This past week I had a National Champion SnoCross racer in my office. Now I treat any and all patients, but certainly have a love of treating athletes. This young athlete really got me thinking about the benefits of being flexible and strong in as many ranges as possible Here is a kid that weighs maybe 60lbs and is riding around a 500lb snowmobile and launching it into the air, over moguls and around tight corners all while each lap the terrain is ever changing as the sleds chew it up, and trying to avoid his many competitors. I grew up snowmobiling on weekends up in Haliburton with my family, but what was described to me by this “kid” was something else.
So let’s get a few things laid out first. SnoCross is like motocross, but on a machine that weighs more than double that of a dirt bike, and has half the suspension, is less agile, and on a course that gets chewed up by the machines so fast that every lap is different. On top of that, did I mention that the patient I was treating is all of 11 years old.
He presented with left lower abdominal muscle soreness after landing a 40 foot tabletop, right hip tightness and tension between his shoulder blades. The only sudden onset pain was the abdominal pain from landing hard off of a jump. The other pains came on slowly after a weekend of training several hours a day.
After hearing this I went looking into SnoCross, and after watching a few videos saw the amazing insanity that is SnoCross. It looks like the riders are constantly hanging on for dear life, while sporadically being launched in the air, sometimes at odd angles, only to come back down and rocket off into another corner. It reminded of the Ewok’s driving the speeder in Return of the Jedi.
The mechanics needed to not only control a 500lb snowmobile, but also be able to handle harsh and unpredictable jolts and changes of direction from the ever changing track conditions is staggering. The riders are never simply sitting on the sleds, except for when they sit waiting for the start flag to drop. At any point in time they are hanging off one side or the other of the sled, or muscling the handlebars in a delicate balance of throttle, track spin and precise steering to get these beasts to go where they need to go, as fast as possible.
This brings us to the point of this blog. What are the needs of the body in order to be able to not only handle these stresses, but also to excel and win, as that’s the point in this whole endeavour. At first thought most would simply start with strengthening exercises. The interesting part is that in doing his sport he is going to build strength. Riding a snowmobile for hours at a time will build the specific strength required. What it doesn’t build is the flexibility needed for when you get pushed beyond your strength limits and into new territory of joint movement. This is where injury happens and where there is a big opportunity to make some enormous gains.
Total joint range of motion is an area where major gains can be made. If you think about it, in a perfect world our joints will only be required to go through the exact ranges needed for a given movement as perfected in a closed environment over and over again. This however is not reality. As in the example above with SnoCross where a rider can be pulled and yanked into any manner of positions for all of the joints in the human body. This however creates a problem. Because at no point will an 11 year old be able to muscle a 500lb snowmobile, nor will a full grown adult have much more luck. The best option then is to train his body so that he is capable of dealing with large perturbations (push/pull) to his joints.
Training full and ever increasing range of motion is then best. Doing lots of strength work isn’t necessarily needed as he is going to get this while riding his sled. He needs to work on, large range of motion exercises that challenge the full range capable of each joint. Working to increase the range of each joint will allow for an increase in the body’s capacity to handle large, unexpected perturbations.
Traditional though would dictate that we should have these athletes work on strength work. But they do enough of that from doing their sport. The goal with this type of extra work is to make their body capable of handling unexpected and unplanned incidences.
Attached are a few links to good daily rehab exercises for not only SnoCross racers, but anyone that does sport. They aren’t hard exercises, but the goal is to increase one’s capable range of motion. Until the next time, keep the rubber side down.
Dr. Adam Wade
Dr. Adam Wade 