Drivers, athletic trainer and race planning

Article by Samuele Tedeschi - Athletic trainer and motor sports driver therapist

The day of the race has always been considered the litmus test, where the driver and the athletic trainer concentrate all their efforts towards a single goal, "victory".
Depending on how you behave on the race weekend you can get the best result or the worst result. Because leaving aside the programming followed throughout the season, it will be very important to arrive physically and mentally prepared for the day of the competition, otherwise you risk being tired or unmotivated.
There are two possibilities that can be reached at the end of the day and that the athletes know well:

finally get the hard-earned results
lose or have an anonymous race

It will be up to the preparer to ensure that the driver arrives on the circuit to the best of his ability to win the first option. In fact, the work to be carried out by the preparer must include the hydro-saline integration program, the psychological motivation of the pilot, aimed at facing the race with the right mental preparation, the unloading of the muscles and the elimination of the tensions deriving from driving during the tests. In certain competitions, the filter function is also added, the function of which is to "filter" all the information directed to the driver to prevent the whole "from" and "to" communication from becoming too burdensome and deconcentrating for the purposes of the tender.
It is therefore clear that the algorithm for winning competitions is complicated and that the work to be carried out during the race weekend are many; in the article, in which the guidelines will be listed, the phases that make up the pre-race will be outlined.

Fig.1.1 The tasks of the athletic trainer during the race weekend

Integration

Water is essential to ensure the maintenance of an optimal state of hydration. In fact, a loss of fluids equal to 2% of body weight is sufficient to drastically decrease physical efficiency and to generate an evident sense of exhaustion! "water and electrolytes have the function of preventing the appearance of muscle cramps and mental and physical fatigue, as well as preventing dehydration. Dehydration that often occurs in motor sports precisely because of the personal protective equipment used - such as fireproof suits and leather suits - and the hot / humid climate present on the race tracks, which significantly increase sweating and the dispersion of body fluids .
The most suitable type of drink to take during driving should be strongly hypotonic, in order to speed up gastric emptying and quickly restore the liquids inside the cell (hypotonic drinks are those whose concentration has a pressure osmotic lower than that of plasma and the osmolar load of sugars and mineral salts is not unbalanced).
The maltodextrins, dissolved in water together with the salts with the correct ratio of proportion, have the undoubted advantage of maintaining the hypotonic solution, consequently they allow the organism to be rehydrated rapidly, thus allowing a delay in the energy decline.
It is also necessary do not take more than 500ml of liquids for half an hour, since the body is unable to assimilate more than this dosage and the excess would be expelled in the urine. On the other hand, an excess of salts would also cause an osmotic imbalance, with consequent problems in the intestine. Consequently, it is necessary to calibrate the supplementation of liquids well, bearing in mind that our body expels 1.2 liters / hour of sweat during sports and that this figure can increase depending on the intensity of physical effort, even if generally for sports such as motoring and motorcycling this figure can be defined as reliable.
So to integrate potassium, magnesium and sodium, we will follow the proportion dictated by the following statement: 1 liter of sweat contains 1.5 g of salts, of which 40% is composed of sodium, 30% of potassium and 5% of magnesium , the remaining missing percentages are to be attributed to all the other salts expelled by sweating, but not involved in the performance process. The pilot will weigh himself before each race or free practice and based on the weight detected on the scale the procedure will be as follows:

Subtract the weight measured after 1 hour of activity from the weight measured before track activities
Transform the result into grams

Example:

Weight before activities 70 kg
Weight after activities 69 kg
Result: 70 kg - 69 kg = 1.0 kg = 1000 g

Water to drink during and after the activity with the salts = 1500 ml

It will be necessary to drink 250 ml of water during the competition or free practice and at the end of these, at regular intervals of about 15 ", for a total of 1500 ml; 40% sodium will be dissolved inside the drink, for 5% magnesium and 30% potassium, in addition to maltodextrins or other types of sugars with which the pilot is comfortable.
To then calculate the correct quantity, in the proportion, it will also be necessary to take into account the density of the water which is equal to 1 g / ml.
We will thus be aware of how many salts and liquids we will have to replenish for that type of race (the procedure must be repeated whenever the climatic and geographical conditions of the place where the race is changed).
In the hours before the race, already in the morning, the pilot will be asked to perform a slow hydration, about 200-500 ml every 30 minutes with hypotonic drinks; in the post-race, on the other hand, hypertonic drinks will be used, that is, with an osmolarity greater than that of plasma because they are loaded with nutrients such as carbohydrates given by maltodextrins.

