Self Coaching?

[Misti]

Do you guys self coach when you are riding? What kinds of things do you correct in your own riding? How does self coaching work out for you?

Misti

[alex.s]

for me, its basically two questions.

first question: am i wide open throttle in the power band?
if no, why not? what is stopping you? is it your mind? is it your traction? identify what is keeping you from rolling on the throttle.

second question: am i struggling to stay on track at the exit of each corner?
no: go faster.
yes: why?

this is the harder question to answer. if you understand what you are doing that leads to the result you don't want, you can typically look at your options before that to see what you could have changed to get a different result. exit too wide? can you take a later apex? are you going in too fast? starting too narrow or wide?

everything i do to better myself starts by identifying a mistake that i have made. once the mistake is identified, you can plan alternatives. once you have a plan for alternatives, you can try them out and see how they go.

[JohnnyBravo]

Not as much as I should, why? Cause I may wind myself in some bushes or worse. I do try to correct any problems I spot in my riding, why? I don't wanna go off through no bushes or worse.
I hope to make it to a track school or twelve one day

[adouglas]

Every time I ride. Every single time.

Be smoother with shifts and throttle (that transition from off to on kicks my butt a lot).

Work on body position.

Work on line selection and vision.

Mentally go through/plan for the next corner before I get there.

Get a feeling for how much I can push (a comfort limit thing… intellectually I know the bike can do MUCH more than I ask of it but you need to learn to trust it).

and on and on…

That's what riding is to me. Constantly working to perfect the art, thinking about it all the time. And taking pleasure when you do it right. I never just zone out. Riding is a very active thing for me, mentally.

[Misti]

Originally Posted by adouglas

Every time I ride. Every single time.

Be smoother with shifts and throttle (that transition from off to on kicks my butt a lot).

Work on body position.

Work on line selection and vision.

Mentally go through/plan for the next corner before I get there.

Get a feeling for how much I can push (a comfort limit thing… intellectually I know the bike can do MUCH more than I ask of it but you need to learn to trust it).

and on and on…

That's what riding is to me. Constantly working to perfect the art, thinking about it all the time. And taking pleasure when you do it right. I never just zone out. Riding is a very active thing for me, mentally.

Now how much would you say you are questioning/working on each ride or at once? I think that riding is constantly working to perfect the art and thinking about it at the time, as long as you aren't overwhelming yourself in the process. Coaching yourself to work on one thing at a time is a good thing, getting frustrated or mad at yourself for making mistakes or trying to work on too many things isn't.

[adouglas]

Only one thing at any given moment.

I have a background in aviation (I'm an instrument-rated pilot) and a lot of what I did in the cockpit was task management. You focus on one thing at a time.

"Multitasking" is a myth. Humans are good at serial unitasking and switching quickly… but the fact is that you really can focus fully on only one thing at a time. The thing in the center of your attention takes priority, while other tasks are given less-than-full attention.

I use this all the time at work. The moment someone I'm talking to looks down at their phone, I stop talking… even in mid-sentence. Quite often, they don't even notice that the "conversation" has stopped for a moment.

So, approaching a corner, it becomes a series of tasks. The "coaching" bit comes from visualization before I ever get there… the intent, say, to really focus on getting a smooth transition this time.

[choneofakind]

Using a camera helps a ton when self coaching. You can take the bias out of your memories from what you intended to do and see what you actually did.

[adouglas]

Yeah, GoPros tempt me not because I want to take Yet Another Endless Movie About The Road In Front Of Me (yawn), but because I want to see things like my suspension working and my body position.

[Misti]

Originally Posted by adouglas

Only one thing at any given moment.

I have a background in aviation (I'm an instrument-rated pilot) and a lot of what I did in the cockpit was task management. You focus on one thing at a time.

"Multitasking" is a myth. Humans are good at serial unitasking and switching quickly… but the fact is that you really can focus fully on only one thing at a time. The thing in the center of your attention takes priority, while other tasks are given less-than-full attention.

I use this all the time at work. The moment someone I'm talking to looks down at their phone, I stop talking… even in mid-sentence. Quite often, they don't even notice that the "conversation" has stopped for a moment.

