DataDan
Mama says he's bona fide
We often discuss “limits” in the context of sportriding but never in specific terms. You know, “He crashed because he was riding beyond his limits,” without saying what limits were exceeded. I think it's tremendously valuable to be able to understand specific rider limits and recognize their symptoms. With that knowledge, we can identify skills that need improving and even exercises to develop them.
Defining limits in terms of crashing—you’ll know you’ve exceeded your limits when you’re sliding across the road and watching your bike tumble over a cliff—obviously isn’t very helpful. Speed isn’t a useful measure either. On some twisty roads, the speed limit is much too fast for many turns. On others, soccer moms in their minivans go faster.
In fact, there can be no objective measure of “limit” because it varies from one rider to the next. It usually isn’t a limit of the road or the motorcycle that gets a rider into trouble, but a limit of skill or confidence. So to describe it in a useful way, it must be something you can learn to recognize, a warning that the edge of your personal envelope is approaching before it all goes to hell.
One measure is the occurrence of those anxiety-producing “moments”. That is the subject of one of my favorite articles about sport riding, Degrees of Control by Jeff Hughes in Sport Rider.
But I think it’s also possible to identify limits at a finer level of detail, because there isn’t just one limit to our abilities; there are many. Here are some that I often work on:
The sign that a rider is pushing the limit of a particular skill thus becomes an early warning that more serious trouble isn't far off. We all have bad days, and next weekend you might find yourself feeling anxious about lean angle. If you try to gut it out and hope the feeling goes away, it's just a matter of time before you simultaneously hit some other limit and the two combine to create a serious problem. But if you recognize that feeling—probably a vague uneasiness as you lean the bike into a turn—and identify the cause, you can prevent disaster by heeding the warning. Cut back on entry speed to reduce lean angle demand until your confidence improves.
In this thread I hope to get experienced riders to post their thoughts about these key skills and thought processes, the symptoms of exceeding the limits capped by those skills, and techniques for breaking through.
What specific limits have you found that hinder your riding? How do you recognize them? And what do you do to overcome them?
Defining limits in terms of crashing—you’ll know you’ve exceeded your limits when you’re sliding across the road and watching your bike tumble over a cliff—obviously isn’t very helpful. Speed isn’t a useful measure either. On some twisty roads, the speed limit is much too fast for many turns. On others, soccer moms in their minivans go faster.
In fact, there can be no objective measure of “limit” because it varies from one rider to the next. It usually isn’t a limit of the road or the motorcycle that gets a rider into trouble, but a limit of skill or confidence. So to describe it in a useful way, it must be something you can learn to recognize, a warning that the edge of your personal envelope is approaching before it all goes to hell.
One measure is the occurrence of those anxiety-producing “moments”. That is the subject of one of my favorite articles about sport riding, Degrees of Control by Jeff Hughes in Sport Rider.
But I think it’s also possible to identify limits at a finer level of detail, because there isn’t just one limit to our abilities; there are many. Here are some that I often work on:
- sizing up a turn, judging an appropriate entry speed, and planning a line
- keeping eyes and brain ahead of the motorcycle
- steering the bike quickly and accurately to a planned line
- leaning the bike to an angle that will achieve a planned trajectory
- dealing with surprises
The sign that a rider is pushing the limit of a particular skill thus becomes an early warning that more serious trouble isn't far off. We all have bad days, and next weekend you might find yourself feeling anxious about lean angle. If you try to gut it out and hope the feeling goes away, it's just a matter of time before you simultaneously hit some other limit and the two combine to create a serious problem. But if you recognize that feeling—probably a vague uneasiness as you lean the bike into a turn—and identify the cause, you can prevent disaster by heeding the warning. Cut back on entry speed to reduce lean angle demand until your confidence improves.
In this thread I hope to get experienced riders to post their thoughts about these key skills and thought processes, the symptoms of exceeding the limits capped by those skills, and techniques for breaking through.
What specific limits have you found that hinder your riding? How do you recognize them? And what do you do to overcome them?
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