover better between individual efforts and each race, to be more efficient at expelling bi-product from exercise.
So you need to do your cardio and build up your baseline capacity without question. Then you need to get strong, really strong! After this you build up your sustained high intensity capacity and recycle through these processes. All of a sudden, everything on the track feels easier and so smooth. I can vouch for this because I've been there and felt it and it's like you've never felt on the bike before.
Friday, January 17, 2014
Vibration and Bike Setup - Arm Pump Science
We all know that bike setup is important for your speed, comfort and to not wear you down so fast. I'm not here to tell you exactly how to setup the bike but, to educate you on why that setup impacts your physical performance so much.
We all have dealt with the revered arm-pump. This horrible mechanism comes to haunt you in the late stages of a race and can cause your lap times to seriously increase and you lose positions. This mechanism is fairly complex and we have some real challenges in dealing with it. The first thing that I will state is why I don't think it's lactic-acid.
I have heard this before from people and lactic-acid is argued to potentially not even exist in the human body because, it requires a level of acidity the body cant achieve or maintain life at. Regardless we know that Lactate does exist, which helps to shuttle out negative bi-products from exercise and also free Hydrogen ions (H+). These H+ cause your body to be more acidic and can cause that burning sensation you feel. Additionally, the presence of increased H+ concentrations can cause muscles to fatigue faster by inhibiting part of the process that allows them to contract or by competing with part of the complex chemical process of initiating a muscle contraction.
So now.....we all in the motocross world know that your suspension can increase this arm pump and your grip choice for your bars can reduce some of it. The key is why? Vibration!!
Your bike itself when you roll the throttle creates a certain amount of vibration. This vibration then resonates through your body. Additionally, a rough track with bad suspension will put a large volume of high impact stress into your arms from lack of effective absorption from the forks themselves. This in essence acts similar to vibration when the bars are jerking around in your hands, though this would be at a small scale level. This is insanely critical to your performance and this is why.
Bovenzi and Griffin (1997), found that high frequency vibration caused a reduction in blood flow to the fingers, when the hands were tested for blood flow during different vibration frequencies. Additionally Bovenzi et al. (1999), found a reduction in grip strength from the vibration caused by loggers using hand saws. This research shows that high vibration can potentially reduce blood flow to your hands, deprive you of required nutrients to maintain strong muscular contractions and lead to fatigue. This is one potential reason. Some conflicting evidence states a different idea.
According to Nakamura et al. (1995), blood circulation was increased when exposed to whole body vibration and grasping bars. Now additionally what we know in the training world is that high frequency vibration can cause greater amounts of motor neuron activation. In layman's terms; the higher the rate of vibration the greater amount of muscle activation over all and the faster your body learns to do that. This is of course is only true and studied up to somewhere around 80Hz or slightly more.
According to Hazell et al. (2007), higher frequencies of vibration increased muscle EMG activity in general. An average of 3.5% increase in muscle activity was observed across multiple exercises for different parts of the body. This then supports the findings of Nakamura et al. (1995) that blood flow is most likely increased during vibration. Increased blood flow during increased muscle activity seems logical. This though means a shorter time to fatigue from working harder and an increase in H+ that leads to faster fatigue/muscle acidity from more work.
Think of when you were hurt and hadn't been on the bike for a long time. When you first got on and those first few weeks riding, you get arm pump pretty bad until you ride more and it slowly dissipates. The rougher the track the worse it is but, overall it is less the more frequently you ride. It's just like weight training, the more you work the more your body adapts to the stress.
Now this isn't revolutionary science. We've all played a game or been in some situation where you held onto something that was vibrating and it caused your hands to cramp up. I remember playing an Adams Family game at the arcade where you had to hold onto the handles as long as you could while they vibrated at higher and higher frequencies. Eventually it was too intense and you couldn't bear it. Then your hands hurt for a while after. It's the exact same thing just on a larger scale and for greater duration's of time.
In conclusion, I believe that the evidence more clearly supports the idea that the vibration from the bike increases the amount of work the muscles are doing in a very short amount of time, which leads to greater fatigue based on the mechanisms mentioned above. Your arms work harder and create more H+ to increase the muscle acidity. The time to fatigue is already naturally going to be less but, the now secondary effects of increased H+ makes things far worse. The kicker is that your body can only produce so much lactate and transport bi-product out of your body so fast. While the process to get rid of this bad stuff moves along at about the pace of a little Chevy Geo, your muscles are working at about the pace of a Ferrari 458.
