Exploring the difference between aging and aging well
On January 18, 2025, Eli Tomac wrote his name into the history books yet again. By winning at San Diego, he became the only rider to win at least one Supercross in 11 consecutive seasons. He further solidified his position as number two on the all-time win list, and he also moved up the list of the oldest riders to win a main event. At 32 years of age, he is now number five behind Justin Brayton (age 33), Mike LaRocco (age 33), Chad Reed (age 33) and John Dowd (age 32).
Back in 1991, Jeff Ward won the Oklahoma City Supercross at age 29, setting a record at the time. That year, Dirt Bike Magazine ran a story that explored the effects of age on racing and how best to achieve a long, healthy career in the saddle. We interviewed “Wardy,” Malcolm Smith, Jeff Spencer and Dr. Herman Falsetti. Here, we present that piece in our ongoing series of stories that never grow old.
THE CLOCK NEVER STOPS
It’s scary to watch yourself getting older. It’s funny at times, too, realizing how hard it is to keep a respectable pace until the end of a race or even a challenging trail ride, or how it takes a little bit longer to get up after a good get-off. Not everyone laughs inside their helmets at their fading performance. Some worry, some get mad and a few never really have to give it much thought because they do what it takes to ride as fast as they’re physically able for as long as they want.
This is about staying fast. When you learn what the experts in the medical and sports fitness fields have to say on the subject, as well as the secrets of older riders out there, it might change more than how you ride; it could change the way you live.
HOW BAD AM I, DOC?
Jeff Spencer, training adviser to many of the most successful and best-known motocross stars of the past decade, hit us with a few unsettling facts right off the bat: “We’re slowly destroying our bodies almost from the time we’re born. Though serious injury at an early age can create lasting problems that limit physical performance, children have a tremendous capacity for self-repair that tapers down with time. Their bodies are cell-making factories, so repairs to any growing part are normally fairly quick and complete. At age 21, when growth stops, the factory shuts down. The body still has an impressive capacity to heal itself, but wear becomes a factor, especially non-regenerating parts of the body, such as joints. Anyone who rides is familiar with the stress on joints. It’s worth noting that, except for crash-related joint injuries, running is more punishing to the joints than riding.
“By age 30, you’re losing bone material and muscle tissue. You’re using both, but your body isn’t making any more. The heart is a muscle, so the losses the body suffers affect the cardiovascular system as well as general muscular strength. Riders at this age may notice a reduction in flexibility and also as the ligaments become less elastic.
“All items I mentioned describe the typical effects of aging that nature hands out to everyone, but we often do some additional damage of our own. Most people recognize that the injuries we sustain affect our comfort and physical performance limits, but they ignore the impact of general lifestyle habits, which are just as important. Diet, exercise and environmental factors make a daily positive or negative contribution to our general well-being.”
THAT BAD? WHAT CAN I DO?
Fortunately, aging doesn’t have to be a grim, joyless process. It’s not nearly as crippling as it sounds, either. Dr. Herman Falsetti, director of Health Corp, one of the country’s leading sports fitness/wellness clinics, furnished us with a report from Exercise Physiology, which indicates that overall performance in physically fit humans diminishes at just 1 percent per year after age 25. Performance loss jumps to 2 percent per year in physically active humans after age 60, but even that’s barely noticeable. Dr. Spencer was quick to point out that everybody’s system can be protected from aging, and it’s not difficult, time-consuming or expensive to do. A sensible approach to diet and exercise is all that is needed. Even more encouraging is the fact that you can reverse the effects of years of bad habits, but only if you exercise and eat right. One or the other won’t do it.
Don’t expect to live a long and healthy life if you eat fast-food meals or snack on junk food every day. Even if you ride two 45-minute motos daily, your arteries will look like a kitchen drain choked with bacon fat, and your heart will give up trying to push blood through the clogs. You might live pretty long if you eat properly, but regular exercise is a must if you plan to avoid injury and heal quickly.
