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James Cater Racing

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James Cater Racing

Tag Archives: fitness

Physical training for an amateur racing driver

10 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by jamescaterracing in Fitness, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

diet, fitness, gym, physical training, race fit, ryland centre, season preparation, training, weight loss

Something we often neglect (especially us oldies) is our physical fitness for racing.

Let’s face it – unless you’re in Formula One or doing the Le Mans 24 Hour race, you can get away with driving a Formula Vee fuelled only by Big Macs and donuts.

80ES-T31-360

But that’s the danger – you CAN race so long as you can fit into the cockpit, but you won’t be the best that you can be.

If you walk around any amateur racing paddock you will see drivers of all shapes and sizes. Yes, there are some super-fit specimens there, but most of us have lives and stuff going on outside of racing that means we can’t commit to a full training regime and diet. Hell, we even laugh nervously when we chat about about how unfit we are, but we all know we should be putting a lot more into our personal fitness.

Weight is a crucial factor in motor racing, and when you’re racing a 370kg single seater the difference between you being a 68kg active Lightweight boxer and a 100kg post-Christmas lummox will have a huge effect on the performance of your car.

Around the middle of last year I was the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life – slowly creeping up towards the 14 stone (89kg) mark.

This was all my own fault, as the rule is very simple:

James Cater’s Book Of Dieting: Chapter One –

Eat less and exercise more.

The end.

Around July I had a ‘lucky’ break and had a nasty bout of gastroenteritis, which saw me lose almost a stone over a few weeks. I saw this as a golden opportunity to join a gym, make some lifestyle changes, and try and keep it going.

It also helps a massive amount if you have a training partner, and so when The Ryland Centre were offering a free ‘taster session’, my fiance and I went to check the place out and see if we liked it.

Image result for ryland centre gym

We didn’t want to go down the whole personal trainer route, and decided to just do our own thing – once my fitness is back to a certain standard I might review this, but ideally I’d need a trainer who knows how to deal with a racing driver.

I figured the first step for me was to chip away at core strength and get my aerobic fitness up – so started increasing my pace on the treadmill to a fast jog, and taking advantage of their indoor cycle, rowing machine and cross-trainer.

The Ryland Centre have a good variety of machines, so I can switch it up a bit rather than bore myself on the same machines every time, and also use the weight machines and free weights. I will use these more once I’m happier with my overall levels.

That’s another thing about gyms that can be a struggle – you have to drag yourself there for at least a month or two before you start to really see any results, and maybe even start to enjoy it.

After about 7 weeks of going twice per week, I ambled into the section to do some stretches (I know how important flexibility is from my martial arts training) and was absolutely ecstatic to see a punch/kick bag hanging up!

Related image

This totally reignited my training, as it’s a piece of kit that I’m good with, plus it gives an amazing workout! I challenge anyone to do 60 seconds punching a bag as hard and fast as they can – it will kill you!

So now my routine is to warm up on a few machines, stretch and hit the bag for a few minutes, then back to the machines for a while before round 2 on the bag! I’m monitoring my heart rate as well as recovery time, and toning up very well, so far

I eat pretty well, generally speaking. I eat a lot of home cooked food (believe it or not I’m actually a pretty good cook, and chase perfection with anything I’m doing in the kitchen) but I’m not denying myself the odd takeaway or anything like that. The key is to control your portion size, and if you know you’re going to cheat and eat snacks between meals then you have to have smaller meals to compensate!

I’m here to enjoy life, so don’t agree with total denial for diet, as it never works. I’m also open to trying new food, and will swap in healthier options as and when I find them.

Also, in those spaces between the Winter rebuild, I’m getting myself up into the hills as often as I can! Even just walking can be tough if you chose the hardest route available in your local hills, and a few hours away from the garage does wonders for your wellbeing and mental health!

IMG_20191229_122517

In a future blog I may go more into depth with training methods and routines, and even add in a few of the things I eat. This blog is really just the basics, and that doesn’t mean it’s the least important – if you embrace the prinicples here, your diet and training will work, however you specialise and jazz up the finer points.

Have you found anything useful for your training and diet? Let me know in the comments!