Considering all of this and the simplicity of it, you can see why bike setup becomes so critical. You could inadvertently sabotage your own physical performance on the track. The key is to take this simple idea and apply it to your bike setup, to optimize your performance.
References:
Bovenzi M., Zadini A., Franzinelli A., & Borgogni F. (1991). Occupational musculoskeletal disorders in the neck and upper limbs of forestry workers exposed to hand-arm vibration. Ergonomics, 34, 547-562.
Bovenzi M., & Griffin M.J., (1997). Haemodynamic changes in ipsilateral and contralateral fingers caused by acute exposures to hand transmitted vibration. Occupational Environmental Medicine, 54, 566-576.
Bovenzi M., Lindsell C.J., & Griffin M.J., (1999). Magnitude of acute exposures to vibration and finger circulation. Scandinavian Journal of Work Environment Health, 25, 278-284.
Hazell, T.J., Jakobi, J.M., & Kenno, K.A. (2007). Effects of whole-body vibration on upper and lower body EMG during static and dynamic contractions. Journal of Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism, 32, 1156-1163
Nakamura H., Ariizumi M., Okazawa T., Nagase H., Yoshida M., & Okada A. (1995). Involvement of endothelin in peripheral circulatory induced by hand-arm vibration. Central European Journal of Public Health, 3 (suppl), 27-30.
We all have dealt with the revered arm-pump. This horrible mechanism comes to haunt you in the late stages of a race and can cause your lap times to seriously increase and you lose positions. This mechanism is fairly complex and we have some real challenges in dealing with it. The first thing that I will state is why I don't think it's lactic-acid.
I have heard this before from people and lactic-acid is argued to potentially not even exist in the human body because, it requires a level of acidity the body cant achieve or maintain life at. Regardless we know that Lactate does exist, which helps to shuttle out negative bi-products from exercise and also free Hydrogen ions (H+). These H+ cause your body to be more acidic and can cause that burning sensation you feel. Additionally, the presence of increased H+ concentrations can cause muscles to fatigue faster by inhibiting part of the process that allows them to contract or by competing with part of the complex chemical process of initiating a muscle contraction.
So now.....we all in the motocross world know that your suspension can increase this arm pump and your grip choice for your bars can reduce some of it. The key is why? Vibration!!
Your bike itself when you roll the throttle creates a certain amount of vibration. This vibration then resonates through your body. Additionally, a rough track with bad suspension will put a large volume of high impact stress into your arms from lack of effective absorption from the forks themselves. This in essence acts similar to vibration when the bars are jerking around in your hands, though this would be at a small scale level. This is insanely critical to your performance and this is why.
Bovenzi and Griffin (1997), found that high frequency vibration caused a reduction in blood flow to the fingers, when the hands were tested for blood flow during different vibration frequencies. Additionally Bovenzi et al. (1999), found a reduction in grip strength from the vibration caused by loggers using hand saws. This research shows that high vibration can potentially reduce blood flow to your hands, deprive you of required nutrients to maintain strong muscular contractions and lead to fatigue. This is one potential reason. Some conflicting evidence states a different idea.
According to Nakamura et al. (1995), blood circulation was increased when exposed to whole body vibration and grasping bars. Now additionally what we know in the training world is that high frequency vibration can cause greater amounts of motor neuron activation. In layman's terms; the higher the rate of vibration the greater amount of muscle activation over all and the faster your body learns to do that. This is of course is only true and studied up to somewhere around 80Hz or slightly more.
According to Hazell et al. (2007), higher frequencies of vibration increased muscle EMG activity in general. An average of 3.5% increase in muscle activity was observed across multiple exercises for different parts of the body. This then supports the findings of Nakamura et al. (1995) that blood flow is most likely increased during vibration. Increased blood flow during increased muscle activity seems logical. This though means a shorter time to fatigue from working harder and an increase in H+ that leads to faster fatigue/muscle acidity from more work.
Think of when you were hurt and hadn't been on the bike for a long time. When you first got on and those first few weeks riding, you get arm pump pretty bad until you ride more and it slowly dissipates. The rougher the track the worse it is but, overall it is less the more frequently you ride. It's just like weight training, the more you work the more your body adapts to the stress.
