Working out at Woking

I have just got back home from a morning spent in the "Fitness and Wellbeing centre" aka the gym at the spotless McLaren team HQ outside Woking and I feel absolutely knackered and certainly neither fit nor well. The good people at McLaren came up with the great idea of inviting us hacks in to get a taste for the sort of punishing fitness routines Lewis and Heikki have been putting themselves through during the winter and the experience was exhausting. Half way through the two-hour session, I thought we had finished...

Under the watchful eye of McLaren trainer Gerry Convy we did running machine stuff and then a series of weights and other exercises which the drivers use to prepare for the stresses and strains of the cockpit. One of the hardest was a harmless-looking procedure where you sat on the floor with your legs together with your heels off the ground, holding a 4kg(or five) medicine ball which you simply moved or rotated from one side of your body to the other. The idea was to strengthen muscles the drivers use when cornering. A minute of that and I could feel the sinews stretching...There were plenty of others in a similar vein.

The highpoint was the "Technogym" Formula One driver-trainer machine which Lewis himself demonstrated. This is basically a cockpit with a set of weights attached both to the drivers' helmet and the steering column. The helmet is attached to the weights by lengths of bungee cord and the idea is that the machine replicates the pull of gravity on your neck as you turn imaginary corners. Having never sat in a Formula One car or driven any open-wheel single-seater, I found this contraption a real eye-opener; you got a vivid sense of how hard the drivers work in the cockpit and it was easy to see how utterly draining a full race distance must be.

Lewis, by the way, was on top form. He looked a little heavier than he did by the end of last season but he reckons he is fitter now than he has ever been. He is clearly raring to go on the new season and sounded very happy with the pace of the MP4/23. His view is that the Barcelona test, when the McLarens were slightly ahead, is the benchmark and that it is going to be a very close battle with the Ferraris.

Halfway through the gym session, Ron turned up to remind us just how fit he is at 60. At one point he was on the exercise mat next to me and, of course, he was all out to prove that he could do whatever we were doing harder and longer than I could. And he did. The Ronster was in remarkably good spirits considering all the dramas in both his personal and professional life in recent weeks and months.

After we had finished in the gym, we had lunch standing up(odd, I know) in the "Hakkinen" dining room upstairs with Ron. Of course the talk was all about when or if and why he might step down. There is clearly a power shift coming at the top at Woking but I am not sure if Ron or anyone else knows exactly when it will actually happen. (It's not going to be this week).

I got the feeling Ron is finding it very hard to walk away from what is an extraordinary life-long achievement. You only have to look at the MTC to realise the scale of Ron's contribution. It may be perfectionism gone mad, but it is also a version of excellence that is hard to beat...

Comments

[IDR]

May I recommend you some good "Oxygen Bars" here in Madrid.

Please confirm ASAP that you are still alive, and not writing this from heaven (or hell, who knows).

[Kathryn S]

Ha! Tomorrow morning will be the real test as to how very much you overdid...I just finished a rehab series for a herniated disc and came to the conclusion there are certain aspects of what my therapist put me through for my "well being" that would perhaps be frowned upon under the Geneva Conventions.

It is quite interesting how very specialized the training for athletes has become. I read somewhere last season that breathing exercises were part of some of the team's training...was there any talk of that? Breathing techniques and oxygen usage are apparently part of a new wave of exercise science and I imagine anything thought to give an advantage would be considered.

[Anon]

It would be fun if an epert could judge all the pilots to see how fit they are. Some pilots like Webber, Sato, and R. Schumacher (when he was racing) seemed really fit to me. But I'm just guessing. By the way, I loved this statistic showing the consistency of each driver. If you don't count Nakajima who raced only one race, Alonso was the most reliable pilot in 2007, pipping Lewis by TWO laps.

http://www.f1db.com/exec/section/driver/action/statistic/page/Driver_reliability

[CHIUNDA]

You lucky bastard! I came out of the gym this morning feeling run over by some construction machinery as usual only to find out you had Lewis as a personal trainer - its good to know the atmosphere inside the Woking outfit is really upbeat. A good way to kick off the season and wake the blog up.

[nachosm]

Welcome back, Ed!

Bear in mind that starting to work out is the hard part, so don't let tomorrow's stiffness prevent you from keeping yourself fit, or from starting to get in shape.

Thanks for sharing your hard day at work, :) Interesting stuff...

[ALLMAN]

Oh, dear....is your McLaren propaganda going to stop anyday?