{"id":3928,"date":"2013-04-18T12:42:43","date_gmt":"2013-04-18T18:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/?p=3928"},"modified":"2013-04-14T16:43:35","modified_gmt":"2013-04-14T22:43:35","slug":"becoming-a-better-rider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/becoming-a-better-rider\/","title":{"rendered":"Becoming A Better Rider"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_3938\" style=\"width: 508px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/BMW_S1000RR.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3938\" src=\"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/BMW_S1000RR.jpg\" vspace=\"10\" alt=\"BMW S1000RR\" title=\"BMW S1000RR\" width=\"498\" height=\"366\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3938\" srcset=\"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/BMW_S1000RR.jpg 498w, https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/BMW_S1000RR-300x220.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 498px) 100vw, 498px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3938\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>A BMW S1000RR I rode once.<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n<p>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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sportbikes.net\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sportbikes.net<\/a> forum and I recently got a notice of a thread on that forum that I thought would be worth sharing.<\/p>\n<p>The question posed was, &#8220;Becoming a Better Rider &#8211; What helped you?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Here are some of the replies.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Safer: A bunch of mistakes etched into my memory. I do things and afterwards think &#8220;if X had happened, I would have been screwed!&#8221; 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.<\/li>\n<li>Definitely hanging out with people who were better than me. Its the same thing I&#8217;ve found with being a musician&#8230; you&#8217;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&#8217;t mean squids doing stupid stuff on public roads. It means friends that actually have skill, do track days, etc.<\/li>\n<li>Crashing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Wow? Really? I guess if you live to learn the lesson, the lesson does stick.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>MSF course &#8211; It picked out fundamental flaws in my riding.<\/li>\n<li>Track days &#8211; #1 thing I learned from trackdays is to look up. This is a valuable life lesson. Look up, it works!!!<\/li>\n<li>American Supercamp &#8211; 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.<br \/>\nRiding a dirtbike &#8211; Reinforced a lot of the things I learned at Supercamp, but helped me loosen up on the bike.<br \/>\nThen I read a book called &#8220;Total Control,&#8221; 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.<\/li>\n<li>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.<\/li>\n<li>Keith Code California Superbike School for me.<\/li>\n<li>Two things I think&#8230; I&#8217;m constantly experimenting with different techniques on the same road to see what works and what doesn&#8217;t. But that&#8217;s just how I learn, doesn&#8217;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&#8217;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.<\/li>\n<li>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).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>OK, so I get it. Crashing really can teach you a lot, as long as it doesn&#8217;t end your riding days. I don&#8217;t think anyone would recommend this approach, though. You just have to take advantage of it when the opportunity presents itself.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s one more I like.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I learned by not being too proud to seek training.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner<\/strong><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.examiner.com\/article\/butler-maps-northern-california-map-is-an-eye-opener\" target=\"_blank\">Butler Maps Northern California map is an eye-opener<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Biker Quote for Today<\/h3>\n<p>The twisties &#8211; not the superslabs -separate the riders from the squids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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, &#8220;Becoming a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[516],"class_list":["post-3928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-safety","tag-better-motorcycling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3928"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3942,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928\/revisions\/3942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}