Now this isn't revolutionary science. We've all played a game or been in some situation where you held onto something that was vibrating and it caused your hands to cramp up. I remember playing an Adams Family game at the arcade where you had to hold onto the handles as long as you could while they vibrated at higher and higher frequencies. Eventually it was too intense and you couldn't bear it. Then your hands hurt for a while after. It's the exact same thing just on a larger scale and for greater duration's of time.
In conclusion, I believe that the evidence more clearly supports the idea that the vibration from the bike increases the amount of work the muscles are doing in a very short amount of time, which leads to greater fatigue based on the mechanisms mentioned above. Your arms work harder and create more H+ to increase the muscle acidity. The time to fatigue is already naturally going to be less but, the now secondary effects of increased H+ makes things far worse. The kicker is that your body can only produce so much lactate and transport bi-product out of your body so fast. While the process to get rid of this bad stuff moves along at about the pace of a little Chevy Geo, your muscles are working at about the pace of a Ferrari 458.
Considering all of this and the simplicity of it, you can see why bike setup becomes so critical. You could inadvertently sabotage your own physical performance on the track. The key is to take this simple idea and apply it to your bike setup, to optimize your performance.
References:
Bovenzi M., Zadini A., Franzinelli A., & Borgogni F. (1991). Occupational musculoskeletal disorders in the neck and upper limbs of forestry workers exposed to hand-arm vibration. Ergonomics, 34, 547-562.
Bovenzi M., & Griffin M.J., (1997). Haemodynamic changes in ipsilateral and contralateral fingers caused by acute exposures to hand transmitted vibration. Occupational Environmental Medicine, 54, 566-576.
Bovenzi M., Lindsell C.J., & Griffin M.J., (1999). Magnitude of acute exposures to vibration and finger circulation. Scandinavian Journal of Work Environment Health, 25, 278-284.
Hazell, T.J., Jakobi, J.M., & Kenno, K.A. (2007). Effects of whole-body vibration on upper and lower body EMG during static and dynamic contractions. Journal of Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism, 32, 1156-1163
Nakamura H., Ariizumi M., Okazawa T., Nagase H., Yoshida M., & Okada A. (1995). Involvement of endothelin in peripheral circulatory induced by hand-arm vibration. Central European Journal of Public Health, 3 (suppl), 27-30.
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Phoenix 450 Breakdown and Power Rank Introduced
Phoenix was a bit more of back to normal for racing. There were a few surprises but overall it was closer to what we have come to expect over the past couple of seasons. So lets get to it.
Track Conditions
The track seemed to be pretty good and didn't breakdown as fast as A1. 83% of the fastest laps registered happened in the first half of the race. After lap 10 only 3 racers registered their fastest lap times. This means the track was most likely getting slower as a whole because, you would expect guys to hit their fastest times once the pack got spread out. Which they did but, they did that mostly inside of the first 8 to 10 laps. The only logical conclusion is the track as a whole was breaking down as a whole. This seem to provide some pretty good racing though.
Below is a frequency analysis chart, looking at how frequently people set their fastest lap on what number lap. For example the first column 2 had 3 people set their fastest lap. I do apologize for the lack of organization of title on this chart though, next time will be more descriptive.
Most Consistent:
Looking at all of the lap times the one guy pops out to me, Justin Brayton. The top 10 most consistent racers of the night breakdown as follows:
1. Justin Brayton
2. James Stewart
3. Ryan Villopoto
4. Ryan Dungey
5. Justin Barcia
6. Andrew Short
7. Chad Reed
8. Nick Wey
9. Broc Tickle
10. Ivan Tedesco
Consistency again shows some correlation to where guys finish. Brayton was the most consistent guy overall and had arguably maybe his best performance in Supercross to date. Stewart charged forward, Villopoto won and the rest of the group here doesn't finish off far from where they are ranked in this
Power Ranking
I decided to play around a bit with a power ranking system based off of fastest lap time, variation of lap times and where they finished. Now almost everyone finished 20 laps. The few riders who didn't I simply used the forecasting ability of Excel to predict their potential lap times for lap 19, 20 or both. From there I found their fastest lap times, the variance in their lap times overall and compared this against where they actually finished in the race. This comes together to create what I call a power rank and I will use this overtime to see if we can predict where guys will finish in the next race before it even happens.
