By: James R. Davis

Article courtesy of TSB


Fear can kill you - it leads to riders freezing at their controls in an emergency and taking no corrective action whatever. It leads to doubts that are self-fulfilling. "I can't make that turn!" Finally, it leads to dangerous reactions such as 'grabbing a handful of brake lever' instead of doing a CONTROLLED panic stop.

But we, ALL OF US, were afraid to begin with. How to get over it should be the question you answer because by observation you know that virtually all of us did just that.

My suggestions are simple:


Convert fear into respect. Understand and acknowledge that the sport is dangerous and that what you must do to survive it is UNDERSTAND everything you can about it. Ignorance is the cause of a great deal of fear.

Make sure that the motorcycle is ALWAYS mechanically sound. Your life depends on just two wheels, it only makes sense to insure that they are well maintained.

Practice and then practice some more. Practice in all kinds of environments, not just a parking lot. Practice in the rain. Practice on gravel. Practice stopping and starting on a hill. Practice stopping quickly (in a parking lot!) Practice going fast (speed limited by law.) Practice going SLOW - this IS important!

Be prepared. You cannot practice enough to have experienced everything - the car that moves into your lane at freeway speeds should be an event that is new to you. The unexpected does happen - often. Sometimes, unfortunately, things break - even if properly maintained. In other words, you should assume that sooner or later you will find yourself getting off your motorcycle unintentionally (it falls over in a parking lot with ten of your friends watching you.) You should be dressed to not only survive that experience, but so that you will be uninjured or minimally affected by that dismount. (Can you say 'helmet', 'gloves', 'leather'?)

Now, to go back ... your objective should be to convert fear into respect. I do not mean respect merely of the dangers or of your motorcycle - those are the least of it. You need to develop a respect of YOURSELF - an absolute regard for your ability to CONTROL the motorcycle at all times. An immense pride in YOUR ability to make it - that is, that 100 horsepower machine - do exactly what YOU want it to do.

When that happens, you have won.

It is not for no reason that we ride our motorcycles with grins on our faces.

 

Good read!

 

Definately a good read. A friend of mine said a few things that stuck with me which are in this article, probably has saved my life already.

 

the book i read pretty much said to use fear as a warning sign. don't let it control you but don't disregard it either.

your fear level is always changing as you learn so it will always let you know when your pushing it, no matter how good you get....


even moto gp guys have fears but they use theres to help them, not hurt them like most of us do.

 

What about all those t-shirts and stickers in people's car windows? They can't be wrong, can they?!

 

their fear is not winning, cause thats 2 less ladies at the end of the night.

i forgot which mag i was reading i want to say it was roadracing world... but they put a heart monitor on all the moto gp riders and the average was 115bpm, but valentino was 74bpm through out the whole race. max biaggi's hit 150 right before he crashed out. the goal is to relax but how is the trick?

 

track days so you are confortable at speed and trust what your taught.

AT JENNINGS when you first get worried about entering a corner too fast you just have to trust the teaching you have, LOOK THROUGH THE CORNER!!!... if you come in a LITTLE (nothing is going to save you if your riding completely out of control) hot dont panic...pin your head on the shoulder your in the direction your going (EX:going left: chin on left shoulder) roll off the gas you'll scrub off some speed and make the corner 90% of the time maybe not on the best line...running wide is ok (not off the track)until you get confidence to run it in that fast knowing its going to stick then you realize you can go faster.

turn 8 at jennings takes out more riders then any other (including me) if you can feel confortable going fast around turn 8 the rest are a breeze...and makes patterson road feel like a walk in the park........