J'AIME March 2018

Life in the fast lane
M OTO R S
THIS MONTH J’AIME’S MOTORING CORRESPONDENT AND RESIDENT
RACING DRIVER MARTIN PLOWMAN LOOKS AT HOW TO GET RACING FIT
January is over and for many of you who started the
year full of optimism to shed the Christmas weight,
you might be starting to slip back into old habits.
Maybe it’s time to train like a racing driver! Drivers
are not athletes I hear you say? That’s an opinion
I’ve heard from many a casual fan of motorsports.
It can’t be hard just to sit on your bum and turn a
steering wheel?
Racing drivers rarely get any credit when it comes to
athleticism. I think the main reason for this is because
the driver’s effort is hidden from view behind the
car and without experiencing racing for yourself it’s
hard to relate. Anyone who watches the 100m sprint
can fully appreciate what it must take to perform at
that level. But for any non-racing driver it’s hard to
appreciate the effort required in the cockpit.
When I raced in IndyCar, I was exposed to over 4g
in the corners, my neck literally felt like it would rip
off! The weight of the steering-wheel equated to a
20kg dumbbell in a flat-out 5th gear corner with the
wings pushing the car down into the ground. During
the course of a two-hour race my average heart-rate
would be around 140bpm and I would lose 6lbs of
sweat!
The levels of strength and fitness required to race
competitively can be developed in two ways. You can
exercise the muscles in the car by racing; the pros
are that you will target exactly the muscles needed,
the cons are that you’ll be sacrificing competitiveness
against your competitors and it’s also very expensive.
All the pro drivers prepare and train in a gym, and
as boring as it is to see social media feeds full of
gym shots and healthy eating, the reality is that this
represents a huge amount of a professional driver’s
time.
During the off-season, drivers have to go through a
very rigorous training program. One of the main
areas of focus is core strength. Core strength is
important as it helps to prevent injuries. You often
see big crashes on TV and wonder how they just
walk away. A huge contributory factor is the fitness
of the driver; of course the safety of the modern
racing cars does help, but it may be a different story
altogether if the driver wasn’t conditioned to take
such an impact!
Not wanting to sound like a dog on a thistle, there
would be no use telling you how important fitness is
if I didn’t provide some advice and support.
I’ve put together my favourite five muscle-blasting
exercises with the help of Connor, my friend and
trainer at Snowdome Fitness in Tamworth. What’s
great about these is that they can be done almost
anywhere, anytime without fancy gym equipment, so
there really is no excuse to put off your fitness goals
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