Driver Fitness


We all love driving events. We like them so much that we spend an inordinate amount of money trying to make our car go faster. 

There is also a low budget approach to being faster. Let’s make the driver faster. Think about your fitness program. 

Training outside the car will make you faster in the car. Think about how much time you spend working on your car. It may be time to think about working on you. Are you the same person who buys titanium bolts to save weight and then eats a whole pizza for lunch? 

Your Fitness Program: You don't need strength to drive your autocross or track car. You need to be in peak physical condition for a relatively small amount of time. Brad Sikes works with NASCAR’s Kevin Harvick and he puts the emphasis on cardio training. He believes you should be doing short bursts of high intensity exercise where you reach your maximum heart rate. Once you reach your goal you should then back off to let your body recover. If you think of a roller coaster you get the idea. The idea is to elevate the heart rate and then let it recover. They generally go by the name High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT

In the beginning of your fitness program you might use 80% of your heart rate as a goal. The good news is that these high intensity sessions only need to be done a couple of days a week. The other days you should be doing lighter sessions where you only reach 60% to 70% of your maximum heart rate

Your maximum heart rate is a function of your age. The formula for your maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age. There are a number of online tools that will do all of the calculations for you. If you’re 45 years old your maximum heart rate is roughly 165 beats per minute (bpm) and you should be able to maintain that level for about three minutes. 

Just for comparison you might consider that the average F1 and Indy car driver reaches 190 bpm during a race. They have a resting heart rate of 40 bpm. That is due to both their age and their level of conditioning. 

You should give some serious consideration to using a professional trainer. You can do some serious damage to your body if you exercise improperly. A trainer can help you with form and make sure you’re progressing. You already have a driving coach. Now you need a coach for your body. Going fast has never been easy.

Data Logging Your Body: Once you know where your heart rate is on a daily basis it might be nice to know where it is while you’re behind the wheel. Collecting data during your workouts is important but the real test is how you do while racing. 

The technology to monitor your heart rate while driving is very basic. The critical part is the download. Any device you purchase should have at least a 30-minute recording capacity. You don’t need to see your heart rate while driving. You do though need a device that can record your heart rate information so that you have it available later in the day, or even the next week.

Most people today are looking at wrist devices. The Polar A360 (www.polar.com) is a wrist-based heart monitor with download capabilities. The traditional chest band is great but if you use a cool suit this traditional chest band will give you some faulty data.

If you decide that all of this works you might think about stepping up to a biometric wireless connection. You can now connect your body to your car’s telemetry. The Wireless Motorsport (https://wirelessmotorsport.com) system measures heart rate, body temperature and your oxygen level. There is even an optional carbon monoxide sensor. It’s not that expensive at less than $700. You can see the system in action on You Tube. Do a search for Wireless Motorsport on You Tube.


The old adage was “How fast do you want to go? How much money do you have?” Today the adage is “How fit are you?” 

Williams F1 Workout



The Jenson Button Fitness Program



The Daniel Ricciardo Workout
















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Corvette C4: The Rear Suspension

Image
Your C4 Corvette has, or maybe once had, a great suspension. It could very well be worn out by now though.  C4 Corvettes are old cars and the parts have started to wear out. It's not that any one item is really bad. The problem is that all of the wear has added up. A little bit of wear in a lot of places means you have a lot of total wear. It's a cumulative thing. You may not even notice how worn out things are since you've probably never driven a perfect C4. Your Corvette seems perfectly normal to you even if it isn't. You just assume that all C4 Corvettes drive the way your car does. One of the reasons aftermarket parts seem to make such a huge difference with older Corvettes is that aftermarket parts are generally used to replace worn out factory parts. People put some new aftermarket part on their car and extol the virtues of that part. They would have felt the same difference if they had used a stock GM part.  New parts make a huge difference whether they are OEM o...
Read more

Hi Tech Coatings

Image
Thanks to the Department of Defense and NASA we have an entire family of chemical surface treatments that can be applied to various engine components. Our tax dollars have made all of this possible.              Most of the cutting edge developments in both F1 and NASCAR the past few years have been in ever more sophisticated coating technology. Even after all these decades coatings remain as the cutting edge of engine technology.             These coatings are not just about reducing friction. C oatings won’t make a measurable power difference unless the motor is turning over 6,500 rpm. Thermal barrier coatings and dry film lubricant coatings though don’t need to be spinning high rpms to be beneficial.              High tech coatings will though make a difference in three areas.        Increased thermal efficiency of the engine   ...
Read more

Garage Fires

Image
If you set your house on fire you’re going to have some issues with the family. You may have to give up on cars and play a lot of golf. That’s just one reason why you need a fire extinguisher in your garage. The very first thing you should do if you set fire to your garage is to call 911. Do that before you even grab your extinguisher. Next make certain that every member of the family is out of the house. Your family is a lot more important than the Lotus XI that’s on fire in your home garage. Human life is always more important than property. With the fire department on the way and the family standing on the front lawn you can now reach for the extinguisher. Types of Fires: There are five different types of fires. We can rule out cooking oil fires in your garage so that brings us down to four. Class A: These fires involve ordinary combustibles  such as  wood, paper, cloth, trash, and plastics . This is your basic trash fire. Class A fires always leave ash when the fire is ov...
Read more