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Old June 9th, 2017, 05:12 AM   #137
adouglas
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Name: Gort
Location: A secret lair which, being secret, has an undisclosed location
Join Date: May 2009

Motorcycle(s): Aprilia RS660

Posts: A lot.
Blog Entries: 6
MOTM - Jul '18, Nov '16, Aug '14, May '13
Here's what I learned during one-on-one with Ken.

I went in with that "What's holding me back?" mindset and I decided before the instruction day that it's confidence. I'm too tentative everywhere. My form and basic skills are good but I just have a hard time really committing.

So we worked on that. What Ken saw was way too many corrections, caused by overreacting to perceived issues that didn't really matter. I'm working too hard trying to stay out of trouble and get it right. The couple of laps where I really paid attention to letting go (my true limiting factor) were great. I wasn't focusing on how hard I was braking, or my throttle roll-on, or other such things. It was all about that one element.

It goes without saying that in order to focus like this, you have to ride at a pace where the other stuff can take care of itself. If you're going into corners so hot that it's triggering SRs, then you instantly lose the lock on what you're trying to accomplish. That doesn't mean you can completely ignore those things, but it does mean riding at a pace where they're not going to rise up and dominate your attention.

The point about pace is exactly why I've paid so much attention to fundamentals like body position. I want to make them second nature so that I can move on and focus on more important things. If I'm riding so fast that I'm starting to think too much about braking or staying on the track or... ahem... my left foot in Turn 7 at Palmer then I no longer have the bandwidth to deal with that one, true, limiting factor.
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I am NOT an adrenaline junkie, I'm a skill junkie. - csmith12

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