Phoenix Power Rankings
1. Villopoto - Finished 1st
2. Brayton - Finished 2nd
3. Dungey - Finished 3rd
4. Stewart - Finished 4th
5. Barcia - Finished 5th
6. Roczen - Finished 6th
7. Short - Finished 7th
8. Tickle - Finished 8th
9. Reed - Finished 9th
10. Moss - Finished 11th
Phoenix Rank Variance + Fast Lap Rank + Average Lap Time
1. Villopoto - Finished 1st
2. Dungey - Finished 3rd
2. Stewart -Finished 4th
2. Brayton - Finished 2nd
5. Barcia - Finished 5th
6. Roczen - Finished 6th
7. Short - Finished 7th
8. Tickle - Finished 8th
9. Tedesco - Finished 12th
10. Reed - Finished 9th
The results from this were pretty encouraging. This shows that the variance in lap times, your fastest lap and average lap times overall are a strong predictor of where a racer will finish. There was a 3 way tie for 2nd place, but they all somewhere in those 3 positions. So what does this truly mean?
This means that in order to be fast you need to be consistent. You can physically measure progress in your lap times by analyzing these variables and can see how you are doing. Now this doesn't tell you what factors create consistency and reduce variation in your lap times, plus make you fast. But it does let you know what factors to analyze for yourself. Then each individual has different things that make them more or less consistent on the track and influence performance.
Villopoto vs Brayton
![]()
This paints an interesting picture about the race. You can definitely see where Brayton's average times were dropping quickly as Villopoto's average lap time was increasing. This resulted in the late battle and charge that we saw. Interesting to see how their race looked visually based on times and in comparison. Brayton seemed to stay consistent to gain the lead and as Villopoto seemed to turn the afterburners on. Then possibly struggle a bit with consistency based on whatever was occurring in the race and Brayton made the late charge to give us some excitement at the end of the race.
Track Conditions
The track seemed to be pretty good and didn't breakdown as fast as A1. 83% of the fastest laps registered happened in the first half of the race. After lap 10 only 3 racers registered their fastest lap times. This means the track was most likely getting slower as a whole because, you would expect guys to hit their fastest times once the pack got spread out. Which they did but, they did that mostly inside of the first 8 to 10 laps. The only logical conclusion is the track as a whole was breaking down as a whole. This seem to provide some pretty good racing though.
Below is a frequency analysis chart, looking at how frequently people set their fastest lap on what number lap. For example the first column 2 had 3 people set their fastest lap. I do apologize for the lack of organization of title on this chart though, next time will be more descriptive.
Most Consistent:
Looking at all of the lap times the one guy pops out to me, Justin Brayton. The top 10 most consistent racers of the night breakdown as follows:
1. Justin Brayton
2. James Stewart
3. Ryan Villopoto
4. Ryan Dungey
5. Justin Barcia
6. Andrew Short
7. Chad Reed
8. Nick Wey
9. Broc Tickle
10. Ivan Tedesco
Consistency again shows some correlation to where guys finish. Brayton was the most consistent guy overall and had arguably maybe his best performance in Supercross to date. Stewart charged forward, Villopoto won and the rest of the group here doesn't finish off far from where they are ranked in this
Power Ranking
I decided to play around a bit with a power ranking system based off of fastest lap time, variation of lap times and where they finished. Now almost everyone finished 20 laps. The few riders who didn't I simply used the forecasting ability of Excel to predict their potential lap times for lap 19, 20 or both. From there I found their fastest lap times, the variance in their lap times overall and compared this against where they actually finished in the race. This comes together to create what I call a power rank and I will use this overtime to see if we can predict where guys will finish in the next race before it even happens.
Phoenix Power Rankings
1. Villopoto - Finished 1st
2. Brayton - Finished 2nd
3. Dungey - Finished 3rd
4. Stewart - Finished 4th
5. Barcia - Finished 5th
6. Roczen - Finished 6th
7. Short - Finished 7th
8. Tickle - Finished 8th
9. Reed - Finished 9th
10. Moss - Finished 11th
Phoenix Rank Variance + Fast Lap Rank + Average Lap Time
1. Villopoto - Finished 1st
2. Dungey - Finished 3rd
2. Stewart -Finished 4th
2. Brayton - Finished 2nd
5. Barcia - Finished 5th
6. Roczen - Finished 6th
7. Short - Finished 7th
8. Tickle - Finished 8th
9. Tedesco - Finished 12th
10. Reed - Finished 9th
The results from this were pretty encouraging. This shows that the variance in lap times, your fastest lap and average lap times overall are a strong predictor of where a racer will finish. There was a 3 way tie for 2nd place, but they all somewhere in those 3 positions. So what does this truly mean?
