Hey friend,

Thank you for trusting me to help you with your BMX racing and I am grateful to be your coach and guide you on your racing path!

Often times I get asked “hey coach, how can I improve my track speed, how can I get faster” and while there are so many ways to get faster on the track, from working on your first straight speed, to working on your skills, being more efficient with pumping, jumping or manualing, one of the secret way to getting more speed is to work on it while away from the track. Again, when we’re at the track, it’s an all you can eat session of gates, first straights, jumps, turns, and it’s all fun, however, it’s hard to continuously advance in any area of your racing unless you go deeper with deliberate intention and focus.

Today I am going to reveal  one of my secret formulas to getting faster on the track, lowering those lap times and unleashing turbo speed around the track… 

And that begins with doing track speed intervals away from the track, either at home, or in a bicycle friendly area…. 

The purpose of track speed intervals is to do two things: Increase your body’s resistance to fatigue, think of heavy legs that start to occur after the second turn, or last turn, and also to train your legs to spin at all check points of the track, from the first straight, out of turns, after jumps, etc.

Track Speed Intervals force you to pedal fast, and to load up up fatigue, and teach your body how to pedal fast while under fatigue. 

Does this make sense? Great, let’s get to work…

TRACK SPEED INTERVALS

I’ll give you two options, one for an at home indoor step up for example utilizing a set of rollers, a fixed wheel trainer, a stationary bike at the gym, or even riding your bike outdoors in a bicycle friendly safe area.

First off, you want to warm the body up for a minimum of ten minutes, and start doing short sprints every 3 minutes, throwing in a 3 second long sprint at a perceived intensity of 50%. 

Let’s talk about what is called rate of perceived intensity and why it’s important in the case of improving your track speed. 

You don’t want to go 100% all out the entire way because you will fatigue too fast in the workout and won’t be able to complete the volume. Volume is key to improving, and remember, that it’s all about going deep into the practice of improving your fatigability. The less fatigue you have, the more access to the power potential you will have in the latter parts of the track.

Therefore, you actually want to back off on the intensity, give it less gas sorta speak, and bring your rate of perceived exertion down to 75%.

Here’s how to do it…it’s simple.

Start off out of the saddle and sprint for 5 seconds at 75% and then coast for a count of 3 seconds, and then repeat that three more times for a total of 20 seconds of sprinting. 

Now, it may or may not seem that hard…

Rest 2 minutes and then repeat again

During the 2 minute rest, simple pedal real easy, with very little resistance…

And then hit again repeating the 3 efforts at 5 seconds each for an intensity of 75%.

Do this for a total of 8 rounds. And notice by the time you get to the half way point, how well you’re breathing or not, and take note how you’re legs feel heavy or not…

 The key is to keep working through it, and build your body’s ability to facilitate metabolic waste, that burn in the legs, which in turn, seems like you fatigue out quickly!

That’s it. Do the work, have fun with it, and if you have any questions please feel free to email me at [email protected]

See you tomorrow!

Coach Greg Romero