Bowen Therapy – Injury Recovery

10 Sunday Feb 2019

Posted by jamescaterracing in Fitness, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Bowen Therapy, fitness, injury, Julie Foster, recovery

An unfortunate (and thrillingly unique – but that’s another blog…) part of being a racing driver is that you’re going to be involved in a crash.

Thankfully, Motorsport UK are continually doing a great job to make sure we all walk away from accidents without too much physical damage.

But there’s always a chance you’re going to pick up an injury – or, like me, you’ll pick up an injury away from the track which affects your racing. Then what do you do?

After my motorcycle accident in June, I underwent a course of physiotherapy, which got things moving again but left me with near-constant pain and a body that just didn’t feel right.

Image result for julia foster bowen

One of my managers at work told me about Bowen Therapy, which had helped her after a nasty road accident. I figured anything was worth a go, and so booked up a session with a local therapist.

I deliberately looked into what was going to happen to me as little as possible, so that I wouldn’t have any expectations. I’m also a firm believer that even a placebo effect gets the job done, so all I had to lose was the £45 per session it would cost, for a minimum of two sessions.

My main problem is lower back pain which is made worse when sitting in a chair or standing up. Somewhat ironically, I’m only really pain-free when strapped into my race seat in the Formula Vee! I also have a lot of upper back issues and my neck got ripped up pretty badly by the whiplash of getting hit in the side by a two tonne car and then slapping off the tarmac. My broken rib healed, but ribcage on that side felt twisted, my whole body was generally weak, and I’d hurt my wrist a bit.

This means my fitness program ended right there, as did the karting I was doing between races.

I survived the rest of the season with deteriorating fitness whilst unable to train, and clearly can’t have been driving my best.

I turned up at my first Bowen Technique session with Julia Foster, having filled in a brief questionnaire on my injuries, and chatted to the friendly therapist to give her some idea of how to treat my plethora of injuries.

I was told that rather than focus on my lower back as my traditional physiotherapy had, she would treat and balance my whole body, as the source of my pain may actually be elsewhere in my body. This made sense to me, but I was determined to keep a healthy dose of cynicism and just see what happened.

Laying on a massage table is where it all gets a bit tricky to explain. The moves where almost like a massage at times, but more of the gentle pinching motions. Then there was some pushing of areas of my body, a bit of prodding and poking, some laying on of hands, and stuff I have no idea about.

It’s not quite massage, not quite acupressure, not quite pressure point meridians and not quite fingertip massage. Overall, it’s a very gentle and relaxing experience with some brief, mild pain, and many more ticklish moments where I was trying not to giggle and flail about!

I was told to drink lots of water over the next few days, and booked in another session about a week later. And to work a little on my posture by doing things like not standing with my wight on one leg.

I wasn’t disappointed as I left the session, as I did feel generally better, but it wasn’t some mindblowing jump back to health – although I had been told it may take a few days to take full effect.

I thought I’d be needing some full-on chiropractitioner crack-and-snap treatment to get my bones back into alignment, but after the first Bowen session the difference was fantastic – especially given that the touching was so light!

Sitting at my desk the following morning I was surprised to find the pain almost gone, although this had been masking another nerve-type pain in the same area of my lower back. Either way it had definitely reduced my pain and increased the time I was able to sit for.

I have also been doing a pilates class for the first time ever, to help get things moving. This had also shown up several issues such as not being able to lay flat on my back because my ribs felt twisted. At my next pilates class I found this was greatly reduced, and this improved my performance overall.

Going back to the second Bowen session, I was completely honest about all this with the therapist, and we got down to more of the same. She did comment that my alignment did look much better, and I had been paying attention to her advice on posture etc.

After another hour on the table we spoke for a while about what else she had found, and I booked up a third session.

I now found that the nerve pain in my lower back had gone, too – but the next layer of pain was slightly higher up in my back, plus something going on with the back of my ribcage.

I noticed I was performing much better and stronger at my pilates class, but this was followed by a couple of days of the new back pain at pretty nasty levels. Again, it seemed to be caused by sitting and standing.

Speaking to Julie before my third session, we reviewed all of my progress, and then it was more of the relaxing work.

Right from the start it did always surprise me how she could go straight to the problem area – not finding her way by my reaction to the touches as most would do. I gave very few clues as she worked, just relaxing myself and letting her do her thing.