This means that in order to be fast you need to be consistent. You can physically measure progress in your lap times by analyzing these variables and can see how you are doing. Now this doesn't tell you what factors create consistency and reduce variation in your lap times, plus make you fast. But it does let you know what factors to analyze for yourself. Then each individual has different things that make them more or less consistent on the track and influence performance.
Villopoto vs Brayton
This paints an interesting picture about the race. You can definitely see where Brayton's average times were dropping quickly as Villopoto's average lap time was increasing. This resulted in the late battle and charge that we saw. Interesting to see how their race looked visually based on times and in comparison. Brayton seemed to stay consistent to gain the lead and as Villopoto seemed to turn the afterburners on. Then possibly struggle a bit with consistency based on whatever was occurring in the race and Brayton made the late charge to give us some excitement at the end of the race.
Monday, January 6, 2014
A1 450 Breakdown
The times and information that I am using in this article were obtained from the AMA by their website http://archives.amasupercross.com/2014/index.html?EventID=S1405. From there I analyzed the data as a whole. The following is what we are able to tell about the A1 450 main event.
Track Times
From the lap times as a whole we can theorize that the track began to breakdown and the physical stress of racing started to really show itself around lap 7. At this point the lap times as a whole began to drop. Previous to lap 7 or at least at lap 7, approximately 67% of the field turned their fastest lap and 87% by lap 9 (not including those who DNF'd early on). This also seems to be around the time that the race started to get really interesting and the racing got close. The following is a ranking of each lap overall. I did eliminate as many anomalies as I could, that would skew the results.
Lap 1 - not timed
Lap 2 - 14th
Lap 3 - 1st
Lap 4 - 4th
Lap 5 - 3rd
Lap 6 - 2nd
Lap 7 - 13th
Lap 8 - 5th
Lap 9 - 6th
Lap 10 - 8th
Lap 11 - 19th
Lap 12 - 7th
Lap 13 - 9th
Lap 14 - 10th
Lap 15 - 12th
Lap 16 - 11th
Lap 17 - 16th
Lap 18 - 15th
Lap 19 - 17th
Lap 20 - 18th
Speed and Consistency vs Result
This category looks at who was the overall fastest across the duration of the race and who was the most consistent with those lap times. This is important for evaluating performance. You might get a start like Alessi in Heat 1 and be maybe 3 or 4 seconds ahead on lap 2 but loose that slowly across the race, yet still win. If you want to evaluate the performance of a racer not by result alone, then this is how you would do it. I will only list the top 10 though, as the full field is not necessary.
1. Broc Tickle
2. Ken Roczen
3. Ryan Dungey
4. Jake Weimer
5. Andrew Short
6. Justin Barcia
7. Justin Brayton
8. Chad Reed
9. Josh Grant
10. Ryan Villopoto
If we include where the riders officially finished the story is as follows:
1. Ken Roczen
2. Ryan Dungey
3. Broc Tickle
4. Justin Barcia
5. Chad Reed
6. Justin Brayton
7. Jake Weimer
8. Andrew Short
9. Josh Grant
10. Ryan Villopoto
Conclusions:
From this I think we can tell that Ken absolutely deserved to be in first. Now we all have to admit that Stewart would have passed him if he stayed on two wheels. His results were excluded due to his DNF. Roczen though came out and showed everyone in the business that he is going to be for real this year.
Stewart made a real presence and I think the hype around him making a comeback, may be true...this time. I did find that his fastest lap and the overall fastest lap of the race was lap 15. He went down on lap 16 and I think we can surely say that James Stewart is back.
Villopoto was a real shock to everyone. He started strong and went down about the time that the track slowed down overall. The real shocker is after the crash, him not being able to turn it around and surprise us with his ferociousness. At lap 16 he fell off the pace and his lap times were above 1 minute while the leaders were maintaining under 1 minute on average. Whether he decided to play it safe or the crash really took more out of him than we thought, only he will know.
Chad Reed I think proved he is back with some real potential. Why he started to fall off the pace the last couple of lap, who knows. But regardless it was only about about 1 second or less and he showed everyone that he is back in a big way.
