In racing, every fraction of a second counts. Bryan McDonald — a former professional supercross racer and longtime supercross and motocross coach — knows this to be true, but equally as important are the precious moments between races.
A longtime believer in leveraging video to enhance performance, McDonald transitioned from restrictive desktop software to mobile iPad and iPhone setups run through Onform, which has enabled him to maximize efficiency during practice sessions and on race day.
“It used to take me an hour to break down footage of two guys, and now I can do one start to finish in under seven minutes.”
McDonald got a late start in his supercross racing career, getting into the sport at 19 when much of his competition had well over a decade head start. He would turn pro in his mid-20s, and raced professionally from 1996-2004. A pair of serious back injuries in 2004 and 2006 forced McDonald to end his racing career and transition into coaching.
Whether he’s onsite at a race or coaching from thousands of miles away — as he plans to do for this year’s FIM Motocross of Nations event in France — McDonald is able to stay connected to his riders and offer race analysis and guidance through Onform. He follows the teachings of Bill Walsh, longtime head coach of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers, using the platform to dissect the “little things that are happening beneath the surface” that the human eye can’t catch.
“If you take care of the little things and really acknowledge all the little things that are happening, the score will take care of itself,” McDonald said in reference to Bill Walsh’s well-known advice. “A lot of people don’t see the little pieces that are taking place underneath the surface. And if you can’t, it’s like having money in the bank and not knowing it’s there. It’s useless.”
Maximizing Moments Between Races
McDonald used to only be able to accommodate up to 14 riders in a given session, but he recently coached as many as 18 in between rounds at an event.
Using Onform, he’s able to quickly pull up footage of one rider and compare it side-by-side with footage from the race leader or another rider. His family works as his extra sets of eyes, searching for the fastest lap times of certain riders to compare against the fastest laps of others.
“They’ll essentially shoot me a timestamp of where to look so I can quickly pull that piece,” he said. “I’ve got that process down where I can do it in about 20 seconds.”
He’s able to dedicate roughly seven minutes per rider in between races, shuffling around the pits to break down film in the moment to adjust and improve in the next run.
“It’s a little stressful,” he said. You have to be on your game to get it done. But having a tool like Onform allows me to be locked in and do my job fast and do it well.”
Preference for Timing Features Over ‘Ghosting’ Functions
Many of McDonald’s colleagues use ghosting features on other platforms. While Onform has an overlay feature where you can blend videos on top of one another, McDonald prefers the side-by-side comparisons — which allows him to compare different riders or different attempts at turns and jumps for an individual rider.
“It varies from rider to rider of what works from a technique standpoint,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s all about leverage from a bike performance standpoint.”
McDonald relies on Onform’s Stopwatch feature to dial-in timing on turns, straightaways and jumps.
“To me, the Stopwatch feature on the Onform app is a game changer,” he said. “That’s something we didn’t have with other platforms, and in this sport we measure everything through time.”
McDonald is driven by a personal philosophy that coaching is ineffective without quantifiable data. Onform allows him to measure and analyze angles into turns, the height of jump, the optimal paths on a course and the forward momentum of his riders.
“I don’t want to just be out here teaching technique and telling people what to do without the ability to measure what they’re doing,” he said. “Most of the technique stuff happens in practice. On race day, a lot of the stuff is not necessarily rider technique, but momentum versus distance. Even though the tracks in supercross are very similar from weekend to weekend, that is something you have to measure because it’s tough to tell with dirt conditions and other variables.”
Getting Coaches and Riders to Embrace Mobile Video Analysis
Athletes and coaches in the supercross and motocross worlds are creatures of habit, McDonald explained. While tech around the bikes and safety have certainly improved significantly over the years, the use of video in training and racing is still a bit “old school.”
McDonald coaches independently under his brand Hungry to Win. He partners with various teams who still rely on camcorders at the track to record practice sessions and races. Then the footage is loaded into a desktop program for analyzing. While effective, it’s time-consuming and cumbersome.
With McDonald’s mobile setup through Onform, multiple angles can be recorded — one through an iPad and one through an iPhone — allowing for seamless syncing and near-instantaneous playback.
And with the ability to record in 4K on mobile devices, the footage is just as good or better than the video cameras used by the teams. McDonald usually records the entire track, and is able to zoom in and out on riders to see the small details of what’s happening.
“It’s amazing the clarity you get,” he said. “That’s something you don’t always see on the traditional camcorders unless they are recording already zoomed in.”
He’s able to coach in the moment, whether in person or remotely. Onform also allows him to catalog his riders for quick reference of historical performances. The riders have a full history of their highs and lows at their fingertips.
“I definitely have plenty of coaches come up to me and ask about my setup at events,” McDonald said. “The athletes I work with love it. There is interest there from others, it’s just that many are so accustomed to the way things have been done for a long time in this sport.”