Team HRC’s Mitch Evans had surgery on his right shoulder in Brisbane at the end of last month, where the Honda rider is now recuperating. The initial prognosis from the doctors was good and the belief is that he would make a full and quick recovery after originally sustaining the injury at Valkenswaard’s second round of the 2020 MXGP World Championship.

Shoulder recovery…

I’ve basically now just got to let the shoulder recover and let the cartilage glue back to the bone. I have these little exercises that the physio has given me, after seeing him in the studio yesterday for my one week check-up. He was really happy with my range of motion and I have double the range that anyone normally would one week after surgery, so that’s a really positive sign. He gave me these exercises to do, so I’ve been following that advice. I’m not in any pain so, honestly, it doesn’t even feel like I’ve had surgery at all. I’ve also been keeping in contact with Team HRC’s physio Filippo and he’s really happy with the progress too, so it’s all looking positive. I’m keeping it rested, but doing these four different exercises four times a day and that’s the only time that I move it. They are pretty basic range of motion exercises and then nothing else.

Training at this moment…

I’m still able to cycle, but I’m not able to go running or anything like that. I’m allowed to do cycling and weights on any other part of my body just as long as am I’m not using my shoulder, so I started indoor cycling two days ago now and just slowly build back into it as I haven’t really done much since I dislocated shoulder. I just want to keep my base fitness and then once my shoulder starts feeling a lot better, I want to add some higher intensity workouts to try and replicate the bike time that I’m missing. At the moment its low intensity stuff, just to get the body moving again.

Returning to MXGP…

For me, I’m just focusing on my shoulder and just by the timeline that my doctors and physio have laid out for me. I’m not really worrying about the MXGP calendar right now as, honestly, I don’t know when the next race is likely to be so it makes sense just to control what I can control. I hope though that by the time we do get back to racing, I’ll have spent time back on the bike already.

Travelling back to Europe…

I don’t think anyone really has an idea at the minute, so we’re just playing it day-by-day and seeing what the governments are saying. It’s going to come down to when we’re allowed out of the country or even when I’m allowed back into other countries without any quarantine periods.

Taking up time…

We’ve been doing jigsaw puzzles recently at home, 1000-piece puzzles and they take a good amount of time. We’re onto our second one now so just trying to keep off the boredom that way. It’s like being a little kid again, playing board games at home and sitting around and not doing too much. It’s a difficult situation, but I’m also looking at doing some studying at home, so we’ll see how that goes. I’m thinking of doing something like science and nutrition, something along those lines, which could help me with my career at the moment and also gets me ahead for after my racing career.