Justin Barcia showed that he does have some real potential to be a contender. He rode extremely well and scored high in all of the categories listed. Once he puts everything together as a whole with a bit more experience, he will be consistently challenging for podiums and wins.
Broc Tickle is the real shocker here. He finished 8th overall yet he was the most consistent on his lap times overall while maintaining highest possible rate of speed for his abilities. I think it's big leap forward for him and the RCH team. Regardless of his final finish I think this shows he has real potential to put the team on the map this year. If he would have started better and been further up front, who knows exactly where he would have finished. Overall though I would say to look out for Tickle this season. It may be his year to make a statement in the 450 class.
Track Times
From the lap times as a whole we can theorize that the track began to breakdown and the physical stress of racing started to really show itself around lap 7. At this point the lap times as a whole began to drop. Previous to lap 7 or at least at lap 7, approximately 67% of the field turned their fastest lap and 87% by lap 9 (not including those who DNF'd early on). This also seems to be around the time that the race started to get really interesting and the racing got close. The following is a ranking of each lap overall. I did eliminate as many anomalies as I could, that would skew the results.
Lap 1 - not timed
Lap 2 - 14th
Lap 3 - 1st
Lap 4 - 4th
Lap 5 - 3rd
Lap 6 - 2nd
Lap 7 - 13th
Lap 8 - 5th
Lap 9 - 6th
Lap 10 - 8th
Lap 11 - 19th
Lap 12 - 7th
Lap 13 - 9th
Lap 14 - 10th
Lap 15 - 12th
Lap 16 - 11th
Lap 17 - 16th
Lap 18 - 15th
Lap 19 - 17th
Lap 20 - 18th
Speed and Consistency vs Result
This category looks at who was the overall fastest across the duration of the race and who was the most consistent with those lap times. This is important for evaluating performance. You might get a start like Alessi in Heat 1 and be maybe 3 or 4 seconds ahead on lap 2 but loose that slowly across the race, yet still win. If you want to evaluate the performance of a racer not by result alone, then this is how you would do it. I will only list the top 10 though, as the full field is not necessary.
1. Broc Tickle
2. Ken Roczen
3. Ryan Dungey
4. Jake Weimer
5. Andrew Short
6. Justin Barcia
7. Justin Brayton
8. Chad Reed
9. Josh Grant
10. Ryan Villopoto
If we include where the riders officially finished the story is as follows:
1. Ken Roczen
2. Ryan Dungey
3. Broc Tickle
4. Justin Barcia
5. Chad Reed
6. Justin Brayton
7. Jake Weimer
8. Andrew Short
9. Josh Grant
10. Ryan Villopoto
Conclusions:
From this I think we can tell that Ken absolutely deserved to be in first. Now we all have to admit that Stewart would have passed him if he stayed on two wheels. His results were excluded due to his DNF. Roczen though came out and showed everyone in the business that he is going to be for real this year.
Stewart made a real presence and I think the hype around him making a comeback, may be true...this time. I did find that his fastest lap and the overall fastest lap of the race was lap 15. He went down on lap 16 and I think we can surely say that James Stewart is back.
Villopoto was a real shock to everyone. He started strong and went down about the time that the track slowed down overall. The real shocker is after the crash, him not being able to turn it around and surprise us with his ferociousness. At lap 16 he fell off the pace and his lap times were above 1 minute while the leaders were maintaining under 1 minute on average. Whether he decided to play it safe or the crash really took more out of him than we thought, only he will know.
Chad Reed I think proved he is back with some real potential. Why he started to fall off the pace the last couple of lap, who knows. But regardless it was only about about 1 second or less and he showed everyone that he is back in a big way.
Justin Barcia showed that he does have some real potential to be a contender. He rode extremely well and scored high in all of the categories listed. Once he puts everything together as a whole with a bit more experience, he will be consistently challenging for podiums and wins.
Broc Tickle is the real shocker here. He finished 8th overall yet he was the most consistent on his lap times overall while maintaining highest possible rate of speed for his abilities. I think it's big leap forward for him and the RCH team. Regardless of his final finish I think this shows he has real potential to put the team on the map this year. If he would have started better and been further up front, who knows exactly where he would have finished. Overall though I would say to look out for Tickle this season. It may be his year to make a statement in the 450 class.
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