Guest article: Neuroathletics in motorcycle racing

Guest article by Michael Erhart

In sports with an affinity for technology such as motorsport, solutions for improving athletic performance are usually primarily found in the hardware – i.e. in the racing car – and are sought (at great expense). Working with soft skills such as neuro-centered training, where the focus is not on the racing car but – with hardly any investment but all the more effectively – on the athlete, is rather atypical here.

Nevertheless, the author of this story has tirelessly developed motorcycle racing into his own personal neuroathletics niche. Perhaps it should be pointed out at this point that we are not talking about “normal” motorcycling – on the road or as a hobby in the form of so-called trackdays on race tracks – but about professional racing. MotoGP and World SuperBike and their subcategories that “supply” young riders.

Why is there so much potential for improvement/therapy in motorcycle racing through neuro-focused training?

1. Professional motorcycle racing presents an extraordinary sensory challenge. Due to the incredibly high speeds involved in racing – which are almost incomprehensible even to amateur motorcyclists – the visual and vestibular systems as well as proprioception are challenged every fraction of a second. To become world class, you also need highly developed, acrobatic physical and motor skills. Whether the rider is able to stabilize a motorcycle slipping away in a bend through a lightning-fast body-motor counter-reaction – in technical jargon, such a successful manoeuvre is called a “save” – or is thrown onto the asphalt in a high arc at 200 km/h (technical term “highsider”), positively influencing this is an ingenious playground for neuroathletics training.

2 The extremely high speeds already mentioned also mean that probably more than 90% of a race lap or an entire race is based on reflexes. Whereas in a racing car, long straights on racetracks offer a few seconds of opportunity to consciously think about the current situation, including rational action, sitting freely on a racing motorcycle at 300 km/h or more (MotoGP speed record 366.1 km/h) there are only fractions of a second for arbitrary intervention of the frontal lobe.

3. without wanting to create an exaggerated heroic epic – latent danger to life is the pillion passenger of every professional motorcycle racer. Serious accidents, even with fatal consequences, are not an everyday occurrence, but unfortunately they are by no means a rarity. In the past four years, six riders have died in our environment. In short: the often quoted “is it safe?” question of the brain is more than justified. An improvement in sensory input through neuro-focused training will therefore also mean an improvement in motor output from the point of view of the brain’s perception of safety.

4. motorcycle racers benefit in their lap times from the lowest possible body weight. This is why most of the protagonists’ training is extremely GA-heavy. Riding the ergometer for hours on end in the hope of reducing body fat percentage or BMI by a tenth results – at least in the author’s subjective assessment and experience – in a dulling of the senses trained in neuroathletics. It is not uncommon to see young people on the world’s racetracks who are stubborn, lanky and gawky and then ride a racing motorcycle at its physical limits, with a tire contact area the size of a credit card.

5 Falling on your head or at least experiencing a high acceleration impact on your head in a crash is part of everyday life in professional motorcycle racing. While an amateur motorcycle (racing) rider would do anything to avoid a painful fall – sometimes more, sometimes less, but always guaranteed – a “crash” is absolutely normal for professionals and especially for young, wild offspring. The rookies (they start on the professional stage at the age of 14) know neither danger nor fear of it due to a lack of cortical risk assessment that is not yet fully developed at this age. But even the top adult stars crash often enough: Spain’s coming MotoGP hero Pedro Acosta crashed no less than 24 times in the first 80% of the 2024 season. In short: mTBIs, i.e. seemingly mild concussions, are a matter of course and a virtue in this sport. Even abnormalities and complaints felt by the racer himself, which clearly indicate a concussion, would not even be discussed in the medical center (where the pilots are taken for an examination after heavy crashes) in order not to run the risk of being eliminated from the race weekend due to “medical disqualification”.

It happens time and again in this sport that a rider “suddenly” completely loses his feeling for the bike, that completely inexplicable lows in form – followed by a steady stream of crashes – occur and that a reliable race winner, as if out of the blue, no longer manages to finish higher than midfield. Nobody in this sport – with the exception of the author of these lines – would make a causal connection to impacts on the head. However, if you then question – “what happend before happend what happend” – since when the form was torn off and how: you always end up with a fall…

6 Use it or lose it: Long rehabilitation periods are also part of the game. Typical here would be, for example, protracted ankle injuries that force the use of aids for months after numerous surgical interventions. After a year’s break back on the bike, most of them again struggle with their “inexplicable” lag in lap times. It’s strange why you’re suddenly much slower when it was “only” your ankle that was injured. Nobody here would think that both the vestibular and visual systems could have deficits after half a year of walking on crutches. Not to mention the performance-minimizing influences of neuronal protective patterns from proprioception…

The field of activity for neuroathletics coaches would therefore be far greater than the understanding required from the athletes and their environment or the willingness to allow something new to happen. The aforementioned affinity for technology, which dominates everything and everyone, does the rest. It therefore proved to be an immense advantage in the author’s work to incorporate as many technical components/games as possible into neurotraining. Standing there with two vision sticks or even just holding out bare fingers to racers for visual tests/drills – too few technical bells and whistles to go down well here. More on this later in the story.

