Hendrick Motorsports’ Mark Martin admits that his workout regimen changes a little in the offseason – that doesn’t mean that he in any way slacks off, though.
The 52-year-old NASCAR veteran says that it simply is more than he can stand to not work out. His program is relatively intense, too.
“My training is a little different in the offseason. During race season I do four days on, which is strength training, then three days off, which is Friday, Saturday and Sunday during race season and I work in a couple of cardio sessions during that time,” he said. It should be noted that on Friday through Sunday he is at the track, manhandling his 3,400-lb. stock car at high speeds.
In the offseason, though, he says he just can’t skip those three days.
“It just drives me nuts,” he said. “So I do four (days) on and two off, so I’m a little off schedule during race season I train every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and now it’s all over the place because I do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and then I start back instead of on Monday on Sunday. I get a little bit more work in, I get a little bit more rest so I feel that my recovery is a little more rapid, so I’m able to recover from the workouts.
“I love it; it’s an important part of my life, as you guys saw, Jack LaLanne just passed away at 96 and I guess he was exercising until the very end and I think that’s cool. … He inspired me in the 60s when he was on television. Hopefully I can aspire to live like him; to live as long and rich a life as he did.”
Stumbling block
Who says drivers don’t have enough personality?
Hendrick Motorsports’ Jeff Gordon took a good-natured jab at himself when asked about his potential to slip up and name the wrong sponsor this season.
Gordon has been partnered with DuPont since beginning his NASCAR Sprint Cup career and won all four of his titles with the company on his car. This year, DuPont is lowering its number of primary races and the AARP program Drive to End Hunger is taking over in the majority of races.
So has Gordon slipped and blurted the wrong name?
“It does start with a D, so that’s been helpful,” he said with a laugh. “I’m really excited about being involved with Drive to End Hunger as well as continuing our relationship with DuPont. We’ve been together 18 years, so they’ll be on a number of races … So far, I haven’t made too many mistakes, but I’m sure that it will happen along the way.”
Numbers game
Think drivers keep up with those career-mark starts? Think again.
When Dale Earnhardt Jr. takes the green flag for the season-opening Daytona 500, he’ll be making his 400th start in a NASCAR Sprint Cup points race.
His thoughts on hitting the mark? When asked if it as a pretty big number, Earnhardt Jr. didn’t seem overly impressed.
“I don’t know – you tell me,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like a lot, doesn’t seem like we’ve been racing that long. I feel thankful and fortunate to have had the opportunity to be in the sport and to have had 400 starts and hopefully have 400 more, and then some. Those milestones don’t mean much to me at this point in my career, but maybe I’ll kind of understand really what it means. It doesn’t sound like a real big number when you race as much as we do and the season is as long as it is, it doesn’t seem like we really took that long to get there.”
And then teammate Mark Martin chimed in.
“When you said it doesn’t seem like that much, I started to say, it’s not,” he said with a laugh.
“How many do you have? Like 4,000?,” Earnhardt Jr. asked as Martin laughed.
While Martin is a seasoned veteran, he hasn’t quite reached that mark. He is well ahead of his younger teammate, though, at 794.
Eye for talent
One sometimes wonders if Jeff Gordon ever thinks about what might have been if he had not discovered the talented Jimmie Johnson and brought him into the Hendrick fold.
For his part, Gordon seems pleased to work with his teammate – and still a little in awe of his talent.
Gordon admits that he was impressed with Johnson from the first time he saw him on the track.
That was during a Nationwide Series test at Darlington Raceway. Gordon was there helping Ricky Hendrick learn the place and was on top of the hauler trying to point out the line to follow.
“There was a car that went around there and was fast, had the right line and I was just using him as an example to talk to Ricky and I said, ‘Who is that, because this guy knows what he’s doing’ He was like, ‘Oh, that’s Jimmie Johnson,’” Gordon remembers.
Gordon said he commented to Hendrick to confirm that Johnson was new to the sport – and Hendrick’s response surprised him.
“He’s like,’ Yeah, I don’t if he’s ever been here before.’ And I was like, ‘Nah,’” Gordon said.
So he went and met Johnson and asked him how many times he’d been to Darlington – and Johnson confirmed it was the first time he had seen the tough track.
“So right there I was impressed,” Gordon said. “This guy, he’s got it. He’s not afraid, he’s pushing the car hard … That just transpired into a few more things that I noticed. I think that he didn’t go noticed as much as he probably should have because he wasn’t winning a lot of races … To me in the equipment he was in, racing against the guys he was racing against, bringing that car home every weekend but pushing it pretty hard, real hard, that impressed me.”
Gordon says that other Cup owners also took note of Johnson and that the driver would have made it into the series with someone quickly.
The question is, would he be a five-time defending champion if he was competing with another organization.
“He was going to be in the Cup series and he was probably going to do great things,” Gordon said. “Would he have gone on to do the things he’s done here at Hendrick? I can’t be so sure. I mean, you take that kind of talent with a guy like Chad Knaus and Hendrick Motorsports and those people, that’s just one of those things that comes along maybe once every 50 years or something like that.”
Workout plan, take II
Mark Martin’s not the only workout guru within the Hendrick family.
Team owner Rick Hendrick also marvels at the work ethic Johnson brings to the table each season.
Recently, he saw evidence of that as the two were eating together.
“Jimmie’s a machine,” Hendrick said during the recent Media Tour. “Jimmie was in here two days ago and we’re eating lunch and I’m eating cookies and he won’t eat any carbs and he’s getting ready to go out and run 12 miles in 90 minutes or something and I haven’t run 12 miles in my life and I’m like, ‘Man.’
“And he said, ‘I’ve got to get ready. My trainer says I’ve got to eat this way four or five days.’”
The way Hendrick sees it, that’s just another sign of the level of dedication Johnson brings to his championship hunt each season.
“That’s a guy that doesn’t need any motivating. … Who in the world would start now eating like that and working like that getting ready to get in the car because it would give him another tenth? That’s the kind of dedication that he’s got,” Hendrick said. “Until he loses that fire, I don’t have to do a thing but just give him good stuff.”
