Get on Track with your Karting Fitness Part 2

Shoulders and upper back - This is where you will get your strength to drive the kart and throw it into the corners, it will also help you develop endurance to cope with increased grip and hot sticky tracks. It helps form a strong platform for postural strength and spinal protection, and for massively reducing the risk of injuries from impacts. For those looking to step into single seater testing from karting, it is also essential to have strong and effective shoulder complex!

Moves to get you started

Alternate arm shoulder press – sit on swiss ball, with feet wide stance apart. Take weight in each hand and perform alternate arm shoulder press from top of shoulder to a fully extended arm above your head. Maintain your balance!
Seated rear row – place feet into a weight column, and have a bar set level with your chest. Push legs out so they are straight and squeezing through your back, pull bar into your chest, hold and relax. Hold your posture.
Upright row (combined with deadlift) – take a split stance, and with a narrow grip take a barbell and raise it until it rest on the top of your thigh. From here pull the bar upwards until it is level with your chin, and then relax back down slowly. An option to then go straight to a deadlift exists here also

Chest – your chest is not as important as some of the other muscles groups for karting. It will give you added strength in some aspects of your karting fitness, but it needs to be trainer and strong to give you postural symmetry with your strong back

 

.

 

Try these for starters

Bench press – take a bar bell with a shoulder width grip, lying flat back onto a bench. Extend arms fully above your chest, slowly control the bar down until almost touching your chest, then after a slight pause, push back upwards. Raise legs off the floor or widen grip to make move more difficult.
Press ups – press ups are good as can be done anywhere, but try stringing 3 different types of press ups together one after the other. They have a number of variety such as normal, wide, narrow, incline, decline, into a swiss ball, t – press up and split hand position.

Forearms – these are essential as they are the muscles that allow you to grip to the wheel… thy will normally be conditioning with the amount of karting you do, but there is massive benefit in training them as it will reduce fatigue!

Get going with these exercise

Standing straight arm rotation and bent arm rotations – take a light dumbbell in each hand, take arms out parallel to the floor either straight or bent at the elbow and starting with hands palm down, rotate as much as your can anti clockwise, the clockwise.
Steering wheel turns - take a seated position or hold a driving position balanced across a bench. Hold a weight plate in both hands in the same way you hold the steering wheel. Rotate fully clockwise and anti clockwise.

How long and how hard vary… it is dependant on the individual and the level of your competition. Always try to push yourself and make your training a challenge, try to continually push more reps for endurance and when the muscles get used to the weight to the point that your reps are endless, up the weight slightly and try to meet the same. Alternatively you can challenge yourself with minimal rest between sets or combination circuits where you simple move from one exercise straight to the next one doing as many reps as you can.

For more information on the best ways to train, tips on your race conditioning or for a sample training programme check out www.fit2race.co.uk.

Check back for our top tips for your nutrition!

<<Page 1