The following are some practical examples from our collaboration with a 19-year-old Moto3 rider from the Junior World Championship and the Red Bull Rookies Cup, who has been ready to integrate neuroathletics into his training program for three years now. In the off-season, he trains visually, vestibularly and proprioceptively for 30 minutes at least three times a week. In-season, depending on his mood and time. Also integrated into the weekly waiting times at airports on the way to/from races (eye drills on one leg ;-). The pilot in question comes from Austria and only started motorcycle racing – very late – at the age of 15. The Spaniards and Italians, who are leaders in the world of motorcycle racing, generally have 7-10 years (!) more experience on the bike, as they actually start working consistently and systematically with small children on MiniGP bikes.

Insiders on the scene repeatedly expressed their amazement and appreciation at how incredibly quickly the Austrian had made up for these missing years and caught up despite his comparatively young training age. Neither the athlete himself nor those around him doubt that the targeted neuroathletics training and mobility/agility program with neuro-focused elements, which we have individually tailored to motorcycle racing, have played a significant role in this. A word about fitness: The traditional annual fitness test held by the APC – the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center – was won by the athlete in question, for example with a running performance of 3.7 km in the specified 12 minutes.

Visual training:

Let me start – deliberately against the usual hierarchy in neurotraining – with facts from visual training. All racing drivers ever tested (we also work with professional car/kart and powerboat drivers) who showed low performance in terms of repetition speed and/or number of repetitions of gaze jumps in near-far saccades also had difficulties with correct braking points on the racetrack. To put it even more drastically, the author of these lines has already had the fun of accusing drivers with weaknesses in the near-far saccade test of having weaknesses in braking points and always got the same answer: “Yes, that’s absolutely true, but how do you know that?” For us, the causal relationship is beyond doubt. The interesting thing is that drivers don’t slow down by frequently braking too late and thus messing up the entry point into the bend. They brake too early, earlier than necessary (self-protection of the brain!?) and thus waste time under full throttle. Creating an increased sense of safety by means of visual training proved to be an effective intervention here.

Visual training in a sport-specific posture:

While this plays less of a role in a seated position in a kart, car or racing boat, the results of visual training in different positions on the motorcycle change significantly for some riders. In other words, it sometimes makes a huge difference whether eye drills are carried out standing upright or in the same posture as when riding on a straight – namely crouched low on the tank of the motorcycle. The angle of the eyes changes so drastically here, as well as when simulating extreme lean angles, that completely different stress reactions can occur. There is also no doubt that there are differences in eye tests/drills in these postures for one and the same rider, but after a fall with direct impact or high centrifugal forces on the head.

We are therefore currently devoting a great deal of attention to this exciting area. In line with the industry’s affinity for technology, which has already been mentioned repeatedly, we are currently working on the realization of a neuro-bike simulator – probably the first and only one of its kind in the world: a real racing motorcycle that can be hydraulically moved into various real lean angles by the coach using a remote control, while the test person on the bike completes digital visual tests/drills on a large screen monitor in front of them – with eye movements being filmed and heart rate plus HRV being recorded at the same time. We expect, or at least hope, that this “high-tech equipment” will significantly increase the acceptance of neuro-centered training in motorcycle racing. Not to mention exciting findings and “research results”.

Peripheral perception:

Just as surely as someone with accommodation deficits cannot hit braking points flawlessly, a rider with limited peripheral vision at the start of a motorcycle race will – in our estimation plus experience – lose valuable positions in the first few hundred meters – on the start straight and when the wide field of participants turns into the first corner. Of course, peripheral vision is already restricted by the helmet, but: the wider the angle, the less tunnel-like the view, the better the visual attention can be directed forwards to the turn-in point in Turn 1 despite simultaneously keeping a peripheral eye on the other competitors, many of whom are racing towards the first corner at 200 km/h and more. If the brain’s safety query requires you to rotate your head and turn your focus to the side of your competitors, your gaze is no longer directed at the approaching braking and turning point for a fraction of a second. According to our interpretation, this uncertainty also causes pilots to back off because the brain plays it safe. This is why training peripheral vision/perception is one of our standards, just as eye training in general is also practiced as “visual fitness and strength training”. As soon as the eyes, which are really challenged in ultra-fast motorcycle racing, become tired, the level of concentration also drops. More mistakes are made, which cost time and positions towards the end of the race or often lead to crashes. As a rule, the tires and their decreasing grip on the asphalt as the race progresses are blamed. In our opinion, however, the reason is rather the rapid deterioration of the driver’s eye performance, causally followed by small driving inaccuracies up to gross blunders including landing on the seat of the pants as the worst-case scenario.

