Motorcycle Training, Practice, and Muscle Memory.


So here's the question from Jay in the last post.

I will practice. I will take classes. But I don't think I will "train" like a police motor officer or MSF Rider coach. I would like to hear more about "training" as opposed to "practice". How much "training" does it take to develop muscle memory and is that much "training" realistic among recreational riders and commuters?

To me training and practice are two different animals. While practice does happen during training, not all practice has to be done in the context of formal training. Nor should practice be limited to those times. Muscle memory is based on repetition but the successful application of it, I think, depends less on deep seated actions and more on how long it's been since we last used the skill we're asking our body and mind to perform.

I want to at least try to keep this post fairly succinct. To that end I'm going to provide the skeleton with only a little bit of muscle filled in. When you're reading this and come to something you want more information on ask in a comment. I'll use another post to fill in more of the body, as it were.

Let's start with muscle memory.

When most people think of muscle memory they think of actions that have been repeated so many times that they become a permanent part of our subconscious. I guess the idea is that when a person finds themselves in an emergency situation the correct response will happen automatically without a lot of thought required. There's a lot of truth to this, for sure. While I'm certainly not an expert on the mind / body connection I have studied enough to know that there's more components to the formula than this. Besides, I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night! ( that's a humorous reference to an American television commercial for those of you in other parts of the world )

More on muscle memory in a bit. Here's a good way to think of the different settings for training versus practice.

Training teaches us what we need to practice.

Whether it's motor cops or civilians as shown in the two photos below, there's a specific reason for coming to formal training sessions. This brings us back to how muscle memory is formed.





Repetition is the process by which muscle memory is formed. The content, however, is a series of snapshots. Think of the flip books that used to be popular with kids. Each page would have a picture on it. By itself each page was static. Rapidly flip the pages, however, and the individual pictures start to look like a movie.

That's another aspect to forming muscle memory. What happens is that our brain connects a series of individual actions into a smoothly flowing whole. The process is similar to the flip book thing but a lot more sophisticated. What's equally true for both the flip book and muscle memory is that each individual picture has to be the right one to contribute to that smooth flow.

Can you imagine a flip book that has all these drawings of a black and white panda walking along the ground, for instance? We flip the pages and things are flowing smoothly. It really looks like a movie of the panda walking. Suddenly, right in the middle of the sequence, are two color photos of pink crocs. While pink crocs are certainly the rage in certain situations, they have no place in this sequence. Our movie is ruined because it's not what we want or need right now.

Training helps us make sure each picture in the sequence is correct for the plot of the movie. In my mind training is any situation where a person who understands what needs to happen can observe us and offer the appropriate feedback. So not all training has to be "formal", per se. It could consist of two riding friends meeting in a parking lot for a morning session, for instance.

Of course, the caveat is that both friends should actually know what each step in the sequence should look like and how to offer that feedback. Telling somebody that their last stop sucked, for example, isn't really helpful. They should be able to hone in on the specific spot in the sequence and offer tips on how to improve. This kind of training can be of benefit. Sometimes riders do know what SHOULD happen but might simply have become sloppy. It could be that a rider has also picked up a bad habit. Having a riding buddy watch us for a bit can make us aware where we've slipped to, as it were.

Still and all, there's no substitute for professional instruction. There's also the fact that advice we pay for can have more value to us than "free" advice offered by a friend! Under the watchful eyes of a pro we get feedback on every still photo and useful coaching on how to improve. We also know what's going right so we can concentrate more on the things that need work. Going back to the statement that training teaches us what to practice, one professional training session can fuel our personal practice for months to come.

Do you like the reference to "watchful eyes" and then the photo of the osprey? This is a bird nesting at the track where we hold our ART classes. She watches everybody pretty closely. It's hard to get a photo against bleary white clouds but I think the point comes across.



As a quick example let's look at maximum braking. I've posted this photo before. It shows a fellow instructor demonstrating maximum braking at 70 mph during one of our police training sessions. Note the head and eyes up, the fully compressed front fork, the slightly squashed front tire, and the lack of a skid mark! There is no ABS on the Ducati. This is perfect form for maximum braking but it didn't get that way by itself. This nearly perfect "movie" is made up of quite a few individual still photos.



