One rides a motorcycle for many reasons.
Most ride it for the sake of riding
Others ride for thrills.
Few others ride to compete or even to win.
The rare rider rides to be the fastest rider on earth.
I am different.
I started riding to
BE
(Speed itself).
...
My only motorcycle lessons were the ones I had to take to get my license.
And other than allowing me the visceral experience to
interact with a two-wheeled, steel-and-aluminum-and-oil machine,
I received NOTHING.
The premium for the "experience" and "knowledge"
that I needed to pay was a joke.
Because I lost both my time and the money.
I was asked to pay up, then to sit on a chair,
then to listen to and see
shiny presentations sprinkled with narratives and scenarios,
sold to me as "lessons".
The world will never understand ...
Lessons, cues, and techniques do not work.
Lessons, cues, and techniques do not work.
Lessons, cues, and techniques do not work.
Lessons, cues, and techniques do not work.
Lessons, cues, and techniques do not work.
They may work for a short while.
They may show you great hope.
They may even get you that one-off podium finish.
Heck, if you get really insistent on toiling day and night,
they may even make you a "legend".
Do you understand?
Lessons, cues, gotchas, tricks, and techniques
may work for everyone or even for
the self-convinced "legend".
But they are NOT for
THE LEGEND.
I will use an example.
During my motorcycle lessons,
one cue I kept on receiving was this ...
I was told this -> "Keep hugging the tank as you maneuver a turn"
This was after the instructor noticing my knees repeatedly
leaving the tank, in the direction of the curve
or the turn.
What I was told,
the end result of that instruction,
i.e. having one's legs always hugging the tank of a bike
is actually The Way
to make a turn -
Left or Right
Ninety degrees or Fifteen degrees,
Increasing-radius or decreasing-radius.
But just like all things natural,
it must happen naturally.
And not through memory, lesson, techniques, or cues.
Now, I know the MotoGP/Moto2/Moto3/WorldSBK
drag-knee-to-gauge-lean-angle experts
are laughing at me and my statement above.
But do they know that I am grinning at their premature laughter?
Every time my knee automatically left the tank
in the direction of the turn, is merely a symptom.
I am certain it happened with the rider
who introduced the whole knee-dragging madness
to the collection of societies of communities of riders.
(The collection of societies of communities
that then birthed the notorious
extreme-lean-angle technique.)
Let us call this rider Mr. X.
I will let you in on something
about Mr. X and my instructor.
1. Mr. X did not understand how the Body works.
You see when the Body has not awakened, the Mind will kick in.
The Mind likes to take shortcuts.
The human Mind is a sucker for tricks and techniques.
Because Mr. X decided to exploit his knee-drag-to-make-a-turn symptom,
Because Mr. X decided not to explore the symptom, to understand the symptom,
Mr. X got lured in by the symptom and became infected with a disease.
The disease his friend, his buddy, his wife, his son,
his students and everyone else ultimately picked up.
The disease you today see every single rider
infected with,
relying hopelessly on that infection to maneuver a turn.
2. The instructor does not understand how the Mind works.
If you see the Mind do something (let us say A),
and you tell it verbally - "Do not do A, do B."
The Mind may do B in that instant.
But the moment you let it go and higher, more demanding, more real-life
situations come, the Mind will default to A.
No matter how many times you say it.
This is the same as instilling "good habits" in children.
This is the same as instilling "proper form" in athletes.
The athletes who are able to demonstrate "perfect form"
every time, are doing so not because of the instruction they received.
They are doing so because they are doing so.
(Because the entity "perfect form" does not exist.)
Children keep falling back on that "bad habit"
because someone is hell-bent on instilling the opposite
(which also, happens to not exist.)
If you were not just speed-reading, you saw the italicized statements
that the previous two paragraphs started with.
I will restate here for emphasis...
Mr. X did not understand how the Body works.
The instructor does not understand how the Mind works.
^^And therein lies the gist of my message.
Thank you.