Whilst I do understand a bit about energy within and around our bodies, I’m also a cynic of it all. Whilst this can make me a tough customer, I try not to let that colour my thoughts on the end results – and without a doubt the Bowen technique has helped me a lot.

I’m not completely cured just from this, but it’s given me enough of a stable base that I will be able to ease back into some heavier training. I’m sure a lot of my remaining pain is due to the weakness of my muscles over the months I’ve been affected. That and the fact I’m getting older and don’t bounce so well!

Would I recommend Bowen therapy to anyone else? Absolutely!

There’s definitely something there that makes sense and works. It’s quite likely that I’ll go back for a ‘top up’ at some point, and if I do get banged around in any racing incidents I’d also expect that Bowen could do something to help me.

Image result for julia foster bowen technique

A FitBit in a racecar!

04 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by jamescaterracing in Fitness, Formula Vee, Racing, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

charts, driving, extreme, fitbit, fitness, heart attack, heart rate, inches from death, peak, racing, screen shots

A FitBit in a racecar!

It’s worth saying from the start that I am not the ‘fit bit’ in the racecar.

For those who don’t know, a FitBit is a bracelet type thing that keeps track of things like heart rate, how many steps you’ve taken, how much sleep you’ve got, and any exercise you’ve done. There are a load of cheap ones on the market and the main thing missing is the heart rate monitor, but I chose he FitBit HR because it has this and works on Windows phones.

For £100, they’re very clever pieces of kit that can be use to set and track a lot of health targets, even including calories burnt and helping with a diet plan. My main interest, though, was to find out what happens to my heart when I’m racing.

For the Brands Hatch round of the 2016 Formula Vee championship, I wore my FitBit, and have taken several screenshots of the heart reading that I got from the weekend.

My normal resting heart rate is around 66bpm. Based on age (220bpm minus your age), my maximum heart rate is 181bpm.

Arriving at the circuit on Friday afternoon, it seemed like a good idea to take the racecar to get scrutineered (officials check the car and your kit are safe and within the regulations) ready for the weekend.

A ‘formula’ racecar is a bit of a beast. It has one sole purpose in life, and that is to go fast. Two – if you count “trying to kill you”. The point is that even being around one will get you going a bit.

I jumped in the car and drove about 200m up the hill in 1st gear, just to save us pushing it – and then checking the heart rate logs my pulse went up to over 120bpm just doing this!

I’d asked people on Facebook and at work what they thought my max bpm would be – and this showed that a few would be way off the mark!

The following morning was where the fun really started, and I strapped into the full 6 point harness, donned my helmet and HANS device, and rolled out onto the circuit to complete the qualifying session.

As you’ll see from the graph below, whizzing around a track got my heart pounding up to 152bpm! Perhaps unsurprisingly, this peak was early on in the session, where the fear and excitement are strong, and your brain readjusts to thraping a car around at over 100mph.

bpm20qual_zps6wvb8qcm

What is something of a surprise, is that my heart rate dropped to almost 110bpm in the middle of the session as I settled into a rhythm and got used to things, before rising to around the 150bp mark again as I gave a push to find a decent lap time.

Then came the first race of the weekend.

30 cars all trying to pile into the first rollercoaster of a corner on cold tyres is a thing to behold. Even getting to the grid and waiting for those red lights to come on is pretty stressful – your visor steams up, and your adrenaline is in overdrive.

When the red lights switch off, and you try to get the power down faster than everyone around you, you’re already in that deep calm state.

The only thing I can really compare it to is a fist fight. All the fear leading up to it lasts until you get that first punch in the face – then you’re just into the battle and you find everything slows down for you. You start to think and plan and the blinkered tunnel around you starts to open up again.

If you’re not the violent type, then the next best example I can give is all the excitement, fear and worry as you get ready to go up on stage (in a band, for me). One you play the first few notes you forget the crowd and just concentrate on playing the music…

Calm as this all may seem to you, this is when your body is working the hardest:

bpm20r1_zpsblwhtznn

Boom! 171Bpm!

As you can see, my heart rate was pretty high the whole time, but that 171 peak was undoubtedly when I lost the back end on the last lap around Surtees. To me, this was massive, and I felt the back come around, snapped on some opposite lock, and then found I was headed off the track at a very high speed. I thought it was an accident, and it would be a big one, but by luck or judgement I’d got the amount of correction on the steering wheel so exact that somehow still got it turned into the following corner.

