Stacking more plates every week only builds one lane of performance — and motocross doesn’t live in one lane.
By Seiji Ishii
Just lifting weights and trying to lift more all the time isn’t the whole picture. That’s just force development. The other lanes are tissue tolerance, power (speed of force development), and durability (submaximal contractions over long periods / muscular endurance).
Moto needs all four.
If you only chase more weight, you ignore the rate of force and repeatability. You don’t get those by accident — or because you think you’re the next James Stewart.
Force Development: Your Ceiling
Force development is your maximum output — how much raw force you can produce in one effort.
This is heavy squats, deadlifts, presses, and rows. Lower reps. More load. Progressive overload. It’s what most riders default to.
When you lift a heavy barbell, you move through two phases. The concentric phase is the lifting portion, when the muscle shortens — standing up out of a squat. The eccentric phase is the lowering portion, when the muscle lengthens under control.
Most heavy strength work is controlled and relatively slow. You brace, grind through the concentric, reset, and repeat.
That matters. A higher ceiling makes submaximal efforts feel easier. If high loads are comfortable, holding 60–70% effort on the bike costs less.
But heavy strength is slow strength. Moto doesn’t reward slow strength. It makes the other lanes possible, but by itself, it doesn’t win races.
Tissue Tolerance: Can Your Body Handle the Load?
Tissue tolerance is your body’s ability to absorb repeated stress without breaking down.
Tendons, ligaments, and joint structures adapt more slowly than muscle. Skip foundational loading and jump straight into high intensity or high speed, and something usually gets irritated.
This lane uses lighter weights, higher volume, and a progressively increasing total workload. It’s not flashy. It doesn’t look explosive. But it’s what lets you train hard without your elbows, knees, back, or shoulders flaring up every few weeks. It also cuts down the “random” tendon and ligament issues that show up when you skip base work — especially if you’re not 18 anymore.
If this lane is weak, everything else is unstable.
Power: How Fast You Can Access Strength
Power is how quickly you can turn on what you’ve built.
This lane is built with fast concentric work (the “up” phase), jumps, and Olympic lift variations. Even moderate loads moved with maximum speed intent build power.
The bike gets kicked out of line in an instant. The rear tire hooks, breaks loose, and hooks again in fractions of a second. The chassis loads and unloads through whoops and braking bumps. You don’t have time to “ramp up” force as you do in a heavy squat.
If you never train speed, you may have a big engine — but slow throttle response. You can be strong and still react too late to matter.
Durability: Repeatable Output Under Fatigue
Durability is the ability to sustain submaximal contractions over time. In plain English, it’s holding tension and repeating effort without falling apart during a moto.
Think about legs that keep absorbing bumps late in the race. Arms and shoulders that keep you stable through braking and acceleration. A core and upper back that hold body position instead of collapsing when you get kicked.
A muscle contraction is simply tension production. In a moto, you’re producing thousands of submaximal contractions every lap. Most aren’t max effort. They’re sustained and repeated.
Five heavy reps don’t equal a moto, or even a section.
If you only train low-rep strength, you aren’t building repeatability. That’s why riders can feel strong in the gym and still fade on the track.
Why “Strong” Doesn’t Always Transfer
A rider adds 40 pounds to a squat in the off-season. Stronger? Yes.
But in a race, lap times spike early and fall off late. Body position slips. Breathing rate climbs. Technique degrades.
That’s not a mindset issue. It’s a lane imbalance.
Force development improved. Power and durability didn’t improve at the same rate. The ceiling rose, but access speed and repeatability didn’t.
Moto doesn’t reward isolated strength. It rewards usable strength over time.
You Can’t Maximize All Four at Once
You can’t maximize tissue tolerance, force development, power, and durability simultaneously. You have to periodize the emphasis—meaning you intentionally shift focus across phases.
If you try to push all four hard at once, everything blunts. Heavy lifting fatigues the nervous system. Explosive work suffers. Durability gets compromised. Overuse issues creep in.
Instead, sequence the lanes.
Early off-season: build tissue tolerance, then raise the ceiling.
Mid off-season: shift toward power. Move faster. Reduce grind. Improve access speed.
Pre-season: increase durability emphasis. More sustained tension. More repeatable efforts that resemble moto demands.
In-season: maintain instead of chasing PRs. Your energy belongs on the bike.
That’s how you build all four lanes without sabotaging them.
Gym Red Flags: You’re Training One Lane
If any of these describe your week, you’re probably building force development and ignoring the rest.
- Every lift is a slow grind: If most reps look like a controlled 3–5RM effort, you’re training strength at one speed. Moto needs fast access, not just a bigger number.
- You never do “fast up” work: No explosive intent on moderate loads. If nothing in your program is moved aggressively, don’t be surprised when you feel late to the bike.
- You skip base volume, then go hard anyway: You jump straight into heavy or explosive blocks without building tissue tolerance first. That’s when elbows, knees, back, and shoulders start chirping, and your training gets interrupted.
- Your “conditioning” is random: If durability work is just “I’ll do something hard sometimes,” it won’t build repeatability. Durability is planned, progressive, and specific.
- Your gym progress has no on-bike metric: If you can’t name what your lifting block is supposed to change on the bike (late-moto posture, braking stability, stable lap times), you’re training numbers, not performance.
The Rule
Just lifting weights and trying to lift more all the time isn’t the whole picture. That’s force development. If that’s your entire plan, congrats — loading your bike just got easier.
There is tissue tolerance, force development, power, and durability. Moto needs all four.
Strength is the foundation. It’s not the whole house.
