Connor Fields is an Olympic gold medalist
and world champion BMX racer.
To understand what makes him one of the best in his sport,
we’re pushing him to the max
in our series of physical tests.
60 centimeters.
Hi, I’m Lolo Jones
and welcome to Anatomy of a BMX Racer.
Joining me in Las Vegas is US star Connor Fields.
Are you ready for this?
-Let’s do it. -Come on.
Riders ready, watch the gate.
RIO 2016
To be an elite BMX racer, you need power, strength
and balance and these qualities have to be aligned
with a fearless approach to racing.
At the Olympic Games Rio 2016,
everything came together for Connor
as he reached the pinnacle of his sport.
Olympic gold was his.
I train six days a week,
and I have done for ten plus years.
It’s dedication,
it’s not taking time off,
it’s going to the gym when you don’t want to,
it’s going to ride when you might have other things
you'd rather do instead.
It’s just an ultimate dedication day in and day out
to build up the body of an Olympic athlete.
To examine Connor’s physiological make-up,
we’ve brought him to one of the world’s leading
human performance institutes.
We’re going to look behind the stats of this elite
sportsman and see how he shapes
up away from the comfort of the BMX track.
CONNOR FIELDS - MALE - 27 - USA 183CM - CYCLING BMX - 91.1KG
First up, we’re going to look at
Connor’s body composition with the Dexa scan.
Okay, Connor, this is our Dexa scanner, so this is going
to measure your body composition.
Someone like a BMXer, like yourself,
it’s important that we can generate those big amounts
of power through the pedals.
So we’re going to look at how much muscle you have,
how much body fat you have and we’re going to be interested
to see what those results look like.
-Sounds good. -Yeah.
Five minutes, we’ll see what happens.
His per cent body fat was 17 per cent
which is in the top 50th percentile for his age range
and as an elite athlete you would hope and expect
that’s where he’s going to be.
I think it’s interesting when you compare
body fat percentages between sports.
Connor is taking his body around on a bike
rather than having to propel or locomote it himself
as runners and sprinters need to do.
So that allows him to essentially
have a little bit more weight
and some of that will be body fat,
and it also gives him some momentum
in those starts as he’s accelerating
down the start ramp.
So, 17 per cent is an outstanding number
and we would expect that for an elite athlete like himself.
Connor, all that peddling in your sport;
you have to have strong legs.
-I mean, I never skip leg day. -Well, this next test,
we’re going to see how strong those legs are.
-Let’s do it. -All right.
The main muscles at work in BMX racing
are the calves,
the hamstrings,
the glutes and the quadriceps.
I look at my body like it’s a tool and I take care of it
and I do everything I can to make sure
that it’s in the best shape it can be.
Okay, Connor, this test is our countermovement jump.
It’s largely a measure of lower body power,
which, for a BMXer like yourself,
this should be your wheelhouse, man.
This is where you’ve got to excel so...
Listen, we’re going to step onto this force plate.
This is going to measure how much force
you put into the ground.
We're then going to jump for maximal height.
We’ll be able to understand how high you’re jumping
using this technology,
so, we’re going to see what we can do.
In three, two, one, go.
-Come on, up. -Let’s go.
Good. Hold.
When we looked at the data,
he had a vertical jump of around 60 centimeters.
which is a really, really impressive number.
If we look at other sports like basketball and volleyball,
they might be in the 80- to 90-centimeter range,
so 60 is a really impressive number and demonstrates
that Connor as a BMXer is a true strength power athlete
with lots of ability to generate force
very quickly, propelling him off the ground.
Our next test is an isometric mid-thigh pull.
Let’s see how he does.
The isometric mid-thigh pull
is a measurement of whole body maximal strength.
Essentially, Connor has to pull on that bar as hard as he can.
The bar doesn’t move and any effort that he produces goes
straight into our force plates
and we can measure the force that he produces in the ground.
Here we go. In three, two, one, go.
-Pull, pull, pull. -Come on, you got this.
-Let’s go, let’s go, Connor. -Come on! Let's go!
-Pull, pull, pull. -Come on!
Let’s go, let’s go, keep working.
Finish.
The mid-thigh pull, I enjoyed doing that one.
I’ve never had six seconds feel like that long before.
It was the longest six seconds I’ve ever had.
Connor, you know that
you’re actually supposed to like rip the bar out.
I tried.
Maybe the next time.