Psychological Motivation

A certain emotional stability, with a relatively low level of anxiety and tension, is a trait that generally distinguishes successful athletes. And in a pre-race psychophysical preparation program, the management of the rider's emotions must be absolutely taken into account, since a high level of anxiety due to competition (which can manifest itself both cognitively and somatic) is harmful to performance and creates negative experiences of inadequacy and distrust of personal abilities.
Furthermore, contrary to what one might think, mental abilities to react to certain situations can be trained. This is the case of the management of emotions deriving from competitions, where often due to the stress of performance anxiety, there is a tendency to focus less on the pleasure derived from competition and to generate a continuous cycle of stressful thoughts that can negatively affect peak performance.

Fig. 1.3 Pyramid of coaching management during competition days

To break this cycle, the athletic trainer will have to implement a series of training actions for the driver's brain, thus allowing him to enter the situation called in technical jargon "Flow - flow", that is a state of consciousness and deep mental activation capable of to lead the driver to be more attentive and competitive, as well as completely immersed in track activity.
It is then necessary from time to time to probe the different emotions of the pilot to modulate and personalize his personal arousal, which consists in the correct psychophysical activation for that sport, for that moment of performance, for that athlete. The modulation of the images that are created from time to time, for example, it is the basis of the different mental training modalities that will be performed on the competition field. Same thing for the type of attentional style that will be presented; it will be more in external mode, with the attention turned to the external environment, or internal with the attention turned to one's internal stimuli (muscle tension, anxiety, heartbeat, respiratory rhythm, etc.), think for example at the moment of starting grid, where the driver is very focused on internal stimuli but is continually bombarded by external stimuli, such as the public in the stands, the cameras, etc. if at that moment it is not possible for him to r staying focused internally, subsequent performance will most likely suffer, due to the attention and determination that has dropped.
All these different levels of activation, which if not managed correctly, will worsen performance, require the help of a specialist such as the athletic trainer specializing in sports coaching; because a few and targeted measures are enough to keep your activation level high. The first suggestion I would like to give, to start immediately to feel the correct emotions is perhaps the most obvious, but it is the one that is increasingly ignored ... listening to the internal messages of our body from which it is possible to understand if during the competitive performance we are either too discharged or too loaded. The second tip is to keep a diary of your thoughts, before, during and after the race and to also insert the images and sounds perceived in your mind, this will allow you to create a personal history (very important in case of victory, because so it is possible to recreate the exact same sensations in subsequent races, increasing the chances of success) on which the athletic trainer will be able to study the right mix of sensations, to be perceived by the pilot to bring him to success.

Unloading of the Musculature

Depending on the type of work that you set up at the beginning of the season, this part is different from trainer to trainer, so the following is the classic scheme that I usually use and which includes the work phases carried out on the day of competition. From personal experience, many pilots prefer to work on muscle stretching and osteopathic massages, before the race, to promote the unloading action and have greater freedom of joint movements.
However, it will be the adoption of a routine that will give the rider the greatest benefit.

Fig 1.4 The psychophysical unloading and activation cycle to which the driver is accustomed for the day of competition.

In case of tight times, caused by interviews or difficult set of the vehicle or by other anomalous events, it is useful to focus on the phases:

Stretching (away from the race for a few hours)

Pre-race activation (near the race)

Since muscles and diaphragm often remain contracted, due to a lot of concentration used and physical fatigue during rehearsals and qualifications, the stretching work is focused on them. Activation, on the other hand, consists of the pre-race massage and the use of coaching and NLP techniques (neuro-linguistic programming) to change the pilot's activation state and make him enter the "Flow" state.

I conclude the article by showing how the driver's correct physical recovery curve should look like in the three days that make up the race weekend. The initial black curve shows how the times are not respected or the correct recovery methods are not performed, leading to a worsening of the performance at the qualifying on Saturday. The red, on the other hand, shows a correct recovery between Friday and Saturday, but worsening before the Sunday of the race, again due to the wrong methods of psychophysical recovery. The blue, on the other hand, is the ideal line, where the driver shows up on the starting grid, at the maximum of his abilities.