Just to break the photos down consider these. Keeping the head and eyes up and looking well ahead during the entire stop. Smoothly rolling off the throttle while reaching for the front brake. Squeezing the knees against the tank to hold us in the seat and allow us to use the fine control of the smaller muscles of our lower legs on the rear brake pedal as opposed to the force of our thigh muscles. Ensuring that our initial application of the front brake is very firm, but equally as smooth. Modulating the feedback from our fingers and the feel of the bike to achieve a progressive squeeze throughout the application of the front brake. One squeeze until we're stopped. Not two or three squeezes like we often see. Making sure we nail the actual stop. Easing off the pressure on the front brake lever right at the end of the stop because we have a second opportunity to skid the front wheel when we're nearly stopped and the bike's weight starts to rebound off the front wheel which lessens our traction. Letting off pressure while making sure we don't let the bike actually lunge forward.

All the while modulating the rear brake pedal because, as the bike's weight moves forward, less traction is available for braking at the rear. Remembering to lift our foot as we squeeze more on the front. Light to lighter on the rear. Progressively more on the front. Move our toes up to meet our fingers.

This is if everything goes as we planned. We haven't started on the list of things that can go wrong and what to do about them.

During formal training ( and I'm talking about sessions for experienced riders here ) a professional instructor will actually be able to look at and analyze each and every individual still photo. The rider will be then be told which photos are properly placed and which need work. Along with coaching on how to fix those photos that need fixing. Armed with that knowledge we go back into our personal worlds and comment to practice.



Practice doesn't have to consist of doing the whole "drill" over and over. Yes, we do need to do the whole drill often enough to let the brain form the whole movie. It's equally critical to make sure each photo is right. Let's say the instructor told us we need to smooth out our initial brake application. Take a ride and dedicate it to practice being as smooth as possible whenever we apply the front brake. Maybe we were told we need to work on keeping our eyes up because we tend to look down right in front of the bike when we stop. So dedicate a ride to practice keeping our eyes up. Maybe take a ride and practice putting our knees against the tank when we apply the rear brake. You get the idea.

Once we're confident we have all the properly exposed photos in place then take a ride and practice putting it all together. Find a few opportunities to practice a quick stop in a safe place. You'll be amazed how it comes together.



People say that practice makes perfect. Take that a bit further and think "Perfect practice makes perfect".

I may be treading on questionable ground here, but I'm going to step forth anyway. Compare two riders. The first rider will practice a quick stop a hundred times in a session. The last few stops are picture perfect. Then, thinking they have it down, they never come back and practice it again. Another rider could practice five quick stops in one ride, five more on another ride next month, and so on for twenty months. They have both done one hundred repetitions. Who would be better off if an emergency stop were called for at the end of twenty months? The rider who did it a hundred times and then took twenty months off from practice, or the rider who practiced five times a month each and every month for those twenty months? ( we also assume they've both been very lucky during this time! )

I'd put my money on the second rider. That's the other factor in muscle memory. Our brains have long term and short term memory. As we know, there is only so much room in the short term file box. If we don't use something for a while our brain puts it into the long term box. Which is usually buried under something else. It's still there but it can take a bit longer to find than something in the much more readily accessible short term file box.

I'm not saying practicing a quick stop five times a month is enough. It may or may not be. What I am saying, though, is that the freshest correct memory wins every time.

The same applies to cornering sequence, head turns, being smooth overall, or whatever.

Most casual or recreational riders won't train or practice to the level of an instructor or a motor cop. It would be great if every rider did. Especially if we think of what's at stake if we get something wrong. However, every rider can, and should, make sure each and every still photo is correct for the sequence and that the movie is on fresh film!

Miles and smiles,

Dan

Step 4 Muscle Memory

This is the step we're aiming for when learning something involving physical movements. Which, coincidentally, we're required to do a lot of when riding a motorcycle. We want these physical actions to take a background role as far as the amount of concentration required to perform them. This is true of any of the physical skills involved. What we're really concentrating on, though, are the skills specific to accident avoidance. These include, but are not limited to, braking and swerving. If we want to be a bit more technical about the matter, we could include proper cornering technique and head turns.

In an interesting contradiction you could call this level of performance unconscious competence. We do the right thing without having to think about it on a conscious level. The movements required become automatic reflexes. Another way to look at it is to say they happen on autopilot. We should just automatically do the right thing. I'm sure you get the gist of what I'm trying to put across by now.

I remember Gramps teasing me at the supper table. He'd watch me eat for a while and then give me a big grin. Gramp would remark on one of my autopilot reflexes.

"You know, it's so interesting watching you. Whenever your elbow bends your mouth flies open!"

What he didn't specifically say was that the reason this happened was because I was getting ready to shove another forkful of food that I'd just liberated from my plate into my mouth.

An example from the world of motorcycling is in properly using head turns. Whenever we're preparing to change the direction of our motorcycle our unconscious reaction should be to automatically point our nose at the new target. Whenever we're faced with the need to apply maximum braking our autopilot response should be to apply both brakes smoothly with the proper modulation of front and rear brake. Believe me, this isn't the normal reaction. We have to work to get there.



