Driving a race car for a living isn’t quite as straight forward as it looks. Sure, you need some talent but that talent is comprised of a great many individual skills that make up the complete racer.

Long distance runners for example need the luck of the draw with long trim limbs and a resilience against impact injuries; boxers the reflexes of a cat and disproportionate upper body strength and snooker players a strategic mind like that of a chess master and the patience of a saint.

Imagine that those are just a few of the skills racing drivers have to perfect in equal measure, just to be considered a contender in this all too competitive profession.

Since the increased interest in the off track activities of our Formula 1 drivers, the general public have become increasingly aware of the need for supreme fitness in these athletes. However, it’s important to note that each racing discipline, from endurance prototypes to tin-top sprint racing, exerts a different pressure on the driver’s fitness.

TRX Fitness has presented new training opportunities to athletes of all descriptions but in a new tie up with Clio Cup racer Fulvio Mussi and his innovative team, YourRacingCar.com, both parties are learning new things.

Race car drivers are unlike most athletes in that the successful ones need to be able to perform in three half hour sprint races one weekend and jump straight into a 24 hour endurance race the following. Obviously, no one driver races for 24 hours but the overall event of 2 hour stints followed by short rest periods requires specialist training in itself. It’s a challenge that Fulvio knows all too well having spent this last weekend racing at Brands Hatch in Kent. Two 45 minute test sessions on Friday followed by 30 minutes of qualifying and 30 minutes of racing on Saturday and a further 30 minutes of racing on Sunday. After the drama of a professional race event has passed, Fulvio’s back to the circuit for 7am to coach would-be racers of the future – 6 hours in the passenger seat of a car in the hands of an inexperienced driver. Fulvio talks candidly about the work he does and it’s affect on his fitness levels “It’s essentially like being in a washing machine all day. My clients are learning a completely new way to drive a car and it’s like being 17 again for many of my tutees. Hard on the breaks, stalling, jumping around all over the place looking for some clutch control. In fact my day job is what wears me out fitness wise – being able to recover from these long sessions is more crucial to my race performance than anything else.”

So – what has he achieved in his short time (three months) using the unique suspension training system that TRX offers? “It was a real shock when I was first learning to work with the TRX. I did a training session with Stu and it blew me away really. I thought I was quite fit but it exposed serious areas of weakness in my body and that’s the main benefit I’ve felt. I’ve been improving areas of my fitness which didn’t seem particularly important in the past but are now giving me a real edge. There’s no other way that I’ve found to identify those weak areas – if you don’t know there’s something you can target, why would you look to improve it? Essentially, I feel like I’m finding new muscles! ”.

Motor racing is a game that’s won and lost in fractions of seconds. It’s for that reason that Fulvio’s seeing such benefit from the TRX Fitness training. For many people it’s a fantastic way of getting fit without enduring the impactful stresses of the more conventional training methods but for elite athletes like Fulvio, it’s a fine tuning device. Like the millimetre perfect set up on his race car, TRX is Fulvio’s finest spanner!