Quote:
Originally Posted by Misti
Having good technical skills is the only sane route to mastering the bands of traction and reading their signs. In other words, without a firm grounding in basics, it’s easy for riders to misidentify what they think is a loss of traction when it isn’t or because of poor technique they may skip a band or two and get themselves into trouble."
Just saying "practice" to me doesn't cut it though. There has to be more to it than just "practice." What do you do when you practice? Is it just seat time, track days, riding around doing the same things you've been doing all along? Is it reading books, talking to people, doing drills, getting instruction?
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Misti, I'm open to thoughts you might have in terms of a training plan.
Maybe it's the engineering background in me, but I like adjusting one variable at a time so I usually go out on track with one specific item to focus on. My main goal is to focus piece meal on items that affect my contact with the bike and ability to learn "feel."
My 2016 was primarily focused on unintentional rider inputs and body position. To that end, I did trackdays and spent two days at CSS focusing on my feet positioning and lower body to tank interfacing (huge thanks to Dylan and Jon!). By finally getting those items into shape, I could eliminate variability and uncertainty in my bike interfacing.
The next physical training goal I have for 2017 to eliminate variability is to improve my hook turn. I'm still higher up than I want, and I think I'm subconsciously still keeping pressure on the bars. By focusing on the hook turn, I'm hoping I can be super loose on the bars to feel what the front end might be trying to tell me.
On top of this, I have been focused on trying to learn feel from the rear tire first. One thing I was working on was trying to get to wide open throttle sooner. Hopefully in conjunction having a body position that can accept feedback from the bike, I'm hoping I can learn to "feel" the rear. I also did two days at Cornerspin with dirtbikes to work on feel. Ideally, I would get more time on dirtbikes to get a better feel for slippage.
If I can get that down, then I would try to move to learning how to feel the front.
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In terms of implementation, specific individual session goals might be:
-Get on the gas harder out of a small sequence of corners harder and note when I get to wide open. Try to push it a bit earlier each lap.
-Focus on and evaluate upper body in the left hand sweeper (e.g. T5 at NCBike).
I also almost always run a front camera and a tail camera checking body position. I'll watch the videos and evaluate how it looks through certain sections to see where I can be more aggressive on the throttle.
So... basically, that's how I approach trackdays...