Quote:
Originally Posted by Sirref
When the student surpasses the master it does not mean that the master has taught all that he/she can teach, only that the student has passed the first step on the journey, the next is to apply the knowledge and skills and for that the master's experience is critical
for example: in misti's story she was qualifying for an ama race, no doubt faster than keith if the two were to race against each other yet his advice from experience proved to be what she needed to clinch the spot on the grid. The same holds true farther along with josh herrin picking up a personal coach for the upcoming season and many motogp racers having personal coaches to ensure that they are at the top of their game. These racers know everything their coaches do but they don't have the same perspective and experience as their coaches and that makes all the difference
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Good point. Perspective is the key. You can't SEE yourself ride. Hence the reason coaching works. Someone else's eyes on you, seeing what you are doing and offering a different perspective on what might help you improve.
I had a wonderful experience at one of the Superbike Schools I was coaching. It was several years ago, when we rode at Blackhawk farms and Keith Code announced at our morning staff meeting that he was going to be a student for a day. He was to ride on track with all the students, doing the same drills and being assigned a riding coach on track to lead and follow him the same way we do with our other students.
Turned out that I was chosen to be his coach. I was a little nervous at the start...coaching the BOSS but when I started following him I could clearly see some of the mistakes he was making. During my first debrief session I started to guide him towards the mistakes he was making and how I wanted him to proceed when he started to disagree with me. He felt like he know what mistakes he was making and what route to take.
I looked at him and did the zipper motion with my hands at the same time telling him to "ZIP IT KEITH! I'm your coach so you listen to me today. I may have different perspective on your riding then you do and I may have a different method to solving those issues but you wanted coaching so let me coach."
He zipped it and listened and applied what I was suggesting and made improvements. At the end of the day he thanked me for zipping him up and thanked me for utilizing his training to coach him towards improvement. Ultimately we came to the same point in the coaching tech, I just took a different route to getting there then he would have.
Just goes to show you that no matter how good you are or how knowledgable you are, sometimes a slightly different perspective or a different set of eyes from a trained professional can really give you a different way to improvement.