Let’s think about the data. Just looking at some
of those results, really exciting, as what I expected
in a strength power athlete like yourself.
That was about 3500 Newtons for the total force
which is a great number. If we put that into kilos,
it’s about 3.8 times your own body weight
that you’re pulling off the ground,
so that’s really exciting.
If we look at Olympic weightlifters,
which that’s all they do,
they are probably up in the five times
their own body weight region.
If you look at marathon runners,
they’re barely lifting one-and-a-half times
their own body weight off the floor.
Work, work, work...
I was definitely impressed
with his thigh pull results, but I was more impressed
that he had official Olympic weightlifting shoes.
It’s like he came to work with a briefcase.
So let’s take a break from testing.
You go to your first Olympics
-and you got seventh, correct? -Yes.
And then you go to another Olympics
and you win gold... Like, tell us.
Well, the craziest thing was
the difference of the two Olympics.
So going into London,
I think I was world-ranked number two,
I had been winning a bunch of races that year,
I was on fire, I was one of the favorites to win.
I was the number one seed in the final.
I had first lane selection.
It was kind of all coming together...
and I completely blew it.
Interestingly enough, going into Rio
was the complete opposite. I broke my wrist...
-four months before. -Dang!
I only made the team on
a discretionary nomination. I almost couldn’t race.
The doctor couldn’t legally clear me to ride.
I had to make my own decision.
I made the final.
I was the number six seed this time around,
but I knocked it out of the park in the final.
-And won gold. -And I won gold.
So it was kind of two completely different lead-ups
and then two completely opposite outcomes.
Wow, that’s some great motivation,
I mean, I'm fired up. Well, I’m not doing the testing
but you are so,
let’s get back to some more testing.
Let’s do it.
This next test should be right in your comfort zone.
We’re putting you on another bike.
Let’s party.
We’re going to test your anaerobic power skills.
-Let’s go, come on. -All right.
We’re going to see how efficient
Connor is at powering his leg muscles for ten seconds.
Okay, Connor,
next test: right in your wheelhouse
as a BMX racer.
This is our maximal alactic power test.
It’s looking at the maximum amount of metabolic power
that your legs can produce into the bike.
This is going to be really similar to what you do
in your race, so we’re expecting
great performance here.
I hope I don’t let you down.
Don’t let yourself down; that’s what it comes down to.
All right. Two, one, go.
-Push, push, push. -Go! Go!
-Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. -Hard! Hard!
-Come on now. -Let's go! Come on.
-Keep going! -Come on, come on, come on.
Keep going, keep going, finish.
All right. Good job, Connor,
a real brutal test, that one,
for sure, but obviously as a BMX rider
we’ve got to make sure we’re performing well on this test.
I would hope that this would be my best test.
Absolutely. So when we look at the data,
as expected, truly, truly outstanding.
You hit a peak power output of 2300 watts, which is fantastic.
That’s going to really maximize that start at the start ramp.
The interesting one that we really look at is the wattage
per kilo of body weight,
and that was right around 19-and-a-half watts
per kilogram of muscle and again, as an elite cyclist,
that’s a fantastic number.
If we look at our mixed martial artists here at the UFC,
they're normally about 15.
An endurance runner is going to be
way down at 11, 10, so you know, 19, 20,
you know, watts per kilo of body weight,
fantastic amounts of power that you're producing,
-so fantastic numbers. -Awesome.
-Yeah, good job. -Duncan just lied
this whole time,
he just made up all those stats.
You essentially just powered the UFC headquarters
for the next month,
so that wasn’t really a test, we just wanted to save
on some electricity.
You’re welcome. I’ll send you an invoice.
There we go.
I think when people think about the BMX, they don’t
always consider it the most physical sport.
They’re riding around on a bike,
it’s a lifestyle attitude that BMXers often possess.
But I think that the data that we got from Connor today
in the lab really showed
how exceptional his physiology is,
both from a strength perspective but also
from a power production perspective.
I think it just goes to show
the level of his professionalism.
-Go, come on, up! -Let's go!
He’s equipped, he's well trained.
You see him turn his game face on
and he’s just a highly professional elite athlete.
-Okay, come on! -Let's go! Let's go, Connor!
BMXers, massive amount of respect.
Those guys have got great physiology and Connor today
demonstrated what an Olympic gold medalist BMXer can do.
I’m Connor Fields, signing out.