Josh Wise: The man turning Chevrolet NASCAR drivers into distance runners

When he was a racer, Josh Wise turned heads in USAC Midget races. He was the 2005 National Midget Series Champion, among other accolades. On dirt, he proved himself to be a fantastic racer, and it turned into a NASCAR career as well. Now, Wise is training the next generation of Chevrolet stock car drivers.

While Josh Wise didn’t win a NASCAR race during his career, he could have been out of the sport a lot earlier had it not been for one thing – endurance training. If Mark Martin is the pioneer of driver fitness, Wise is the one who is bringing it to the masses, so to speak.

With his Wise Optimization program at Chevrolet, the former racer and current athletic trainer is making distance runners out of your favorite NASCAR drivers. It is helping to mold the next generation, and hopefully, ensure the longevity of today’s stars for years to come.

While he was on his own NASCAR journey, Wise realized that he wasn’t going to last if he couldn’t find that next level in his fitness. That is where the journey began for him.

“I didn’t really have a mental model for how to prepare and grow as a driver or athlete,” Wise told 5GOATs in an exclusive interview. “So, I really just kind of underperformed here, you know, had some decent opportunities with, you know, with Toyota originally, and actually raced for JR Motorsports for a little while and then raced in the Cup Series for some time.

“But it wasn’t until about halfway through my experience in Charlotte, as a NASCAR driver, that I just started thinking, ‘If I’m gonna continue my career, I’ve gotta find ways to improve myself.’ And so naturally, I think when people start thinking that way, you think, well, I’m gonna just be – I’m gonna exercise. I wanna get stronger. I wanna go to the gym.

“So, I just got a gym membership. I started working out. And then, that kind of evolved into getting a road bike and start cycling. I really enjoyed that. Then, as kind of, I started seeing differences, right? I started feeling more energy, I started feeling more clarity, I started feeling good that I was doing something to improve myself. Not just kind of relying on my invisible magical power that we call natural talent, you know?”

Wise was soon teaming up with Scott Speed in his fitness endeavors. The two signed up for a sprint triathlon, and they loved it. Soon, Wise was signing up for Ironman events. Then, it got to the point where working out alone wasn’t going to be enough. He went to school.

“I remember the day I was sitting in a room with Kyle Larson watching video, and we’re talking about some things,” Wise explained. “I just realized I was under-equipped to do what I really wanted to do. So, similarly to signing up for my Ironman, I went home and I started researching schools and classes, and I signed up to get my degree in psychology, and I started doing night classes as I was kind of building my business doing this.

“So, you know, I finished that several years ago, but really that initial journey of training, running, really changed my mind, and we still look at, you know, it’s important for racecar drivers to be fit.”

Coaching drivers on fitness then snowballed into more than that. Josh Wise began to look at how NASCAR drivers can improve themselves further. In such a specialized sport, how do you gain that extra edge?

Connor Zilisch is the example

You talk to coaches in football, basketball, baseball, track & field, soccer, and other sports, and they will tell you that doing multiple sports can help development across the board. Basketball players run cross country to stay fit in the offseason. Football players compete in track in order to fine-tune those fast-twitch muscles needed on the gridiron.

What about race car drivers? Motorsports is all about specialization and molding very specific skills in very specific race cars. So, how do you get an edge? Drive every damn thing that you can, that’s how. Is it a coincidence that Kyle Larson is one of the best drivers in the world and one of the most versatile? No.

Look no further than drivers like Connor Zilisch. The 18 year old is the model for what Chevrolet and Josh Wise want to see more of in NASCAR. A diversified skillset for the next generation of racer.

“The idea is we find young race car driver athletes with strong character, strong, strong work ethic, and a special skill set,” Wise said. “What we wanna do is we diversify them, and when I say diversify, I don’t necessarily mean playing basketball or football.

“We diversify them in race cars. So, you know, Connor Zilisch being the example. He’s run multiple, probably more styles of race cars than most drivers two or three times his age. That’s all part of a plan to do what you’re talking about, what we’ve seen in other sports, where some of the best athletes are multi-sport athletes. And racing, it’s a little different because you need to be driving race cars to get good at race cars, but you need to be driving different race cars to be really good at driving race cars.

