Drill Your Skills!
Last Sat. I headed out on my first dirt bike ride of the season. Well…truthfully…”ride” might be a bit of an overstatement. To clarify I did my first dirt bike SKILLS SESSION of the season. You see, I’m a newbie – I’m in Year 2 of learning to ride a motorized bike. And boy, is there a lot to learn! Both hands & feet have specific jobs, the available speed changes how you read a trail & specific skill sets are needed to move a 200lb bike around. I’m lucky I’ve had lots of mtn biking experience…but motors change everything!
Suffice to say my skills session didn’t start off so great. It began with about 10 failed attempts to get the bike moving out of 1st gear…stalled it every time. After my riding partner/coach confirmed that there was “nothing wrong with the bike”, I realized that I was releasing the clutch waaaaay too fast. After making a small hand adjustment I was moving! Step #1, right? Just get the bike moving! Because clutch control has been challenging for me, I did about 6 stops & starts just to practice. OK, feeling better about things. We rode a short distance away from the parking lot & found a flat open patch of ground to work on cornering. Around & around & around I went practicing head, arm, body & foot positions, leaning the bike into the turns & throttle control in both seated & standing positions. Next up, braking. Last season I relied on my hand brake…this season I’m committed to using both hand & foot brakes. So I did rounds of accelerating into a quick stop in both seating & standing positions. By this point the lessons I learned last season were starting to come back. Slowly I released my death grip on the handlebars & started to work with my bike rather than fighting it.
By this point we’d been out about 1 hour…and we’d done no riding yet. We’d been doing skills & drills…the stuff I ask my athletes to do before every workout…the stuff that most folks skip over to get to the fun stuff…the riding!! Well, here’s the deal, folks. I’m here to convince you that your ride, your run, your swim, your whatever it is that you do will be so much more fun if you take time at the start to drill your skills. Take a few minutes to remind your body just exactly what it is supposed to do. Remember that it’s probably been at least 24 hours since you last did that sport. In that 24hr period (or longer) your body will have gotten a bit rusty on the exact sequencing needed to efficiently & effortlessly run that motor pattern. So use some drills to remind it! As a coach I always argue that perfect practice is more important than just practice. Instead of the “Practice makes perfect” saying, I prefer “Perfect practice makes perfect”. And a great way to ensure more perfect practice is to break skills down into smaller, more manageable, components (i.e. drills)!
Drill on, Folks!
Coach Michelle
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