Old School

By David Porter

This will be the 20th year of Pro ATV racing for Doug Gust. I think it’s safe to say this guy is ATV racing’s GOAT (Greatest Of All Time). He may not have the record for pro national championships but can you think of any one that has been as good as he hIt doesn’t matter what sport you’re involved with, whether it’s golf or motocross, if you’re totally focused and committed more than likely you will indeed be successful at it.

You’ve probably heard that many times. For most it goes in one ear and right out the other. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, “I’m committed, I’m focused but I still haven’t been all that successful.” Save it, bottom line; if you’re not successful in ATV racing it’s because you’re not truly as committed as you think you are.

Okay by now you’re probably thinking just what the heck is Porter getting at here? Well, this summer I was the Pro mechanic for the K and K ATV Race Team. With the job, I got really close to a lot of the young Pro and Pro-am riders in today’s ATV race scene. Throughout the year we had a lot of conversations about a whole host of things. It always seemed inevitable that our conversations would end up being centered around working out, training and how much seat time the rider put in on any given week.

You see, I’m a bit of a work out / training freak myself. So I’ve always felt right at home in these types of bench racing conversations, and not just to interact with my old school ways of how we used to train for an upcoming race. I love to talk about training because I like learning about the new techniques and programs that these guys commit to now days. It absolutely amazes me just how committed some of the guys in our sport are compared to others. There are a select few that really do eat, sleep, and breathe ATV racing.

It’s actually pretty straight forward, you don’t win in the toughest ATV motocross series in the world with a spin of the wheel. It takes a ton of hard work, but there are a few riders that I’ve had the pleasure to get to know that I’m just plain in awe of. These select few are just insane with how much work they put into their racing careers. Those are the guys that end accomplishing their goals and ultimately become successful.

 

Their whole lives revolve around training, and basically just flat-out working their asses off day in and day out. That becomes the first clue as to why they’re successful and at the top of our sport.

Never Lift
In 2001 Jeremiah Jones changed the way professional quad riders trained in the off season, but Chad Wienen stepped up off season training and a commitment to success to a whole new level in late 2006. Eat, sleep, and breathe it. It isn’t just an expression for some, it’s a serious way of life for the best motocross riders on earth. Let me give you an example of an average day in the life of today’s top professional ATV rider. Be warned this is going to either make you want to give up or make you want to start doing push ups as soon as you finish reading this.

The top riders in the world don’t sleep past 8AM. Not because they dont want too much sleep, it’s because there aren’t enough hours in the day to fit their typical training day in if they’re not out of bed by eight. Shortly after waking up the top riders in the world will put in a morning jog or bicycle ride. Breakfast will usually follow the run. The rest of morning is usually spent prepping the practice quad for a full day of hard core practice. There is a big effort to start riding right about noon time, just like the noon time first moto at the nationals. Each practice moto lasts an average of 25 minutes. And each day he rides three motos, some may even put in four! Next up is dinner, then, about 8PM, when most others probably crash on the couch and watch television, the top riders are off to hit the gym for some weight training for an hour or so. It’s typically like this for three days on and one day off. On the weekends they’ll usually hit a race somewhere. Mind you, for the fully committed pros at the top of their game, this above routine starts right after the last MX national and doesn’t end until the first round of the following season. That’s pretty close to six straight months of boot-camp-like training. Durring the season there’s a lot of travel involved, but they’ll still ride 2-3 times per week regardless. Few guys can commit to this kind of regimen for even a month let alone six. Are you as blown away as I was when I heard about this kind of off season training program?

At the end of the 2006 season Chad Wienen had had enough. He made a commitment to work as hard as he possible could and came out in 2007 in incredible shape and ready for success. By the 2007 opener he had lost 40 pounds, landed a factory Yoshimura Suzuki ride and put himself at the front of the pack and on top of the sport. When I talk about incredible commitment and hard work I have to bring up one particular rider. I’ll call him the poster boy for this kind of commitment, and the text book case for the point I’m trying to get across. It’s none other than Chad “Never Lift” Wienen. He is the epitome of what hard work is all about.

Unless you just started paying attention to professional quad racing, you know his story, but I’m going to tell it to you a little bit differently. You see, I first met Chad in 2004. At that time he was fast, not rocket-fast though, just fast enough to keep plugging along at the national level. When he turned Pro in 2006 his program was still about the same thing; mid pack finishes and just enough momentum to keep plugging along throughout the season.

At the end of the 2006 season he told me that money was getting tight and he was just fed up with finishing mid-pack. He told me when he left the Englishtown, NJ WPSA final round event he was beat up and totally spent physically. He said he made a commitment to himself to put everything he had into his training program in an effort to come out swinging in 2007. He knew it would take nothing short of total commitment and lots of hard work. Chad told me when he got home from that Englishtown race back in ’06, he tore into his program and started working harder than anyone would have thought humanly possible, and that’s how he got as fast as he is now.

Digger
On the other end of the spectrum is “Digger” Doug Gust. If Chad is the poster boy to commitment, then Doug is the concrete statue of commitment and hard work. Let’s face it, Doug Gust is just a plain stud. What’s most amazing to me is that he has been on top of our sport for so damn long.

If you’ve been around for say ten years you’ve seen Pro riders come and go. But since 1989 Doug Gust has been a consistent threat to win every race he’s entered for the last 20 years! That’s right, he’s now in his 20th season as a professional ATV racer. And he’ll be doing it at the age of 42!

Ever wonder what gets him so motivated to work so hard year after year? I did, so I flat out asked him the other day. He said that winning is all he thinks about. It’s like an obsession with him. He thinks he’s addicted to the feeling he gets when he wins. He went on to tell me that when he turned 40 he craved that feeling even more than when he was in his 20’s or 30’s.

Doug went on to tell me that it sure didn’t get any easer at age 40. On the contrary, the competition has never been so fierce. They don’t seem to get faster every year — they’re faster at every race now days!

There is no question if you ask me, Doug Gust is the likes we shall never see again. He has some strange ability to reinvent and rework his speed as the Pro class around him gets faster and faster race by race.

I asked the single best rider our sport has ever seen what the key was to his success. He gave me a simple answer, “Just hard work, and every year I work harder than I did the year before.” If Doug and Chad don’t quite explain what commitment is, it simply can’t be explained.

You
Next time you see this guy (Chad Wienen) just standing around, ask him how he got to where he is today. He’ll tell you the same thing he told me, hard work. As Doug said hard work is surely the key to success, but I think an equal ingredient to success is motivation. You really need to find something to motivate and inspire you first if you truly want success in anything in life. There has to be something inside you that drives you to excel more than others. Don’t get me wrong, there is indeed a high level of God given talent, but now days that alone wont do it for you. Unless you nurture that talent by giving it the full opportunity that it deserves you’ll never find out if you’re the next RC, Bubba, Wimmer or Tiger Woods.

Take it from a guy that never really had much God given talent (that would be me). Next time you’re training, whether you’re riding your practice quad, bicycling, or banging out reps at the gym, do one more rep, pound out a couple more laps or pedal a few more miles. Try working harder than you have the time before. Try it for as long as you can possibly stand it. Trust me, you’re outlook, as well as your performance in racing, will undoubtedly begin to change for the better. That’s the benefit commitment will give you.

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