LEWIS HAMILTON: A WINTER TRAINING MACHINE

165 hours, 60 sessions & 450 km of running. Lewis reveals how he mixes fun with focus to keep him at the top of his game.

CANTON, MA (March 23, 2009) – As Lewis Hamilton nears the end of an intensive four-month preparatory training regime, Reebok provides a revealing insight into what his body goes through and how he copes with the pressures of maintaining his extraordinary fitness levels.

Unlike most sportsmen who take a break at the end of a season, Lewis has put his body through an intensive and varied training regime. Here is just a sample of what Lewis has gone through in the last four months:

		165 hours of training
		More than 60 training sessions
		The equivalent of training non-stop 24 hours a day for an entire week
		450 kms of running - the equivalent of running just under six laps of each of the 17 race tracks in the 2009/10 season
		Should shrugs up to 750kg per session – 10 times his own body weight

Lewis’ training is split across two areas: Strength & Core and Cardiovascular. For Strength & Core his main areas of focus are: Neck, Core/Back/Gluts, Shoulders, Legs and speeding/agility. His cardio work revolves around running.

Here Lewis explains some of his training regimes and the areas he needs to focus on.

Lewis on his core strength – “not about having the biggest muscles”
“You have to very, very good core stability. It’s not about having the biggest muscles, core stability is the most important for the forces that you have going around your body.

Lewis on his back strength – “it’s about endurance strength”
“My back has to be very strong so we do a lot of abs work for hip flexes and so on. But it’s all about endurance strength so lots of repetitions.”

Lewis on his neck strength – “the one muscle that needs to be strongest”
“My neck grows throughout the year and then shrinks towards the end of the year and it does it every year basically. But that’s probably the one muscle that needs to be the strongest. The training for the neck is quite simple. We have a helmet and we put a weight on the top - five or ten kilos. You can then do the exercise anywhere, which is great so you don’t have to go to the gym. You can do it in the gym or you can just do it off the edge of your bed. You know a hard surface you just sit on the edge of the bed, off the edge and you’re just holding you - holding your head up as you’re laying there. And then you are also doing repetitions, forwards and backwards without moving any of your body, just your neck. So forwards, backwards, sideways and just lots and lots of repetitions until you’re, you can’t do it anymore.”

Lewis on his own fitness levels – “I know I can do a great job”
“The preparations start from the beginning of the year which is how you build yourself up. And now I know I'm fit right now and when I arrive - at my first event I will know to myself yeah I'm fitter than these other guys or at least I'm up there with the best of these guys. I know that I can do a great job.”

Lewis on enjoying his training – “be relaxed and positive”
“It’s about being relaxed and it could be go and have a massage, it could be spending time with your family, with kids, doing something positive, going for a run in the morning gives you positive vibes. I enjoy training. I enjoy feeling fit. If I get up in the morning and I go for a run past the lake and I come back, I feel so refreshed and it’s like the most positive feeling for the beginning of the day.”

Lewis on the training gear he uses
The Reebok SmoothFit clothing and footwear that I use when I'm training has become extreme - it’s always evolving but it’s become more and more of a key factor in my life simply because there's two parts. You know there's the day job and then there's the keeping fit & the training.”

Lewis on leg conditioning – “squats kill”
“Keeping the legs in good condition is easy - all your running, all your cycling, we also do a lot of squats. I hate squats, it kills. When you’re doing your running obviously you’re doing your quads but it’s important to have all the hip flexes, right at the back your gluts, having those strong. You’ve got to make sure you do lots and lots of really good squats for that.”

Lewis compares himself to you or I – “I probably do similar stuff…just all the time”
“I probably do similar stuff to what your average person could do in a gym but it’s just that we’re doing it all the time.”

To see more of Lewis go to www.reebok.com/lewishamilton