If there is any area of training that seems to be neglected in our sport of Motocross, then in my opinion it is stretching. Stretching before and after any exercise, whether you are on or off the bike is extremely important if you hope to remain injury free and also allow those muscles to work to their full potential.

Stretching is a major part of professional riders’ preparation.

Make time
Nowadays everybody seems to be in such a rush with whatever they are doing that something has to sacrifice. By the time you factor in getting bikes ready, drive time out to a track, grab some food and fuel on the way, the list goes on and on. And with the number of tracks these days dropping in numbers seemingly by the day, the duration of these drives to actually get to a track seems to be getting longer and longer, once again taking more of our valuable time out of our day. The end result is normally a quick throw down of food, while you are unloading your bike, quickly fuel up the big girl, throw some gear on and you are out on the track before you know it.

Because basically you’ve only got a couple of hours before you need to be loaded back up again to beat the traffic on the drive home. The one thing that gets sacrifices though is the important warm up/stretch session. Likewise the cool down/stretch session is thrown out the window and normally not even considered. The only way to consistently include your before and after stretch session is to factor it in with your schedule. The only reason that nine out of 10 riders run out of time to stretch is purely because they don’t consider it important enough to put time aside for. If you had an important business meeting to be at by a certain time but you had to get fuel on the way, then you would factor that into your time schedule, so by planning your day a bit better you will find that you have plenty of time for a quick stretch session before and after your training.

Why stretch?
It’s a question I get asked quite often at riding schools and to be honest there is a simple answer and a more complex answer. The simple answer is to warm your muscles up before exercise. But to answer the question properly you need to realise that your muscles are made up of many, tiny little muscles fibres that by themselves are quite fragile. Every time we do any form of training these small muscle fibres are continuously getting little tears and tweaks that we normally wouldn’t even notice. It is only the big ones that we really notice because of the pain caused by such tears. These muscle fibres are continuously contracting and relaxing during everyday activity let alone hard physical workouts, so you can imagine the workload on these muscles when they are under a lot of stress. Just like the engine in your motorbike needs to be warmed up before a hard ride, your muscles need even more attention to detail. You wouldn’t start your bike up cold and hold it flat out for a long period of time, so you shouldn’t do a similar thing with your body.

Warm up before stretching!
Quite a few years ago exercise physiologists used to say that a 10 minute stretch session before and after a hard workout was enough to keep those muscles in good shape. Nowadays it is common knowledge in the fitness industry that you should warm up the muscles gradually before you even start stretching them. Scientific tests have proven that aggressively stretching cold muscles can cause muscle tears as easily as exercising without stretching. So you need to make sure you do a small amount of light exercising before you stretch. If you are at a track about to go for a ride then light jogging on the spot, or even some star jumps can get that blood pumping around the body and warm up those muscles before you start stretching them.

A light warm-up before stretching is vital. Image: Simon Makker/Makkreative.com.

The cool down
Cooling down properly is very important after all exercising but particularly after those very hard workouts where your body is producing a lot of lactic acid. In this case it is no good to finish a very hard workout and go straight into a cool down stretch session. To flush out most of the lactic acid out of your muscles you need to keep exercising at a much lower intensity for at least 10 minutes before you start your cool down stretch session. The difference in your recovery will be massive and you will notice a huge difference when you wake up the following day.

When?
There is really no bad time to stretch. I’ve had times in the past when I’ve gone a bit too hard with my training and you pay for it over the next couple of days. I found myself stretching six or seven times a day and each time I put myself through a stretch session I felt that little bit more relaxed and recovered that little bit more. It’s easy to neglect your stretching when your muscles aren’t hurting, however they still need stretching. You would be surprised how many young riders I come across that cant even touch their toes. As kids we are all that flexible that it almost looks like we are made out of play-doe, yet as we get older a lot of us lose their flexibility. Once you have lost it it’s hard to get back, but if you persist you will find it will pay off. There’s no better way than to start today. Just remember to hold your stretches for a minimum of 20 seconds and make sure you don’t bounce, plus stay nice and still when you hold your stretches. Good luck with your flexibility!