When it comes to off-season training, riders take a range of approaches in order to be fit and ready for the upcoming season. Every rider is different and certain programs work for certain riders, there’s really no exact science to it. In this latest edition of Advice, MotoOnline.com.au checked in with recently-crowned 2016 Australian Supercross Championship MX2 winner Jackson Richardson find out how he approaches his off-season training.

Image: Jeremy Hammer (Foremost Media).

1. Setting a program:
You need to find out where you’re lacking in terms of cardio, strength, all of those sorts of things. The guy I train with, we test all of that and see where we’re at, then we might work on one thing more than the other, but generally we work everything. So I’ll do a bunch of that in the off-season, so that way when the season gets closer and it’s almost about to start, that’s when I’ll be on the bike a lot. I like to ride a lot during the season, so I’ll do pretty much no off the bike training during the season because I’ll be riding a lot. So I like to knock all of the gym stuff and cycling out of the way before the season starts.

2. Training partners:
Mitch Evans is pretty much my fulltime training partner when I’m here, and we’re family as well, so that works out good too. He’s really fast too, so we’re close on speed and it’s good to have someone there pushing you as well. We have a bit of fun while we’re doing it, we’re serious, but it’s fun at the same at the same time. We’re always trying to one-up each other in everything we do, whether it be on the bike, in the gym, mountain biking or anything else we do.

3. Nutrition:
There’s nothing too crazy about my diet, but I do try to stay away from wheat and dairy products, that’s pretty much all that I like to try and do. I’m big into smoothies, they have been part of my diet for post and pre-workout sort of stuff for a while now. I’m also getting into the gluten free thing a fair bit and I’ve noticed a difference with that. So that’s pretty much what I like to do with my diet and it works well.

Image: Jeremy Hammer (Foremost Media).

4. Discipline:
It definitely gets hard and especially up at Cairns when it’s 32 degrees and 92 percent humidity most of the days. You do kind of get over it, you get tired, drained and then you just want to go off the rails, eat shit and not train at all. But in the end, if you really want to win, it’s the sacrifice you have to make. When you win on the weekend it sort of makes that other stuff seem not too bad, winning is a pretty good feeling!

5. Keeping it fun:
Definitely try to keep it as fun as you can, but you have to serious as well at the same time. You always need to keep it fun, we’re doing a job, but we’re also doing our hobby at the same time. You don’t want to make your hobby feel like an actual job and then get sick of it and not want to do it anymore. It’s definitely good to keep it fun, it’s the whole reason we got into it. I go wakeboarding a bit during the off-season and I mainly just like to hang out, play the Playstation and just chill really. We’re all so flat out during the season and we’re outdoors so much, it’s good to sit in the air conditioning sometimes and play Call of Duty all day.

6. Peaking at the right time:
You need to monitor the way you’re feeling, and you need to listen to your body as well. I think most of us just want to do more and more to try and get a head start on the competition. But we also need to look at making sure we don’t over train as well, if we do that we’re just setting ourselves back. You need to monitor the way you feel and make sure you’re not getting fatigued, if you are and you keep going, it’ll just get worse from there.