Favorite workouts of Olympic medalists Mike Day and Jill Kintner:
With his personal trainer Greg Romero
When I trained and groomed Mike and Jill side by side for the 12 months leading up to the games, we just had fun every day. Either way, my goal with their training was to keep it interesting and make them feel good about it. This month I’m going to mention a few protocols that both Jill and Mike liked and that led to an eventual medal-winning performance at the Olympics!
I will play one off the bike and one on the bike training protocol for each athlete!
Jill Kintner exercises off the bike: Dynamic warm-up.
If any of you have had a chance to see Jill at a race, you may have seen her in the parking lot doing lots of fun calisthenics near the pits or the rental car. What you are doing is what we like to call a dynamic warm-up. First of all, you will need some normal sports shoes. The first thing we like to do is open our hips, so we start with a knee-to-chest walk. He takes a step forward and with both hands he grabs below the knee and brings it to his chest and then immediately repeats in the next step.
This opens up the hip extensors and lower back. The forward lunge is the next exercise that targets the opposing hip muscles. This time it’s the hip flexors. Just take a good step (about 5 shoes in front of you) and while keeping your upper torso vertically straight, bend your back knee and move forward, and do this movement slowly. This is a nice dynamic hip flexor stretch that will allow you to pedal efficiently! Jill says, “If I could only do 2 warm-up exercises, I would focus on my hip muscles so I can pedal without inhibitions.”
Mike Day Exercises Off the Bike: Plyometrics
Let’s face it, BMX is power and if you can choose an exercise that can affect all components of power, then it would be plyometric. Plyometrics basically consists of jumping to your feet using only your body weight. The best exercises for children are to simply jump rope or jump and skip. This is perfectly fine and safe and they do this kind of thing all day during recess at school. As long as they don’t jump off boxes or 4-foot-tall ladders, their joints and tendons will be fine. They can first start with jumping rope for 10 to 20 quick jumps. Mike’s favorite is rope because it heats him up, hits his ankle joints, knee joints, and heats up his wrists, elbows, and shoulders. Then once he’s ready he likes to move on to Jump Squats.
Simply place both feet shoulder-width apart, keeping your upper torso vertically straight, push your hips back followed by a bend at the knees, lower to about 45 degrees, and simply counter with an explosive jump as high as you can. . The key is to take off on the ball of the foot and land on the ball of the foot with a slight bend in the knees and hips. You can do it one at a time or quickly. Mike likes to do them one at a time, reboot, and focus on altitude. Mike says, “I’ll jump rope 3 sets for 20 jumps and then squat 3 sets of 5 jumps, and then I’ll be ready for gym training or riding my bike.”
Jill Kintner on the bike: Stand up. Start doing easy sprints.
In the last 5 years, while racing mountain bikes, Jill never worked on explosive sprint power from a dead start. In BMX, he found that it was necessary to give himself a chance on the first straight in order to have a chance to win a medal. His favorite sprint session was doing easy walking sprints with a standing snatch. I designed this exercise with an emphasis on programming the pure acceleration of the sprint from the gate. We used flat pedals to focus 100% on the downstroke and used an easy gear so she was forced to accelerate quickly. “I love them so much that I had a dedicated flat-pedal easy gait bike ready for the Olympics that I would use as a warm-up between qualifying rounds,” says Jill.
What you do is lower 1 or 2 teeth more easily than race equipment and change the pedals to flat. In an open flat parking lot with no cars around, take 2 cones, one for the starting point and one for the point of need. You can mark the distance by placing one down and then pedaling from the start cone to the end cone. Jill liked to do this with about 7 full cranks. How to sprint: Standing in the door start position with the cranks level, approach the start cone slowly and then explode keeping the front wheel down and straight.
Make sure to minimize the curvature of the hips and try to stay upright, concentrating on the extension of each pedal stroke through the feet. “It’s not a hard workout, it’s a quality one, and I love it because when I hit the track I feel explosive,” says Jill. Do 1 set of 8-10 efforts and rest 3-4 minutes in between to regain the ATP energy system. This speed training is about neurological programming, not muscle breakdown. In fact, we hardly ever do any training that has an emphasis on muscle breakdown because BMX is all about quality power.
Mike Day on the bike: full laps.
If you don’t have the throttle to do a full lap without getting tired, then you’re not specifically BMX ready. “There seems to be the impression that it takes a lot of endurance work on a road bike to be in BMX fit, and I haven’t touched a road bike all year, I go full laps,” says Mike. I say because it is not very specific, you get the dynamic power component of the jump and lactic accumulation towards the end. This is the perfect training protocol for those struggling to get there.
The key to this workout is to keep the intensity just below “max.” What makes this exercise work is that you are training your ability to repeat motorcycles to your maximum physical ability. “Greg always talks about how repeatability is the limiting factor for a good racing day,” laughs Mike, “At first I hated them, but then I started to see my racing feeling better towards the end and in the Olympics, I never got better “says the silver medalist. The key is intensity, the rest between efforts and how many. Mike likes to go out and do 5 full laps at 90% intensity with 10 minutes of rest in between. For children under the age of 16, I would recommend a shorter rest interval of 6 to 8 minutes, as they do not produce lactate acid like older people.
