Becoming A Better Rider
A BMW S1000RR I rode once.
My Concours is a sport-touring bike so it kind of qualifies as a sport-bike. For that reason and a variety of others I am a member of the Sportbikes.net forum and I recently got a notice of a thread on that forum that I thought would be worth sharing.
The question posed was, “Becoming a Better Rider – What helped you?”
Here are some of the replies.
- Safer: A bunch of mistakes etched into my memory. I do things and afterwards think “if X had happened, I would have been screwed!” Then I commit it to memory to avoid that possibility in the future. Crossing my fingers and hoping X never happens on the first time a situation arises.
- Definitely hanging out with people who were better than me. Its the same thing I’ve found with being a musician… you’ll tend to plateau after a while, but playing with some new people that force you to sharpen your skills helps a ton. This doesn’t mean squids doing stupid stuff on public roads. It means friends that actually have skill, do track days, etc.
- Crashing.
Wow? Really? I guess if you live to learn the lesson, the lesson does stick.
- MSF course – It picked out fundamental flaws in my riding.
- Track days – #1 thing I learned from trackdays is to look up. This is a valuable life lesson. Look up, it works!!!
- American Supercamp – I learned that people online preach an ideology about riding that may not be the best for me. I learned a lot just talking to real racers about riding motorcycles at Supercamp as well.
Riding a dirtbike – Reinforced a lot of the things I learned at Supercamp, but helped me loosen up on the bike.
Then I read a book called “Total Control,” which taught me how to be a faster/controlled rider and encouraged me to practice what I had read. Then trackdays, and hanging out with trackday junkies instead of squids. - Track. Easiest way to learn your limits and the limits of your bike/tires. Best thing to do is to get behind someone slightly faster than you and try and keep up with them.
- Keith Code California Superbike School for me.
- Two things I think… I’m constantly experimenting with different techniques on the same road to see what works and what doesn’t. But that’s just how I learn, doesn’t work for everyone. I also only work on one thing at a time. Like at the beginning of the season I focused a lot on upper body placement, where my head should be and what my hands and arms should be doing. Then I moved on to lower body, which I struggled with a lot. Now I’m currently working on foot placement and the most effective way to move my feet when transitioning. The other thing that really helped was riding in crappy conditions. Once I learned how to relax while riding in sand my awareness improved overall.
- Wrecking also helped to make me a safer rider. It slowed me down and kept me from taking needless risks (not that I was really all that reckless before).
OK, so I get it. Crashing really can teach you a lot, as long as it doesn’t end your riding days. I don’t think anyone would recommend this approach, though. You just have to take advantage of it when the opportunity presents itself.
Here’s one more I like.
- I learned by not being too proud to seek training.
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Tags: better motorcycling
