Riding with a 4 mph brain
 After
nearly 20 years of riding and 10 years of teaching motorcycle riding
courses both public and private, it appears that there is one common
barrier that all riders share… we are all riding with 4 mph brains!
No matter what level a rider is, beginner to expert, street to dirt,
track or road, there seems to be one primary obstacle that every
rider has to overcome. Sifting through all of the fancy talk,
concepts and advice, the reality is that we are dealing with a brain
that has evolved to travel at 4 mph not at 30, 60, or 100 mph. We
are all operating within the perimeters of a brain that has evolved
over thousands of years.
During the Total Control Advanced Riding Clinic taught at Puget
Sound Safety, students learn how to combat the one element that holds
every rider back… FEAR. Fear is what causes us to brake early, turn
in too soon, dump the throttle in the middle of the corner, tense
up, and worse yet keep us from mastering visual acuity.
Understanding and knowing how to cope with fear is how you advance
to the next skill level as a rider. The root cause of fear is
“evolution.” Fear is the process our brain goes into to survive. The
unfortunate byproduct of this survival instinct is that when riding
a motorcycle those instincts are often opposite of what we need to
do, causing us to ride poorly or, worse, crash.
This is the goal... Bret Tkacs showing how it's done during an
advanced riding class with Puget Sound Safety
Before you can master things like body positioning, perfect line
selection, becoming a smooth rider, minimizing negative effects from
rider impute, etc, you must first be able to remain totally relaxed
as a rider. Fear and poor visual acuity will prohibit you from
reaching that goal.
 During Puget Sound Safety’s Advanced Street Skills course held at
Pacific Raceways twice a year, we work on going straight to the root
of riding with a 4 mph brain. The theory is that evolution has
taught our brains that if we travel at 4 mph, we can safely
look 20 to 50 feet ahead and have ample time to plan for changes in
direction or deal with upcoming hazards. This also applies to lean;
if we lean more than approximately 15 degrees, our brains set off an
alert that we are likely to lose our footing and fall over,
followed by the fight or flight syndrome, increasing blood flow
through body, pumping out adrenaline, tensing up and preparing for
the fall. This is exactly what we don’t want to happen while riding.
Practice leaning and looking with freinds
So how does talking about how our brains evolved make you a
better rider? As soon as we straddle an internal combustion engine
with wheels at both ends, we have launched ourselves well beyond
our brain's natural evolution. No matter what level we are as a
rider, this issue remains constant. Even Valentino Rossi and Nicky
Haden have a limit where fear sets in - it’s just way beyond yours
and mine. Even they have to train to fight the effects of evolution.
Most discussions on riding techniques address that how and where
you look effects your ability to ride well. Every motorcycle course
I have ever seen or taken talks about where to look. I am trying to
illustrate why some riders may have so much trouble looking where
they should. I am amazed how many riders don’t understand how far
ahead they should be looking. Many riders only scan one corner or
even only partially into a corner when looking ahead. The way I like
to describe it is that if you are looking to where if feels natural…
you’re wrong, look farther. If it feels right it probably isn’t.
Understanding concepts like fear and poor visual acuity and how
it affects our riding will help us understand how to overcome it.
I am hoping that if you know why you have a hard time looking where
you should, that you will be able to improve your riding and overcome
those poor instincts that will lead you into harm’s way. You may not
know you have a visual acuity problem if you haven’t challenged
yourself by taking an upper-level training course.
 One of the simplest ways to trick our brains reducing our fear
level is by looking farther ahead. Next time you watch SBK or GP
racing, pay attention to how far ahead those riders are looking. This
speed perception phenomenon can be tested easily while riding or
driving a car. While you are going down the road at a relatively
slow speed 20-40mph look down at the ground and notice how fast if
“feels” like you are going. Next, head out to the highway and while
riding at a highway speeds look out at Mount Rainer or some other
distant object… now how fast does it “feel” like you are going. The
idea here is to trick our brain into “feeling” like it is going
closer to 4 mph than 30 mph or 70 mph. The farther you get your eyes
up and looking through each corner, the less you feel the speed and
lean of the motorcycle. This is part of the reason we should
constantly be searching for the vanishing point.
Mark Needham perfecting his head turn.
Just keep reminding yourself that if it feels like you are
looking far enough through a corner or down the road…. you’re not.
If it feels natural, remember that motorcycles don’t come from nature
so it doesn’t have to feel natural to look where you should. Visual
acuity is what gives us direction and relaxes us. The farther you look,
the more relaxed you will become.
Bret Tkacs is a Northwest motorcycle riding instructor and the
president of Puget Sound
Safety. |
