Jimmie Johnson has all but secured his fourth consecutive Sprint Cup Series Championship. He has been basically, the Tiger Woods of NASCAR these last four years. There are a lot of factors to his success, but one of them is definitely his fitness regimen.
Johnson follows a strenuous fitness workout each week to keep his abilities sharp. He works out four times a week and performs a total body routine that emphasizes strength and endurance rather than mass. That means a little bit less weight and higher reps.
He spends a lot of time keeping his heartrate elevated during the workouts. During a five hour period driving in a car, Johnson's heartrate goes anywhere from 130 - 150 beats per minute. He needs to get his body acclimated to that. To help, he jumps rope during sets of his weight routine. He also does a lot of running work in his workout, specifically sprint drills.
One of the biggest things he has to work with is keeping his body in balance. Because his sport calls for him to drive to the left all the time, his body has to handle all those specific g-forces and loads you deal with at that high of speed. Keeping the body balanced will help him to better handle those forces and that is the challenge. Dumbbell work helps a lot for this kind of training.
He has also committed to a healthy meal plan. Johnson says you have to treat your body like your car, a fine tuned machine. The empty calories you put in through junk does your body no good. He eats plenty of proteins and good carbs with lots of vegetables.
This is an example of another great athlete taking fitness and nutrition to another level. Could he get to where he is without doing this? Maybe, but he certainly isn't taking that chance to find out.
