Motor Sports

Among the more interesting sports where I’ve introduced athletes to the use of heart-rate monitors is racecar driving. I’ve worked with Mario and Michael Andretti, Derek Bell, Al Holbert, and others. Like with many traditional sports, including baseball and football, bringing new ideas into motor sports was not easy. My entry was helped originally after working with a young, unknown driver named Chip Robinson. I trained him like an endurance athlete so his brain and body functioned better behind the wheel going at triple-digit speeds in heavy traffic. He wore a heart-rate monitor during all his preseason endurance training, which included mostly running and walking. He even entered some running races for fun. But behind the wheel during practice sessions, the stress of driving was evident. So I had him wear a heart-rate monitor during these driving sessions (and even during races). I discovered that his heart rate, which I later confirmed in other drivers, nearly paralleled his driving speed. Chip’s, however, was more over-reactive than the other drivers’, demonstrating his need to build a bigger aerobic base.

A racecar driver may be running the car at relatively slow warm-up speeds of 90-100 miles per hour, for example, and the heart rate will often be at that level too. Driving poses a certain amount of inherent risk, and a high level of alertness is necessary to perform well and avoid crashes. This all translates into stress, which raises the heart rate—the faster the speed the higher the heart rate. I’ve seen 180 mph equate to heart-rate peaks of 180.

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This was a very interesting finding but not too surprising for me. I had already experimented with wearing my heart-rate monitor while driving on local roads and highways. I found that the faster I drove, the higher my heart rate rose.

For a racecar driver, this information is very important, especially for those who overreact while driving fast, which was one of Chip’s problems. If a better aerobic system is developed, the heart rate will not overreact, although it will still rise to “normal” race levels. An appropriate heart rate, considering the stress of driving at very high speeds, improves a driver’s ability and makes him or her a better competitor. It also improves overall health, and works especially to improve eye-hand coordination and optimal adrenal function.

After a great aerobic base period, Chip Robinson suddenly won several races with his new team, Jaguar, and his newly developed aerobic system. With this success, the next year he was chosen to be a driver for Al Holbert’s Porsche racing team. Al was so interested in Chip’s training that he became a patient of mine too. Aerobic base training paid off for the first race of the season, the 24 Hours of Daytona endurance race. The team won, driving almost 2,700 miles in twenty-four hours with a record-setting average of 111 mph. Chip would go on to win many other events, including three championships, before retiring from the sport.