For those of us that work out regularly, exercise is usually something we do casually to improve our lives in some way. Whether it's to look good, to live a longer life, or to relieve stress: everyone has their own reasons for keeping fit and healthy. But what if - due to the dangerous nature of your profession - staying fit was a matter of life or death?
I met with former Red Arrows team leader and stunt plane pilot, Ben Murphy: someone who has to follow a strict fitness regime, not only for his day job, but so he can return home in one piece every day.
Now a Red Bull Air Race world championship contender and team leader for the Blades Aerobatic Display Team, Murphy has even more reason to ensure he's in top top shape or else it could get him into some serious trouble. And I'm not talking about a 'slap on the wrist' from the boss kind. Murphy told me about the dedicated health regime involved in his treacherous career as a Red Bull Air Race athlete and stunt plane pilot, and how important fitness is in keeping him alive on a daily basis.
The Red Bull Air Race, established in 2003 and created by Red Bull GmbH, is an international series of air races around the world in which competitors have to navigate a challenging obstacle course in the fastest time. Murphy made his debut in the Challenger Class of the Red Bull Air Race in 2016, and by the end of the season, he'd claimed three consecutive podiums, so he's definitely keen to throw himself at any challenge, no matter how perilous.
But it's not just about bravery. Watching pilots like Murphy hurting around an obstacle course in a tiny aircraft might look terrifying for us spectators, but what onlookers don't see is the mental and physical stresses participators encounter while soaring through the skies at break-neck speeds. These pilots experience a high level of g-forces on their bodies and there's a lot of work they must do to try and counteract it. A g-force is felt by the body as a result of acceleration or gravity, informally described in units of acceleration equal to one g. For example, a 12 pound object undergoing a g-force of 2g experiences 24 pounds of force. The higher the g, the heavier your body, and the more dangerous it can be if not handed properly, especially for pilots during an event like the Red Bull Air Race, when high g-forces are impacting the body.
"What is happening to your body [during a flight] when you have that sensation of being pressed into the seat, is all the blood is being forced away from your head - all the way down through your body," Murphy explained.
He also described the rigorous health and fitness regime he must maintain to ensure he doesn't black out mid-flight, including a specific set of movements of the body, which require a very high level of fitness.
"What we experience at 3g and 4g is just under the threshold of you really needing to do something to your body to counter the g-forces," Murphy explained. "Up to that point, your heart and your muscles are generally coping. Anything over 4g or 5g and you really have to work hard then to counter the affects of the g-forces.
"If you did nothing about it, your brain would have no oxygenated blood in it after just a few seconds, so you start to lose you vision, your consciousness and you black out."
However, a stunt plane race pilot has much more than just 4 or 5g to contend with. During a competitive race, pilots will pull up to 9 or 10g, especially when taking tight corners to make better times.
"What we race pilots do is something called the 'anti-g straining maneuver' which is essentially the bracing of all of your upper torso and leg muscles. By doing this, you're clenching your muscles and restricting all your blood vessels; stopping your blood from draining down from your head."
It takes time to learn this technique, Murphy said, as it's really quite a physical maneuver.
"If you just clenched, even after just five seconds, you still wont have enough oxygen in the brain, so you need to exhale and get more oxygen into your lungs while under the conditions where your whole body and everything is working ten times harder than normal," he explained. "Which is why if you watch videos of the pilots racing, they pull the high-g turns, you see them do the really physical force breathing, and that's them getting more oxygen into them to remain conscious."
Fitness regime
So what does the fitness regime look like for someone with such a physically stressful job where keeping fit and healthy is a matter of staying conscious while thousands of feet above the ground?
"The important factors are core strength, aerobic and anaerobic fitness," Murphy said. "Any endurance aerobic stuff is good for your cardiovascular system, but also a lot of good core strength workouts and upper body weights is important for getting that muscle tensing that you need for the high-g stuff."
Being overly muscular doesn't help either, apparently, as it's all about a fine balance between core strength and cardiovascular fitness.
Surprisingly Murphy's fitness regime revolves around the classics: push-ups, squats, pull-ups, sit-ups, planks, any exercises related to the core, but more importantly, those that strengthen your neck muscles.
"The high g-forces make your head weighs four times as much as normal when under 4g, so with a helmet on, too, that's a lot of weight for your neck muscles to be taking," Murphy added.
"A good warm-up before each race is important, too. If you don't warm up properly and just go straight into rolling 10g, you can expect some pulled muscles or neck injuries."
Before a flight
Regular exercise isn't just the key in maintaining stunt pilot-level peak health. Nutrition is also vital, so it's important for pilots like Murphy to not eat anything that will cause any spikes or drops of blood pressure before flying, "especially when you're about to go and put your body under the stresses of a high-g race," Murphy said.
"About half hour before getting into the plane, a bit of light physical exercise is needed to get the heart-rate going, and to activate your body," he added. "Then you need to bring it down again until ten minutes before you're about to fly, when you'll do some more warm-ups to activate it again," he explained.
But preparing for a race is just as much physical as it is mental.
"Mental preparation and motivation is probably as important, if not more, than physical," he said. "Visualization is a really strong mental preparation tool. Even without being on the race track, the pilots will be able to shut their eyes and picture what it's going to be like to fly through that start gate, the turns they are going to put in, how hard they are going to pull round into the next one.
"And even if you were to give them no visual queues whatsoever, and just asked them to show using their hands what they are going to do on the track, it would be almost to the second of what they would experience when actually flying around. The more mental prep you can do there, the less it will take you by surprises when it comes to it."
Diagnostic & Training Center
So what tech is involved in training for this kind of physically demanding field of work? Murphy uses a heart-rate monitor for his training to ensure he's burning the right amount of calories, but surprisingly, it's not something he uses during a flight.
"People are quite surprised that the heart-rate doesn't change a huge amount when you're up in the plane," he said. "If it goes too high it shows your not in control of your body, you're not keeping calm and so even though your body is working hard, your heart level shouldn't be too high if you're doing it right."
But where the tech really comes in is through the training Red Bull gives the pilots to ensure they are in the right physical condition to compete in the Air Race challenges.
Red Bull send all their athletes to its Diagnostic & Training Center (DTC), where pilots' bio feedback is measured to gain insights into their physical and mental capabilities, to see how well they can cope under different flight-related stresses as well as how their bodies are reacting under certain conditions.
"It's a fascinating insight into your own body and your own head," Murphy said. It's also used to uncover fundamental areas for improving performance. There are many external and internal factors that influence an athlete’s sporting performance, and so with precise analysis, the DTC helps the athletes understand the relationship between these factors and performance.