So, approaching a corner, it becomes a series of tasks. The "coaching" bit comes from visualization before I ever get there… the intent, say, to really focus on getting a smooth transition this time.

Well that sounds great. One thing at a time is perfect and self -coaching can work when done in this manner. The problem is that people tend to coach themselves by being too hard on themselves and trying to work on too many things! When the focus changes from, "oh, your throttle control could have been better in that turn, let's work on it." To, "you turned too early, your TC sucks, your body position isn't right, you braked too early etc etc....that is when self coaching drastically fails.

I think self-coaching can only take you so far as well. It doesn't matter how good of a rider you are, or how well you understand riding technique, you will get to a point where you need another set of eyes to help you improve.

I was racing an AMA Supersport race at Barber Motorsport Park and needed to drop at least a second before I could even qualify for the event but I couldn't figure out why I was sucking so badly in turn 1. Thankfully for me there was another CSS coach there who took the time to work with me through the turn and together we figured out what the problem was. I simply couldn't see what I was doing wrong.

Originally Posted by choneofakind

Using a camera helps a ton when self coaching. You can take the bias out of your memories from what you intended to do and see what you actually did.

Yes, you can see exactly what you are doing- almost as if it was from the eyes of a coach. Sometimes I'll show my students a photo of them mid corner so they can see exactly what I see. And we use the camera review bike in our 2-day camps for that very reason too.

[alex.s]

thinking about it, racing improved my riding the most. its easy to see what you do wrong... when you make a mistake, a few bikes fly by you doing the correct thing.

[greenaero]

Excellent posts! I also think about what I'm doing all the time while riding and strive to ride as smoothly and efficiently as possible. For hypermiling it's all about looking as far ahead as possible , conserving momentum and using as little throttle and braking as possible to achieve your target speed while cruising. This also means maintaining a high cornering speed so that you don't use too energy in braking and then re-accelerating. Its the same discipline you would use in racing only your goal is obviously different.
This struggle for perfection is one of the things I love most about motorcycling.
It is also a lot of fun.

[tfkrocks]

I definitely think about how I can fix my riding when I make a mistake or do something that just didn't feel quite right. If I could have a more experienced rider watch and correct me though, that would be even better. Partially why I want to go to the track again

[JohnnyBravo]

I started self coaching in the forum, a few minutes ago... No more thumbs down for me unless they are on purpose

I found out tonight that I self coach on the road as well... Also that I need a better coach. Parents would take all their kids away from me if I was a coach :/ lots of bleeps and not so many positives in my coaching style

[adouglas]

My self-coach sounds like this guy.

Link to original page on YouTube.

You EEDIOT! What do you theenk you're DOING?

[Misti]

Originally Posted by JohnnyBravo

I started self coaching in the forum, a few minutes ago... No more thumbs down for me unless they are on purpose

I found out tonight that I self coach on the road as well... Also that I need a better coach. Parents would take all their kids away from me if I was a coach :/ lots of bleeps and not so many positives in my coaching style

Yes, sounds like you need a better more positive coach! I found myself doing it again this weekend when I was riding moto and trying to build up the courage to jump the step up. I kept saying, "you aren't rolling on hard enough, your body position sucks, you can't do it." and it really flustered me. When I finally started being more positive, "you're getting better, that corner was good, you CAN do it." I started to relax, my riding got better and....I jumped

[JohnnyBravo]

Originally Posted by Misti

Yes, sounds like you need a better more positive coach! I found myself doing it again this weekend when I was riding moto and trying to build up the courage to jump the step up. I kept saying, "you aren't rolling on hard enough, your body position sucks, you can't do it." and it really flustered me. When I finally started being more positive, "you're getting better, that corner was good, you CAN do it." I started to relax, my riding got better and....I jumped

That's how it goes with me, when I can tone it down an relax instead of getting all worked up everything works out a heap better

[CC Cowboy]

I usually have the guy with the flashing lights and the camera on his dash tell me what I'm doing wrong. I don't usually agree with him but he is entitled to his opinion.

[JohnnyBravo]

I got to talk to him a few days ago, but I was in a store, he gave me a ride in his car