The type of exercise you do isn’t nearly as important as doing it regularly. Sudden extreme exercise without an appropriate training buildup or pre-training warm-up is responsible for more injuries than actual sporting activities studied. Don’t expect occasional workouts to do much good, either; they won’t. It’s important to choose training activities that you enjoy enough to do regularly and vigorously. The time investment doesn’t have to be very great. Twenty minutes of continuous, fairly intense activity each day, something that keeps the heart rate above 120 beats per minute, will do the trick for most people. The details of your fitness program can be as unique as you are, but for best results, adults should include the basic guidelines outlined by Dr. Spencer.
DR. SPENCER’S TRAINING TIPS FOR RIDING YOUNG
Consult a doctor before starting any fitness program, especially if you feel uncomfortable when you exert yourself physically.
Always begin any period of physical activity with mild warm-up exercises, beginning with stretching, then advance to a relaxed version of the activity to be performed. Basically, stretch before you ride, then run in place briefly, then hop on your bike and ride slowly for about 10 minutes before gassing it. Until you warm up completely, you can’t ride your fastest anyway, so why risk injury? Flexibility does decrease slightly with age, but inactivity typically robs riders of more flexibility than any function of aging. Keep stretching your muscles and ligaments with proper exercise, and they’ll stay limber and elastic.
Avoid compressive or high-impact training activities, like lifting heavy weights or running. Swimming is the best, least harmful training activity. Cycling on mountain bikes or road bikes can be considered second best. It doesn’t offer the full-body benefits of swimming, but it does hone bike-handling skills (especially mountain biking), which can benefit dirt bikers. Running on a mini-trampoline is also very good. Cross-country skiing is great. Riding your motorcycle is good training, too, but a high degree of discipline (the rider must ride hard continuously for at least 20 minutes at a time) and a truly challenging track are required to make this activity useful as training. These new bikes are just too light and smooth-riding to give most of us a good workout!
DR. SPENCER’S DIET FOR RIDING YOUNG
Sixty-five percent of what you eat should be complex carbohydrates, like fruits, grains and vegetables. Potatoes are great, but avoid them or any other foods prepared in unhealthful ways like frying or served with cheese sauce.
Ten to 15 percent of your diet should be from protein sources, but no more. Proteins are hard for your body to process. Excess protein is not used by your body. Fish and chicken are much better than red meat but, again, the foods are no better than how they’re prepared. Baking and microwaving beat frying from a health standpoint.
You’ll get the fats you need (about 20 percent of your total diet) from the other foods you eat. There’s no need, other than as a treat, for adults to eat things like dairy products or any other foods that are high in fats, animal or otherwise. An occasional treat, once or twice a week, won’t do any great harm, and if it makes you feel good so you don’t feel like you’re imprisoned by your fitness program, it’s probably doing more good than harm. Attitude is vital to a successful program. If you get disgusted with training and blow it off, it doesn’t help you.
DR. FALSETTI’S PEP TALK FOR KIDS FROM 15 TO 40
“You don’t have to accept the 1-percent-per-year loss in physical performance that nature hands out. We work with many top-10 finishers in world-class competition—several are world record holders—in sports where physical conditioning is as important as it is in motocross, and many of these people are in their late 30s. Train seriously and continuously, and you can cut your performance loss to one-half percent until you reach age 40. There’s no physical reason why someone couldn’t compete at the highest level of dirt bike racing into his 40s, provided he can remain free of injuries that would limit performance. In most sports, older athletes decide to step away from competition for reasons other than their performance, and I would suspect this is true for dirt bike racing also. Riding for pleasure is a different thing entirely, and there’s no limit to how long someone could or should do it. It depends entirely on the individual’s desire to continue with the sport.
“Injuries take progressively longer to heal each year after age 25, but healing is just as complete as in youth. Avoid the temptation to return to strenuous activity just because you feel nearly healed. It’s far better to return to normal activity gradually. Some activity is better than none, because healing depends on blood flow to a great extent. When injured, do things that get your blood moving without stressing the injured area, though some light activity, even a massage, is better than none for the injured area. Of course, the better your general health, the better and faster your recovery from injury will be. Your diet can help or hurt your healing performance as much as your general physical performance.”
MALCOLM SMITH
Beyond “On Any Sunday”
Some riders have uncanny nerve as their advantage. With others, lightning reflexes or athletic perfection is their edge. Some have hereditary natural skill.