So how does this happen? We talk about building the mind-muscle connection. We give it the fancy name of Muscle Memory. How many times have we heard that term? What does it really mean to develop muscle memory? How does it happen? What does it do for us?

Muscles themselves have no actual memory. The concepts of "brain" and "brawn" are always used to convey separate images. We talk about people blessed with one or the other. If we're really lucky we're blessed with both. Once upon a time I was one of those lucky ones. These days I look like a blocky desktop computer. Not much to look at but the processor and memory still work. Either way, you never hear somebody being referred to as having "brainy brawn". Which is a long ways to come back to saying that our muscles themselves have no actual memory.

So what's involved in this muscle memory thing? Think of it as taking a series of still life photographs and turning them into a movie. Individual actions are blended into one smooth movement. The actions are actually stored in our brains. Specifically in the cerebellum. I never even knew I had one of those things in my head before! I may have to explore getting a bigger helmet.

Here's an example from our basic classes. It's the process for upshifting. First we have the students sit on a non-running motorcycle. We break the process down into individual steps. We first practice each step by itself. As we move through the practice we have the students start blending the steps into one smooth series of motions called "upshift".

Here's how it goes. Roll off the throttle. Squeeze the clutch lever. Lift up on the shift lever. Ease out the clutch lever. Roll on the throttle.

Of course, that takes forever. We need to speed it up a little. So now we condense the process into buzz words. Roll. Squeeze. Lift. Ease. Roll. A bit faster but still not the automatic smooth response we're after.

Thus the time spent on the exercise where students actually practice upshifting while riding. For a while it can take nearly the whole length of the range to get into second gear. Pretty soon we start to see the individual steps merge into one smooth and fluid process. That's muscle memory being formed in the cerebellum. It's forming the individual memory of each step into a movie. Each memory is still stored as its own photo but the cerebellum creates the pathways that link the steps into one process.

Thus we get a couple of valuable clues on how to properly form these movies. Firstly, each individual step needs to be firmly and correctly imprinted into its storage space. Secondly, the making of the movie requires a lot of repetitions. The more we correctly repeat the drill the stronger the pathways linking the individual steps become. The goal is to create a near automatic playback of the stored memory of the required movements.

I've written this before but it's really appropriate for this discussion.

Amateurs practice until they get it right. Professionals practice until they can't get it wrong.

Did you get the idea that a LOT of practice is required? There's another saying that practice makes perfect. What should really be expressed is that PERFECT practice makes perfect. This is another value of professional training. Most training sessions don't allow enough time to perfect each skill. What the sessions do accomplish, however, is to show the student what each skill SHOULD look like. This provides the mental picture of the finished product. It's our target, if you will.

I think one of the reasons riders hold back from more intense skill practice is that it can be slightly intimidating. Thinking of the whole process involved in maximum braking, for example, can be overwhelming. When there's a number of different movements involved it can also be hard to self evaluate where the process is good and where it can use some help.



Knowing that the longest journey begins with the first step ( don't know why I'm spouting sayings today but there it is ) why not just take a step? We also now know that our brains still store the individual steps and links these together. Our brain doesn't store "upshift". It stores ROLL-SQUEEZE-LIFT-EASE-ROLL. Why not take advantage of that process and separate our practice into individual steps?

Here's how it can work. Pick a day that we're riding. To work, for work, for recreation, whatever. For that day focus on smooth braking. Just that step. It's simple and effective. It's easy to get feedback on how our brake application is because that's all we're working on. Smooth or not? Simple. Work on cementing the single photo of smooth braking. One correct memory stored.

Pick another ride and concentrate on putting your knees against the gas tank ( or fake plastic thingy up there ). Take the next ride and concentrate on the fine feel possible on the rear brake lever by using the smaller muscles of the lower leg and foot. The next ride can be dedicated to keeping our eyes up and looking well ahead while braking. After that concentrate on a progressive squeeze of the front brake lever.



This may all sound over simplified but it's exactly what our brains need. Remember that the overall movement is a movie made up of individual photos. The key is to make sure that each photo is correct for the movie theme. Once that's accomplished we then work on the whole. Ultimately it's going to require practicing the whole sequence together many times to establish the pathways. You'll find it much more effective and less intimidating having practiced each step individually.

Our goal is actually two-fold. Yes, we want the right movements to automatically be there, as it were, when needed. That's a very valuable component, to be sure. There's an even more compelling reason to get to this point. It's something we've probably thought about but never really delved into. That's the subject for an upcoming post.

Here's a hint: Action is always better than reaction.

Miles and smiles,

Dan