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When I decided I was going to spend 25 days motorcycle touring across all Italy, one of the things that worried me was: “Am I good enough shape for all of the riding and walking I’m about to be doing, every single day, for a month?”
I’m not an athlete, a personal trainer, or even an Instagram model. I’m just Adrian from YouMotorcycle, but today I’ll share how I get motorcycle touring ready, with no heavy lifting, no dieting, and no counting calories. This is just what I do, and how I think it helps me.
My home gym has some options here. Should yweou sculpt carefully with some dumb bells and a bowflex, pedal yourself into a dripping sweaty mess, or lift heavy for max gains bruh?
Honestly, forget heavy lifting and setting personal bests. What we really want to focus on for a month long motorcycle tour are core strength, cardio, and enough leg muscle for repetitive long days of walking.
Bowflex
Resistance training is great for strengthening your twisting, bending, and stabilizing your body. The Bowflex may as well be sold by GIVI, because when you think about putting your hard cases on and off your bike, bringing them in and out of your hotels every single day, this is really the perfect machine for that.
If you don’t have access to a Bowflex, don’t even worry! I started with cables mounted on the back of my door. These days you can also buy looped resistance bands which are even cheaper.
Dumbbells
I know I said we wouldn’t be doing any heavy lifting, but dumb bells can also be a motorcyclist’s best friend. If resistance training isn’t your thing, you can use dumb bells for any number of twisting exercises to activate your core.
Dumb bells are also great for adding some weights to your squats to work on your core and your leg strength. Your core strength will help on long rides, and your leg strength will come in handy when you’re being a tourist on foot.
Exercise bike
My favorite thing in the gym is my Yesoul stationary bike. A bike is great for gearing up for a motorcycle tour in a place like Italy where you’ll spend want to spend both a ton of time riding, and a ton of time on foot exploring, for these three reasons:
- A stationary bike is a great cardio exercise which translates into more energy, better endurance, and greater stamina, which is crucial for being rested and alert deeper into your long rides.
- Obviously this is very much a leg exercise, which helps you work up muscle for all the walking you’ll be doing exploring the places you’re going be exploring on both your planned and unplanned stops.
- What a lot of people don’t realize is that stationary bikes also work your core, including your abs, obliques, and lower back. Having a strong core gives you stability and support, which is going to reduce the fatigue you get from wind buffeting on long rides.
Yesoul review
Now, full disclosure, this Yesoul bike costs $500. Yesoul sent it to me for free in exchanging for promising to tell you guys what I do and don’t like about it, so here’s my brutally honest quick take:
First, this thing basically works as an extra monitor and speaker for my cell phone, meaning I have access to all of my apps, emails, texts, Netflix, YouTube, you name it.
Second, the bike is very quiet, it makes almost no sound at all. I used to train on an elliptical that was so noisy I would feel guilty using it. The Yesoul is so quiet I could use it in the middle of the night and nobody would know.
Third, the screen is pretty good! I watch Vikings on here during my workouts, that show has a lot of really dark colored scenes with really high contrast light sources. Usually deep dark colors and bright highlights are a recipe for making a cheap monitor look bad. I wasn’t expecting much considering the $500 price point, but this screen exceeded my expectations.
Last, it also comes with this sound bar is pretty good too. Accoustics in my gym are terrible because it has 10 or 11 foot ceilings, but this thing sounds better than my 42” Panasonic TV I have wall mounted.
BUT it’s not perfect though. I have two issues with it.
First, after 35 minutes, man or woman, this seat will kill your most sensitive parts. If you’re going to buy this bike, you should plan on having to buy a more comfortable bicycle seat to put on it.
Second, it would be nice if this was a touch screen, but then again, the whole thing is $500, so, we really can’t complain.
The Yesoul bike comes with an app with all kinds of pre-programmed rides, online stuff with trainers, free stuff, paid stuff. I don’t use it. I don’t care about any of that.
The only thing I care about is that this makes working out easy and fun and something I’m already getting results from. Instead of exercise being annoying and long, it’s basically just become an extension of my playing on my phone time.
Want to stream an episode of your favorite tv show? Stream it on the bike.
Want to watch a YouTube video about a place you might ride to, to see if it’s worth visiting? Figure it out on the bike.
I know some people are probably laughing at me for focusing on the media setup and ignoring the ‘gym bro’ stuff about this bike, but, that’s what really what makes it work for me. To make that measurable: on my first day, with a certain resistance, for a certain time, I did 12 km. By day 5, same time, same resistance, I did over 14 km, that’s almost a 20% increase. So this setup is working well for me. I’m really happy with it.
Power rack
Last but not least is the cage. Honestly, you do not need all of this, at all. I was more than happy with a really basic bench and bar and some weights. The missus likes to squat heavy to keep her booty nice and juicy, so we got this. The only thing I’ll do in here is bench press and some chin-ups.
For motorcycle touring, I’d recommend bench press, but you really don’t have to go crazy with it. Unless you’re on a really heavy touring bike, motorcycle riding isn’t really upper body intensive, especially if you’re going in a straight line.
But, if you’re on countless twisty roads, like riding in the mountains by Lake Como, or touring through the Amalfi Coast, or if you’re just doing long days in the saddle, and your upper body isn’t used to getting exercised, you are going to tire out so much faster. It’ll also help with your core strength too, which we know is super important. I think I bought and sold my first bench for like $40. You can find a used one real cheap.
Conclusion
So that’s my motorcycle touring prep. I do cardio to make sure my endurance and stamina is good, core stuff to keep me strong and rested on my bike, twisting stuff to help me lug my hard cases around, and some upper body for the long and fun days.
I have no practical training on any of this stuff, but to me, this just works and makes good sense. If you guys have other suggestions please let me know. I’d love to hear what your routines for motorcycle touring prep are. I know I haven’t even touched on stretching because that’s not really something I do, so, yeah, please leave me your tips!
Thanks for watching, ride safe, but have fun, peace!