Malcolm Smith doesn’t have any of those. His advantage is his smile. It doesn’t take much more than one look at Malcolm’s floppy-eared, farm-boy face to know why he’s starting on his fourth decade of riding and racing motorcycles. “I love it,” he says. You get the feeling he couldn’t possibly tell you anything but the truth.
At age 50, though, Smith has discovered the reasons he loves motorcycling have changed. “I used to want to win at all costs,” he remembers. “If someone was in front of me, I would do anything to pass him. I just didn’t like getting beat.
“Now, I don’t race as often—maybe one or two enduros a year—and I do it just for the experience, the thrill of riding someplace I’ve never seen or challenging myself to finish something. That was always true; that’s why I rode the Six Days. In the old days, it was more of an adventure than a race.”
Of course, even though he claims he’s not as competitive as he used to be, the Malcolm Smith of old rears his head once he actually lines up for a race. Two years ago he signed up for the Incas Rally. He said it was to see the country of Peru (one of the few places he had never been) from the seat of a motorcycle. Once the rally started, though, the then-47-year-old Smith consistently worked his way to the front of the pack, overcoming sickness and exhaustion. It was a glimpse of the Malcolm Smith of old, one of the toughest riders to ever sit on a motorcycle. Eventually, he finished fourth overall against some of the best factory rally riders in the world. That’s about as good as he would have expected to finish in his prime racing days.
“Once I got out there and started riding, it was hard not to try my best,” he admitted later. His best still is pretty darn good. No one who has ridden with him would contest that if he were to ride the National Enduro series today, he would easily earn AA status. He has proven as much by consistently placing well in the Tecate 250K enduro, one of the few events he makes a point to ride every year. All the country’s current top enduro riders show up there, and Malcolm Smith usually will sneak into the top 20 or so.
How have the years affected his riding? “Getting older has affected my attitude more than anything else. My priorities are different now. I want to spend more time with my kids than I did in the old days—that’s the most important thing in my life right now. My family comes first, and riding is something I do when I can. I still enjoy motorcycles as much as ever, but some things are just more important. I consider meeting my wife the luckiest thing that ever happened to me.”
At age 50, Malcolm is still riding, still riding fast and still loving every minute of it. What’s more, he’s going to keep on riding and keep on loving it for a long time to come. You need proof? Just look at his grin.
JEFF WARD
The flying freckle grows up
Jeff Ward has been racing and winning professional-level motocross races for an astounding 12 years. Now 29, he has managed to do what many consider impossible—he goes faster now than in his teens! He earned his seventh National Championship last year and is the only rider yet to earn a title in each of the National classes. If anyone knows how to stay fast, it’s “Wardy,” so we asked him to tell us all he could about keeping your speed as the years accumulate:
“I think there are four basic reasons why I’ve enjoyed the success I’ve had for as long as I have. Attitude is probably the major factor. I’ve known that I wanted to be a top-level racer since I was a kid. I mean, I really wanted it. There’s a big difference in wanting it and just being exposed to racing or being forced to race from an early age. I still want to race and I still want to win. Everything hinges on that, really.
“The second big thing is doing the work necessary to achieve my goals. That includes many things—training, listening to people and taking risks when you have to. I see lots of talented guys who quit or wonder why they’re stuck at a certain level. They wonder what’s wrong, or blame one thing or another when they’re obviously holding themselves back.
“Third would be luck. I’ve had a few experiences in racing that I’d rather forget, but I was lucky to be born with the coordination to ride a motorcycle better than most people. That counts for a lot.
“Fourth would be more luck. I had parents who were excited about my interest in racing and really supported it right from the beginning. My dad could easily have been one of those guys who sits in front of the TV and says, ‘Sure, go ahead, race if you want. By the way, your paper route money goes towards your rent, not a dirt bike. And, if you get a bike, you’d better figure out a way to get it to the track, because I’m not buying a truck so you can race.’ Living in Southern California has certain advantages, too; lots of racing, places to ride, great weather, talent scouts from Kawasaki at the bigger races that sort of thing.”
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