“So what happens is once they get to be, you know, 18, 19, 20 [years old], in NASCAR, the schedule is just too dense and it’s too heavy and you can’t diversify. So, you know, what we try to do with our junior program is we have a lot of technology and science, and data that drives us. But we find young drivers. We identify neurological, sensory, psychological skills, strengths, weaknesses, and we build environment exposure, vehicle exposure, that helps bridge gaps in what we look for.”

Connor Zilisch is definitely the example. He has won races in the Mazda MX-5 Cup and an international karting championship. He has race wins in CARS Tour, Rolex 24 Hours, Sebring 12 Hours, ARCA, and the NASCAR Xfinity Series.

Zilisch is coming off a back injury from Talladega weeks ago. His first weekend back happens to be his oval debut in the Cup Series, and it will be 600 miles. On top of his 300 miles in the Xfinity car, he has a lot of racing coming up in the next few days.

Josh Wise believes the Trackhouse Racing driver is ready. Even coming off of the injury, Zilisch has done the work.

“He’ll [Connor] be ready for this race, although it’s not ideal to have the past three weeks kind of resting, we’ve put enough kind of in the bank that he should be fine,” the Chevy trainer said. “You know, Connor is just an impressive human, as much as a race car driver.”

If we get to the end of Sunday, and Zilisch has 900 miles under his belt in two days, he can thank Wise. The work he has put in before the injury is what will carry him through this difficult test at Charlotte.

Ross Chastain could be the fastest mile runner in NASCAR

Josh Wise works with many drivers in the NASCAR Chevrolet family. Rajah Caruth, Nick Sanchez, Connor Zilisch, and a lot of young, developing drivers. However, there are also seasoned, veteran Cup Series drivers who utilize Wise and his program.

Kyle Larson, Ross Chastain, Daniel Suárez, and more. Earlier this year, Chastain told me in an interview that he had run a 5:30 mile at the last time trial that the Wise training group held. Chastain used to run a 7-minute mile. That is, before he joined Wise’s training group.

Turns out, those time trials are a big deal, and that 5:30 time from Ross? Well, it’s the best of the bunch.

“Our goal … we want everyone to run a sub-six-minute mile,” Wise told me. “So, I think generally in our group, you know, depending on who’s in our group or not, time of the year, I think 70% of our guys can run close to or sub-six-minute miles. Other guys well within range of that, you know, maybe a six twenty. Ross has the fastest one.

“Right now, there’s a couple of guys within seconds. It gets pretty competitive. They’re athletes, you know, and they’re competitors. So, when we do the mile test, it’s a big day.”

On top of the mile test, these NASCAR drivers are doing much more. Many of them have taken to running the half marathon in Huntersville, or at least the shorter 10k race that is held every year.

‘The average person couldn’t survive’ NASCAR races

All of that training goes into racing on Friday night or Saturday afternoon or on Sundays. Drivers have to find any edge that they can. With a 600-mile race coming up this week at Charlotte, they will be endurance athletes. Four to five hours in a car at incredibly high speeds.

In Supercars, the Bathurst 1000 (kilometers) is a 621-mile race. That race also includes co-drivers. There is no such thing for these athletes this weekend. And there are few people who could even attempt to do what 40 drivers will do on Sunday at Charlotte.

It isn’t only the big wrecks that are hard on these drivers. So much goes into the weekend. What if a cool suit malfunctions and starts to burn the driver? Well, they have 400 miles left to race, and they can’t exactly get out of the car.

Few have the passion to do it, even fewer have the physical ability. Josh Wise, as a former driver and a driver trainer, seems to take pride in that fact.

“There’s not many other sports that the average person couldn’t survive,” Wise concluded. “The average person wouldn’t live, couldn’t survive a race in a NASCAR vehicle. I’m not talking about crashing, either; I’m talking about heat. I’m talking about forces.

“The stress, the amount of time that they spend in heat, and the amount of time that they can do in our sauna at really extreme temperatures. Their body has very specially adapted to the stresses of what’s going on. It’s very, very unique for sure. But there’s no doubt that they’re high-level athletes.”

NASCAR drivers are the overlooked endurance athletes of the sports world. There are few sports that push the body as far as NASCAR. 300 to 600 miles of stock car racing pushes the body to its absolute limits. This weekend is the ultimate example.

Chevrolet has its drivers ready. Does Toyota and Ford? We will see just how much longevity and endurance matter this year for the Coca-Cola 600. If a Chevy driver from his training group wins, Josh Wise deserves at least some credit. Either way, he will continue to develop the current and next generation of NASCAR drivers.