End of the season: the body is usually given a month's rest, although not a total rest. Riders takes advantage of this time to practice other sports to break the monotony, sports like basketball or badminton; activities that increase the speed of reaction.
Then comes the pre-season again: from December to the start of March.
Type of training
Cardio-respiratory: to improve stamina, work is on a road-racing bicycle. Riders like Pedrosa do a lot of kilometres every year, climbing mountains similar to those in the Tour de France. This is combined with some time on a mountain bike, and in winter they also do cross-country skiing.
These exercises alternate and are complemented with a lot of time in the swimming-pool where they also do aerobic work, this can be reinforced with work for specific muscles with the use of dumb-bells, etc.
Anaerobic: this is training dedicated to increasing strength, basically the upper body: sternocleidomastoid muscle, trapezium, deltopectorals, biceps, triceps, and forearms. The objective is to work the maximum strength but without gaining too much volume, since the aim is to improve stamina and strength so that the muscles respond rapidly.
The special aspects of riding a top class motorbike means that it is not necessary to have a bulky set of muscles, but to have very powerful ones, owing to the sudden movements that a bike makes in a race.
It is important to have muscles that respond quickly and with good strength so that the rider is physically prepared to control the unforeseen whiplash movements made by the bike.
Another set of muscles that are very important are those in the region of the abdomen. Pedrosa does 1000 sit-ups a day in the pre-season, and 700 during the rest of the season!
Other training: Flexibility is very important for riders as they have to be able to respond with strength with the muscle elongated and powerful. It is also important to strengthen the balance of the body and to control the centre of gravity.
