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Porsche Club of America
The Northeast Region

Pit Pass

By Bill Chadwick
NOR'EASTER Online - January 2006
Northeast Region Logo

A little regular self analysis and evaluation is always a good idea in any sport whether strictly recreational or seriously competitive. This month I’d like to share some with you the program I have be using to address perceived problems.
   
As my forty-ninth birthday rapidly approaches I had better consider my physical condition if I’m going to continue competing and improving my performance in motorsports. The improvements of my driving skills set and the capabilities of the car over these several years have increased the stresses I need to be able to handle physically. There is no doubt that fatigue affects our ability to react, along with perception and judgment during the decision making process. In my particular case I want to be competitive for a full ninety minutes in PCA’s GT-1 class enduro races. To reach my objective I need to be ready to handle a steady diet of 1.6 to 1.9 G loadings while performing high level motor skills in eighty to one hundred ten degree heat.
  
I really enjoy participating in sports. I wish all the sports I like were like skiing and scuba diving where you can work yourself into shape gradually while doing the actual activity. Unfortunately racing is not one of these. There is no way to get enduro race ready within the limits of the track days and session times available. Further it is very hard to simulate that extra percentage of intensity and effort that actual race conditions impose for the entire contest while running practice laps.
   
Unfortunately I have never been a person who particularly enjoys exercise in a gym environment even though the benefits of a regular program are well known. But in quest of better health and performance in competition I’m really trying to buckle down and get myself into the “exercise habit”. In prior months I have mentioned Pete Donohoe and his great facility in Boston, Focus Fitness. I remain impressed with Pete and his staff and most Saturday mornings you will find me there at 8 AM working with Pete for an hour and one half and then leaving with my updated program that will be performed again on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
   
Although I have been athletic much of my life and competed in high school and collegiate sports Pete has introduced me to two new things already; core strength and constant heart rate monitoring.
   
What core strength training means to me is using certain postures and exercises while training that engage and develop muscles deep in the body. Most often you do this by doing a fairly tradition exercise while using one device or another that forces you to maintain your balance at the same time. The results of this core training along with proper stretching for someone like me who has degenerated lower back discs is greatly improved posture and a noticeable ability to do more physical activities without having lower back pain .
   
I was a bit skeptical about this new “core strength” term and these new fangled exercises when I started. But two things have changed my mind so that now I’m sold on the concept. One is the obvious results I’ve enjoyed. The second was recalling my history in sports and why I had enjoyed certain success in them. When I was thirteen we started spending summers in Westport Pt. MA. My father who grew up working on the family chicken farm could not stand the thought of me wasting away my summer being a beach bum. So he shrewdly made friends with a local bay lobsterman. Before I knew it I had spent a day lobstering and as we walked up the dock the captain handed me forty dollars cash and asked “want to go tomorrow”? We’ll for the next six summers I was a deck hand, ten hour days starting at 4:30 AM were the norm. A day off for me meant taking a truck to New Bedford and forking all the barrels the truck would hold full of bait and then jack-assing the barrels into a cooler in Westport: then I could have the rest of the day off. How does this relate to core strength? Well my normal days were on the pitching deck of a thirty-four foot boat in all kinds of weather doing heavy manual labor. I was constantly maintaining my balance subconsciously while performing the tasks at hand. 
  
I never though about it much then but the pay off was I was much stronger and had better balance and coordination (without every seeing a gym or weight training) than you average high school jock. Here are some examples. At sixteen I could stack wet one hundred-ten pound wooden offshore lobster pots five and six high on a rolling deck. My senior year in high school after not playing any football since the 7th grade some friends asked me to go out for the team due to a need for another lineman. I ended up starting at offensive tackle and made honorable mention all league. That same year the wrestling team was short someone for the unlimited class (same deal I had only played lacrosse after the 7th grade) as they did not want to forfeit the six team match points. This one was a much harder sell for my buddies but after two weeks they talked me into this one too. By the time pre-season was over my weight had dropped to 178 pounds and I was eating everything I could get my hands on! My record for the season was 4W-7L and only got pinned twice. The smallest guy I wrestled that season weighed 220 pounds. Now the point of this is not to brag about past glory days, it is that although I was not aware of it at the time, these exploits were only possible because I spent three months every summer training my core muscles.
   
Another new aspect of training Pete has opened my eyes to is heart rate monitoring. These inexpensive devices allow you to constantly monitor your heart rate via a wrist watch type readout. This is particularly important for old farts like me. We don’t want to get too enthusiastic and overstress the old ticker before we have worked our way into reasonable condition do we! Currently after having worked up to them over three months my workouts from Pete take one and a half hours. I warm up on a striding machine for ten minutes bringing my heart rate up to about 145. Then thirty to forty minutes of various stretching, strength and balance exercises. I try never to let my heart rate drop below 145 during the entire time and occasionally it will peak briefly in the low 170’s during particularly strenuous sets. Rest and recovery periods between set rarely exceed one minute. The final phase of a Focus Fitness designed workout is twenty-five to thirty minutes of cardio work on a strider, bike, rowing or stair step machine. During this period a sustained hart rate of between 150 and 160 is maintained.
   
With a slight reduction in junk food I have seen my body fat drop four percent, and even though I’m gaining some dense muscle mass my weight is down five pounds. 
  
My goals in making this effort are to address first the areas of fitness I have trouble with while racing. Body fat is a real enemy of endurance racers. It is a very efficient insulation and can really make a driver pay a very real penalty by getting overheated during a long race on a hot day. The next most important item is strengthening my neck muscles. Some tracks seem to really tax my neck during long races. Finally these workouts are geared toward helping me maintain my concentration and sensitivity during a 1.5 hour race while dealing with the elevated hart rate caused by the physical effort and excitement of the event.
  
I’ll try to keep my readers informed how this program works out for me and is adjusted over the course of the 2006 season. Two races at Sebring FL are right around the corner and I’m chomping at the bit!
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