What are the riders doing during the four months that you can’t watch them race every weekend? We asked veteran trainer Seiji Ishii, who works with Andrew Short, to break down the months of September, October, November, December.
1. There are four months to the off-season. Do you break each of those months down into different pieces?
Coach Seiji: I work backwards. We have an event on January 9, but we don’t always plan to peak at that race, it could be a few weeks later. But just as an example, let’s say we plan to be in peak form by January 9. Then we work the schedule backwards from there. The intensity comes later, the volume comes later. That’s the basic plan, and I’ll explain it.
I’ve been working with Andrew for a long time and I can read him pretty well. At the end of the year riders are usually running on fumes, they’ve been dealing with a lot of stress all year—especially if they were working on a new contact—so you have to try to make it fun for them when the season ends. So that’s what September is for. Andrew went to the KTM Adventure Ride in Crested Butte, and I have some top-secret video of him doing some very non Andrew Short-like things! He had a blast! So I told him to keep continuing that, so there were almost two weeks of Andrew Short having a blast. Just rode a bicycle and his woods bike. He didn’t even touch a supercross bike. So that was most of September. I like to call it the recovery month.
Usually by October, you normally have to start developing a race bike. This year Andrew said he’s not doing it, he’s worked on this bike for a while and he’s pretty satisfied with it. Likes the shock, likes the fork, likes the bike. That was good for us because we could work on training volume during this time. Sometimes I call volume work durability work. This is hard training and you’re putting yourself very close to the edge, physically. October is the month where it’s okay, by Friday, for Andrew to say “Dude, I’m wasted. I’m so tired. I can’t work out anymore.” That’s okay. That just means he did a ton of work during that week, and that will make him more durable in the long run. So let’s call September recuperation, and October high volume.
2. So if someone wants to show some cool video of the riders fighting for that one last pull-up or running up a hill, that’s probably happening in October. Too risky to do it right before Anaheim?
Exactly. We just can’t take the risk of trying something and finding out it doesn’t work, and then it’s time to go race. October is a good time to figure out problems you had from the year before, and to attack those things. For example, Andrew can say that he’s losing mobility in his hips, and he thinks that’s affecting his technique on the bike. So we address that in October, because fixing things like that is hard! We did a lot of hip hinging exercises in the gym, and they basically burned his legs out for a while. You can’t do that in December, because you can’t blow out your legs and take time off at that point. This is also the time where we’ll do any experimenting with diet or training. You can’t take the risk of that backfiring on you right before Anaheim.
November is when you start transitioning into sprints, and working on sections at the track. We made the tool strong in October, now we sharpen it in November. In November, we’ll no longer do any type of training that’s going to make him so sore that he can’t ride the motorcycle the next day. It’s not worth it anymore. Remember, it’s hard to learn a new technique or use proper form when you’re on the edge physically. Think of yourself in an emergency situation. If your house was on fire and you were running, you wouldn’t be thinking about your running form, you’d just be going all out—you’d probably look like an idiot. You don’t care, you’re just trying to run as fast as you can! If you go to your limit, either speed or physically, you’ll just revert to your old habits. So if Andrew is attacking a hip hinging problem, and trying to get himself to pivot at his hips instead of his lower back, he’s not going to do that properly while he’s at the edge of his ability. And you won’t when you’re completely exhausted, either. So you need to work on that stuff when the intensity is lower and you’re not fatigued.
That rolls into December. This is where you want to put it altogether. But no matter what team I’ve been involved with, the team is never completely ready. There’s always unplanned testing in December. I’ve been out there in December and watched Andrew do 120 laps in a day! You do the best you can, but sometimes you get stuck testing all week. And that’s part of the job.
3. How different is testing from training?
You’re still riding, you’re still doing something physical, but it’s not the same. Testing, you’re usually not doing twenty laps. You’re doing a lap or two, or even just a section, and you have to do it at full speed. That’s where the bike is supposed to work. So you’ll do a lap or two, they change parts, you wait, you rest, get something to drink or eat. It gets broken up and it’s a long, long day. You’re getting a workout, but you can’t run your plan to practice a heat race, practice a main, practice starts—you’re working on those things where you can, but it’s not the same plan when you have to do testing. Again, testing the bike is part of the job. You have to work on fitness, riding skills, and testing. We try to separate them to do each properly.
