Thanks CaliGrrl and snot
Hi Sirref; check out the Imagery Training and Race Walking links. Race walking is essentially a moving visualization, or moving meditation technique.
Hi greg737,
I get what you’re saying, but I must disagree somewhat. I don’t want to make this a long post because my thoughts on the subject are already covered on my website
here, but for sure, on track there has been, and always will be, a pecking order.
There will be the 3-5% who perform at a magical elite level (as though they are channeling some unworldly understand & skill). There will be the 3-5% who just don’t get it, and likely never will for whatever reason (attitude problem, inability to feel instead of analyze, etc.) There will be the 5-10% who are the fast guys/gals (who perform with impressive worldly understand & skill). But what about the rest; many of whom get stuck at learning plateaus, get frustrated, and quit? Trying to help this middle group (Advanced Beginners, Competent, and Proficient performers) keep moving up the learning spiral and enjoy their racing again is why I created SpeedCraft.
Here is a real world example that some in this middle group (even the lower-middle group) are not lost causes. When I put my site up in August 2016, a racer from Texas contacted me. He had been racing an SCCA Spec Racer for two seasons (a class where the cars are tightly regulated so the driver is the key ingredient for speed). He had done a private training day with a world-famous driving secrets coach/author, and a private coaching day with a World Champion 125cc shifter kart driver. Both of these netted some improvement, but near the end of his second season of racing he had progressed very little during the season and was still 4.5+/- seconds off the pace.
Over a six week period we exchanged 30+/- emails, talked on the phone for an hour once, and he went to an indoor kart track a couple of times to try some training techniques I’d given him for increasing his sensitivity to energy flow, tire loads, traction and the forces acting on the car/kart. He went to his next race (the last race of his season) and took 3 seconds off of his best time, while also showing profound improvements in consistency. Most importantly, racing went from being a source of disappointment and confusion for him to being an energizing, exciting, and rewarding experience.
His main problem was that he had been trying to think/analyze his way around the track instead of letting ‘himself’ (what I call his intuitive driver) do the actual driving. With the SpeedCraft information, he came to realize what was happening, and through great effort on his part, he changed the way he thought about driving, and how he processed information when driving. I believe this wrong part/process in the brain being used for a job it’s not suited to is one of the major limiting factors for many of the people in the ‘middle group’. Our society is very intellect/logic heavy, but the actual act of driving/riding is an intuitive process. When intellect inserts itself into what must be an intuitive process, the perception of speed increases, sensitivity goes away, lap times go up or don’t improve, and the potential for bad things happening escalates.