Of course, on video, this looks like nothing. Quick twitch, carry on, no drama.

Anyway – that was the peak of the weekend.

You can see slight patterns, but I don’t think the FitBit is sensitive enough that you’ll be able to see stuff like: 156bpm around Paddock Hill, 148 at Druids etc.

I tried harder in race 2, without question.

I also had a large can of Monster energy drink about an hour before I got in the Vee.

And so this result surprised me:

bpm20r2_zps26r6rlak

Yes – that’s a peak of a mere 134! So much for energy drinks increasing your heart rate!

I find this pattern very interesting. The initial peak is that start and then the lull is waiting on the grid after the race was red-flagged.

You’ll not that on the restart, my heart rate rises, but is even lower overall, and with a big dip.

The spike will have been from a battle, and then the dip from when I was ‘in the zone’ chasing after another driver. The peak will be me catching him and pushing hard to do so.

And so what does it all mean?

I do concentrate hard on my heart rate in the gym – how to control it and lower it. It seems this kind of training is well-founded!

The 171bpm peak isn’t entirely unexpected, as we’re all doing something pretty stupid out there – and trying hard to do it, too!

We’re inches from death.

We’re also experiencing life like few others ever do.

Because of that I’m wondering if this pattern will be the same at every race? I suspect the lower heart rate in the second race is a lot to do with the body and mind getting used to being exposed to extremes. It’s more used to it, and copes better each time you do it.

There’s less fear, less excitement, and less stress. It’s like building up a tolerance to eating hot chilli’s – what you used to think was unbearably hot is now a mere tingle on your tongue.

One thing is for sure – time spent on aerobic exercise is time well spent for a racing driver!

I’ll be hoping to use my FitBit at all the races, and will post screenshots for those in the future.

Until then – don’t forget to breathe!

Mounting cameras on a Formula Vee

08 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by jamescaterracing in Fitness, Formula Vee, Racing, Rules & Regulations

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

camera, fitness, formula vee, joovuu, mobius, mounting, onboard camera, preparation, racing, roll hoop, sheane

Mounting cameras on a Formula Vee

When I had the Donington test last year, my mounting bracket hadn’t turned up in time, and so I went with the easy option – I put a bit of foam underneath the camera (a Mobius Action Camera in JooVuu waterproof case) and duct taped that sucker to the roll hoop on the Sheane.

Whilst this does work, and is very secure, it does come with a few problems.  First, we found I’d taped over the LED that shows if the camera is switched on or running, so we had to guess whether it was working.  It also means it’s hard to take the memory card out or charge the battery up.

For this year I’m going to make use of the bar clamp mount from JooVuu.  It’s not perfect because it’s a bit too small for the 32mm chassis tube – but as I came to find when testing things out, the tube isn’t exactly round everywhere, either, so that makes things a bit tough.

The previous run with it taped on top of the roll hoop gave a good picture, but a lot of the screen was filled up by my behelmeted noggin.  This is hard to get around, but with this proper mount it should raise the camera a good few centimeters up, which might make all the difference.

The best camera view will show as much action as possible – both outside and inside the car.  This means mounting it on the right hand side, so you (hopefully) get a view of the gearshift and the steering wheel, and maybe even the pedals.

I may be able to get around this even more effectively by mounting the camera on the side of the roll hoop, although the mount that I currently have limits this, as you can’t have the mount in place with the camera horizontal…

This is probably what I’ll go with at first, but it’s no problem to unbolt and move the camera around a little.

As Glenn rightly pointed out, if I put the car upside down it could cause a problem for the camera with these mountings, but then I will be hoping not to do that, anyway!

We also need to consider getting into and out of the car – in a single seater it’s an even that requires an almost Olympic level of strength and contortionism, without having to worry about knocking a camera.  And we need to ensure there’s somewhere for them to put a tow rope if we end up getting towed off circuit again!

I will hopefully experiment with rear-facing cameras (providing there are going to be other cars behind me on the track!), but that will need more thinking about with types of mount, heat from the engine, and vibrations from bodywork.

If the test day goes without drama, then I should have a bit of time to rethink what we’re doing with cameras, and make improvements where we can.

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