Spending the day with Heath Voss.

I’ve known and worked with Heath for 10 years. Unfortunately, we don’t get to spend a lot of time together. Our busy schedules and the fact that he lives a good 45-minutes away from me limits our contact to email and phone calls. Training schedules and data analysis are also done via the web. Not ideal but it works.

So, you can imagine my excitement when, by Monday afternoon it was looking like Wednesday’s schedule was going to be a little light. With some clients traveling, some sick, and others simply rescheduling, the day was nearly mine. Those clients that remained were kind enough to reschedule their workouts and I made plans to head out to Mico, Texas for a day of riding and training. It couldn’t have worked out any more perfectly as Wednesday is the day that Heath does his most intense training; being far enough removed from race days.

Up before the sun, my day began with a quad venti latte from Starbucks before making the long drive to the lake. Traffic at that hour was light and I made good time. Heath was in the middle of prepping his bikes for the day’s training when I arrived. This time offered us a rare opportunity to discuss, face-to-face, how his training and racing were going. Quite candidly, he expressed disappointment with his overall results and his determination to train and practice harder. For those of you that know Heath this should come as no surprise. He is extremely driven so it took me the early part of our morning convincing him to think, and ultimately do, otherwise; advice that he has heard from me before but has not always heeded. This deep into the season, recovery becomes paramount.

Heath is not alone in this regard. Most of the motocross athletes that I’ve met and worked with are not lacking in drive. They simply lack the discipline to adjust their training volume. I can’t say that I blame them. Riding is fun. At this level, however, it’s no longer about just having fun. It’s about results. But I digress…

The track was dry and slick but lap times were fast and consistent. Conditions have gotten so bad in south Texas that the lake is down 30 feet; hardly ideal for training but it is what it is. If anything, it will make race day easy by comparison. As a result of our phone conversations over the last few weeks, I’ve suggested making some changes to the riding portion of his training in an effort to maintain intensity and ensure adequate, but not excessive, in-season volume. For a number of reasons Heath hasn’t always been good at at following that advice so it was nice to be there in person to elaborate on and reinforce my philosophy.

Sometimes people just need permission to take it easy.

So,with the sun beginning to beat down (85° in February!) and the wind starting to pick up, we agreed that it was time to shut things down for the day. I had left open the option of doing some rowing on the Concept2 but thought better of it. It’s easy for me to get carried away as well. Like I said, this is fun.

Although Heath was pretty much done training for the day (save for some stretching and soft-tissue work), I couldn’t resist the urge to do his peg board. If you haven’t done this before let me just say that it is quite the challenge. I’ve already suggested that we have one made for our studio.

After lunch Heath had engine work to do. As my expertise lies in the human machine, there was little left for me to do and so, with that, I started home confident that the changes we made will make a difference this week in Daytona. If not, we’ll continue to make adjustments. Training is a very fluid process; as much an art as science. Fun as hell, too.

Tagged as: fitness, Heath Voss, training