The test-intervention/drill-re-test approach that is generally used and recommended in neuroathletics is of course taken into account in our work. Primarily, however, as a check on whether an exercise in the form or intensity that we are using is not proving counterproductive. The faster, more precise and more enduring the eyes, the more accurate the balance system, the finer the proprioception – the better, faster and more controlled the pilot’s body-motor movement on the motorcycle and thus its control will be. So we see highly developed skills as a must-have here. Like the aforementioned accommodation, for example. Conversely: Anyone who – for whatever reason – is unable to train their required sensory skills accordingly is unlikely to become a professional motorcycle racer and, in truth, does not belong on a 300 km/h “weapon on two wheels”. In this respect, we are admittedly focusing more on workload and regularity in neurotraining, without re-testing after every drill. At the start of a training program or if mTBI is suspected, we naturally do this much more carefully.

 

We also incorporate sensory input or its reduction into our varied training routine. Mobility drills, for example, combined with acoustic stimuli (from metronome to disturbing noise via headphones), visual restrictions (pinhole & strobe glasses) plus helmet on the head, etc. – we give our creativity every freedom here. Finding new and unusual inputs is generally an integral part of our coaching approach. We don’t even “shy away” from this when training on the bike. It’s important to know that even the top stars of the scene train a lot on so-called pit bikes or mini GP bikes on kart tracks. With these significantly smaller, maximum 140 km/h fast, but extremely maneuverable mopeds on the much narrower kart tracks, training can be extremely effective and efficient, without any great danger to life. There, we often integrate neuro-centered and above all “neuro-crazy” ideas, such as one-eyed driving with an eye patch…

We also pay the utmost attention to training the vestibular system. In the form of daily exercise programs, but also as a warm-up before a race or immediately before taking the bike out onto the race track.

The Turkish rider Toprak Razgatlioglu, recently crowned World Superbike 2024 champion, impressively demonstrates the immense benefits of a highly developed balance system in motorcycle racing. Toprak is a true movement artist and body acrobat on and off the bike. He likes to impress the astonished crowd in the paddock with artistic show acts (headstand on the asphalt with helmet on head and completely wobble-free execution), all of which require extreme body control, motor skills and balance. Neuro-centered training becomes tangible through him: What is it all for? To become as agile as World Champion Toprak.

We integrate the improvement of the vestibular system – as well as visual drills – into everyday life, whether in training or outside of it. Our athletes don’t just jog, they incorporate various head movements, VOR drills, forward and backward running, visual restrictions, ball tossing, etc. Each of our athletes has a balance board designed and produced by us, on which they perform a variety of visual and vestibular drills or simply watch a motorcycle race/football match on TV. Without being allowed to get off the board for e.g. 45 minutes – previously given as a forecast to increase the pressure. In this way, we try to get the vestibular system and the brain used to continuous stresses the length of a race. And watching TV on the balance board for three quarters of an hour is a challenge, guaranteed! Doing saccades in the tandem stand – even queuing to board the plane makes sense. It may sound a little eccentric, but this way you don’t need to train neuroathletics, at least the basics, but can incorporate such inputs into boring and unavoidable everyday scenes.

Probably our most important neuro-centered measure, because it is the most intensely felt by the riders, is the introduction of a neuro-warm-up before races or training sessions on the bike. While the vast majority of riders only warm up muscularly – which we believe is extremely counterproductive from a neuro perspective – we have developed a special warm-up that uses individual exercises to warm up not only the muscles, starting with proprioception, eye drills and creative balance exercises, but above all the sensory system. Everyone who has already done this – the first few times under our guidance, then independently – is absolutely delighted and reports a much better riding experience and also feeling comfortable and safe on the bike much more quickly. While the brain usually needs a few laps to “warm up”, fine sensory input followed by the best motor output is immediately available with our warm-up.

About the author:

Michael Erhart runs his BRAINERQi® Neuro Performance Center in Lower Austria. Originally coming from the field of mental training and sports psychology almost 25 years ago, he has always taken a holistic approach to his coachees, including years of work with human energetics, prevention, nutrition, etc. Since 2019, he has found his personal “connecting link” between all his disciplines in neuro-centered training and functional neurology, which has given him a completely new perspective and a broader understanding. And thus became his “Passion of a Lifetime”. Michael Erhart is currently working with a Bundesliga soccer player to transfer his training ideas, experience from motorsport and innovative neuro-tools to the green pitch. He is also developing neuro-focused prevention programs for senior citizens.
The author would like to take this opportunity to personally thank Daniel Müller for his knowledge on this topic!

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