INTERVIEW: Logan Martin Talks about taking home Olympic GOLD, his BMX Riding Routine and Future Plans

Want to know how Olympic Gold medalist Logan Martin stayed motivated and prepared for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics? We are very grateful for the following Q&A with the Gold Medal BMX Freestyle champion.

After reading the below interview you can clearly see why Logan is one of a kind.

Enjoy the read and Congratulations Logan Martin! Be sure to check out the BMX how-to videos afterward to learn tricks from an Olympic Gold winner!

DD: Congratulations on what everyone would call the biggest win of your career and every athlete’s wildest dream. What an incredible achievement!
How does it feel to win the 1st ever olympic gold medal for BMX Freestyle? 

LOGAN: Thanks so much! It honestly feels so amazing! By far the biggest win of my career. I wanted it so bad. I invested a lot of money and time into achieving this goal and it feels so amazing that it worked out!

DD: How did you prepare for this event? Did you do anything different for this vs the usual UCI events? 

LOGAN: I didn’t do anything different. Leading into Tokyo, I was asked if I was going to change anything in my preparation, and my answer was always ‘no.’ My preparation for events has always worked, so my thought process was “why change anything when I’m literally riding the same-style course against the same people that I’ve beaten before.’

DD: 4 years is a long time to work so hard on something everyday! It takes massive amounts of motivation, focus and strength. How did you stay motivated and focused during pre-selection as well as when Covid hit and the future was so unclear?

LOGAN: It is a very long time! I think for me it’s as simple as taking it day-by-day and just showing up: showing up to the session and showing up to the gym even on the days I don’t quite feel like it (which is rare). I just enjoy riding my bike, it makes me feel good each day when I know I’ve put in the work or done all my big tricks for that session.

I took the Covid lockdown as an opportunity to progress my riding, learn new tricks and just dial everything in! And purely just stay ready for whenever the next event popped up.

DD: There is an insane amount of work that goes into such an incredible accomplishment. What would you say was the most challenging aspect of the whole journey to gold?

LOGAN: The most challenging thing for me is battling ongoing injuries. I have a bad lower back which not many people know about because I never talk about it. It played up again at the end of last year so I had to fully re-evaluate how much I rode and how I trained at the gym. If I worked out my back got bad when I would overload it with too many days in a row. But for me, I only felt content with having a day off only when my muscles were sore and my body is tired from doing so many gym/riding session days in a row. So I had to change my mindset and change my schedule to not overload my body too much. For the first couple of months I just felt like I wasn’t working that hard considering my body wasn’t sore. I had to really focus on recovery days. I also switched from doing CrossFit type stuff to a more standard gym-type session. 

I believe this change in routine helped me so much though!

DD: Leading into the Olympics, how often were you training and what was your schedule like? 

Since that change in my routine last November my schedule looks similar to this most weeks:

Monday – 60-90 minute strength workout in the morning, then I would ride for around 2 hours
Tuesday – Ride then a cardio session in the gym
Wednesday – rest/recovery
Thursday – Ride
Friday – gym/strength then ride
Saturday – ride
Sunday – rest/family day

DD: Did the day of the contest feel like any other event or was it a bit more challenging to stay calm and focused? 

LOGAN: The day of finals felt like a normal contest day! Battling a normal amount of nerves. The seeding round the day before I had way more nerves, strangely enough. Even though the seeding round didn’t matter too much and nobody was getting eliminated, I just felt more pressure for some reason.

DD: There would be a lot of excited groms out there knowing they too could have the opportunity to one day make it to the olympics. You are by far one of the hardest working BMX athletes out there, what would your advice be to the up and comers that have hopes to one day be a professional BMX athlete? 

LOGAN: I think the best advice I can give is to have fun! Enjoy riding your bike, enjoy the process of learning and becoming better on your bike, but also work on all aspects of your life. If you can work hard in all aspects of life and not just on your bike, you will learn to be content and happy and that transitions into success over time! It takes a long time to be successful in anything so don’t expect it to be anything quick. 

DD: After winning Gold in the Olympics, most people would be going home and taking some some time off.  What do you have planned for the rest of 2021? 

LOGAN: I enjoy riding my bike, that’s what makes me happy so I’ll definitely be still working hard on and off the bike still. I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself but I’ll definitely enjoy this win and live my life with a bit less pressure. I’ll do Nitro World Games in October and then get ready for a big year of contests next year!