Jeff Emig Knows How James Stewart Can Go So Fast

James Stewart won the Pheonix Supercross on Saturday in front of 44,953 enthusiastic fans. I loved watching the race, but the highlight for me was Jeff Emig's explanation of James Stewart's speed. If you have the race recorded, listen to what Jeff Emig says a few laps after the restart of the main event. Here is a transcript:

Jeff Emig: One of the things everybody asks me is, "How can James Stewart go so fast?!" Being a former racer myself [NOTE: Jeff was a championship winning racer too!], I can say this - What I can come up with is that as the rider is looking at the track and he is going through the obstacles, is this: no matter how fast James rides, the track seems like it's going slow. He's processing the information and the track is going slow. What he is seeing is going slow.

Announcer: What's he's seeing is how he's going to pass Ricky Carmichael!

James did go on to pass Ricky on lap 8 and he held the lead to the checkered flag.

I think it is great to have commentary from a former racer as good as Jeff Emig. Jeff obviously knows what it takes to go fast. But I wonder if Jeff read my blog posts from December 31st about James Stewart's speed and Ricky Carmicheal's vision skills. (That would be cool if he did!) What I said was that, "Fit eyes are one of the top competitive advantages a racer can cultivate today."

And in my post about Jeremy McGrath's advantage when he dominated Supercross, I said almost the same thing Jeff said about James Stewart. I said,

"With fit eyes, going faster is easier. With really fit eyes, it feels like you are going slower, when you are actually going faster. You have more time to react and you are more relaxed. With fit eyes, not only can you go faster, but itis actually easier to go faster."

Of course, Jeff says it better. He's absolutely right. But what Jeff didn't say is that it is possible to increase your vision skills as a racer. Just because James naturally has eyes fit for speed doesn't mean everyone can't improve their speed by increasing their vision skills. Back in the day, a lot of racers didn't take physical fitness training very seriously. Some riders were naturally more fit than others and that was that. Today, it's a different story. No rider has an excuse for losing because of lack of fitness because everyone in the sport understands the importance of fitness training and we have some expert trainers who specialize in motocross and supercross.

Tomorrow, it may be the same story for vision fitness. We are in a time when no one understands the importance of training to get fit eyes for speed. Once people recognize the importance, then they have to learn how to train their eyes so obstacles on the track appear to go slow while they go super fast.

I have a whole bag of tricks that I can suggest. I'll give one tip in this post. You can train your eyes so they don't automatically lock hard onto objects. It is important to lock onto objects at times. When I used to do BMX tricks, I found that the key to executing a 360 was looking at the end point with my eyes and fixing on that target. Then my body and the bike would follow, spinning around to complete the 360. I only had to turn my head and my eyes to see how far I wanted to spin and then everything else followed. You can see freestyle MX guys doing the same thing when they site the landing while doing a back flip.

However, most of us lock our eyes too much and on the wrong things. Many of us, especially those of us who are a bit nearsighted, fix or lock our eyes way too much. It is a very helpfull skill to be able to look around without locking your eyes. I plan to write a new blog post fully describing the technique (it's an exercise that has to be practiced) after I get a few comments on this post letting me know people are interested in it. All you have to do it leave me a comment letting me know you are a racer and that you would like to try this vision exercise.

The photo is to honor David Vuillemin's excellent ride - while it lasted - and to wish him well in recovering quickly enough to be ready for the next race. David was looking really fast while he was riding.