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| #111  25-May-2006, 00:08 | |||
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| #112 25-May-2006, 00:41 | ||||
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| what about body positioning? Looking at TP and others who have attended, great style but I and others arent built for style  for me, it seems a lot of dosh to learn brake markers, looking thru the corner etc when I can learn that from a book or following the likes of skids or psychlist on the road/track like most things, practising the right drills will help - and unless you do loads of track time events after CSS tuition I dont see how you will stop going back to bad habits...you are certainly NOT going to break them in a couple of days spread out over a few months |
| #113 25-May-2006, 01:30 | ||||
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| I need some training Potty training  I'm just happy to be out there having a go though. Suppose I should be taking it more seriously really but I'm having to much fun to let it get serious and spoil it for me. Thing with improving at bike racing/riding compared to other sports is fear and pain. You can only go as fast as your own fear will let you. when you go to fast you get pain. Bit different to golf or tennis. Played golf for years then went to a coach and after three months was playing a different game entirely. Badminton weired or what. OMHO but coaching in any sport is essential if you want to move forward breakdown your own barriers and succeed. This coaching has to be a long term program to work effectively. I am convinced that anyone who did a full coarse with CSS would be a faster rider as a result which is the idea, coaching works for everyone. I'm sure someone will tell me otherwise but if so why has every top level sports man or woman got one? Not only one but several. physiological, dietician, fitness or fatness, riding? sod it I think I might go and do lodes of it and **** the lot of yu  [Edited on 25-5-2006 by ericthered40] |
| #114 25-May-2006, 08:43 | ||||
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| #117 25-May-2006, 13:13 | ||||
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| Oooooh dear, I can feel an essay coming on. I've spent the last 15 years of my professional life involved in workforce development and performance improvement. I've literally 'written the book' for my company (a major international corporate) on instructional design and performance methodologies through being the main author and architect of the company's 'Learning and Performance Solutions Lifecycle' - A web page designed as an electronic performance support system that is now used by all of our instructional developers and performance consultants. I've taught hundreds of people how to put high quality instructional packages together. I have presented at intenational performance improvement conferences and I have co-taught instructional design courses with internationally recognised 'gurus' in this field such as Dr Harold Stolovitch. I'm not saying this to be boastful, just to state my claim that I know a bit more than most people about what it takes to put an instructional package together, what skills are required of a coach and what skills are required as a 'subject matter expert'. Because we've all been taught something, by somebody, at sometime in our lives and because we, in turn, have almost certainly taught other people (even if it's teaching your toddler how to hold a knife and fork), one of the issues that I constantly deal with is that everybody thinks they know how to teach and what makes for good instruction. The truth is that people very rarely know how to put good instruction together and the sad truth is that people who are real experts at something very rarely know how to teach it. They will use wooly words such as 'when I've taught them these facts people will understand how to....'. There is so much wrong in that simple sentence. For a start, it's focused upon the teacher, not the learner, it assumes that the facts they've assembled are valid and presented in the correct order and there is an assumption that different people will all arrive at the same level of understanding given the same information. This is frankly a nonsense. What a good instruction package will do is to produce reliable results, consistently, for every person that attends. It can only do this by exhaustive analysis of the tasks involved and the context in which those tasks need to be performed. It can only do this by being learner focused and ensuring that learners can actually DO the things that the instruction set out to accomplish and it can only check that the learner can actually DO those things by having specific 'Student Performance Objectives' and learning checks that the course is written around. I can't emphasise enough that without doing the analysis and breaking the whole thing down task by task into an ordered heirachy task analysis and ensuring that learners can actually DO the things that the course is trying to build on by ensuring that the whole course is built around 'Student Performance Objectives' or SPO. A good SPO contains three important things - the conditions under which a student is expected to perform, the performance that they are expected to demonstrate (which is always stated in terms of a verb - a doing word) and the criterion or performance standard they are required to reach to demonstrate that they can indeed DO what is required. A suitable SPO for the first drill in CSS level 1 might be "Riding a motorcyle around a series of different corners, in one gear and without using their brakes (the condition), the student will demonstrate (performance verb) to the instructor that they can control their entry speed correctly into 100% (criterion) of the corners that they take" That seems fairly simple doesn't it? Well, the sad truth is that very, very, very few people take the time and trouble to go into the construction of instructional content to this level of analytical detail. Most people dive straight into demonstration by a subject matter expert (as in the 'follow an instructor that the learner thinks is better than they are school). This has it's attractions, both to the school and the learner. It's **** easy for the school to do because they invest no time at all in constructing any meaningful instruction and the learner gets fooled into thinking that they're learning. I am really sorry to tell you guys that if you honestly think that you're learning something from simply trying to follow a faster rider you are deluding yourselves. I've got so much heavyweight research into Human Performance at every level to back this statement up that I could take all week justifying this statement, but think on this... By definition you are less able than the faster rider so you may just about be able to follow his lines and you may also develop a sense of false confidence that if he can go round at that speed, so can you. But! Do you know from your position behind him precisely when he brakes? How hard does he brake? How does he modulate his braking? When exactly does he initiate the turn? How quickly does he counteersteer? How much force does he use on the bars? Where is he putting his weight? Which muscle groups is he using to do that and to hold onto the bike? How quickly is he getting on the gas? How is he balancing the amount of throttle he can use with the grip he's got available? When is he picking the bike up? Is he tense or relaxed? How is he reacting to the bike moving around beneath him? Where is he looking (can you see where his eyeballs are pointing from behind him?) What information is he taking in from what he sees? the list goes on... Can you tell all that from your position a few bike lengths back? I couldn't and neither can you...end of story. Even if you had some kind of uncanny telepathic telemetry, how would you (as the less experienced rider) know whether the things your mentor was doing were right or wrong? What aspects of his style are helping him go fast and what aspects are holding him up? Which bits should you copy and which bits should you discard? Do you know? Of course you don't. If you really, really believe that you can learn anything this way then be my guest The good news for CSS fans is that having done levels 1 through to 3, I can tell you that by accident or good design the Code method has got nearer than most to constructing valid course content. Code has done a truly excellent job of analysing the physics of what makes a motorcycle turn and (since the laws of physics are an imutable constant) he's also done an extremely thorough task analysis of what a rider needs to do to make the best of those laws. He's also done a thorough task analysis of the psychology at work and the visual skills required to ride with more confidence and more consistency. All of this builds into being able to ride smoother and faster. The CSS methods are not perfect from an instructional point of view. The bits that are lacking are a true adherence to those 'Student Performance Objectives' that I was talking about (they only typically set out the conditions and what you need to demonstrate - the criteria are missing), the coaches debrief can be somewhat cursory so doesn't really qualify as a learning check. Most of all the CSS methods lack any real 'learner analysis'. One of the key things that any instructional designer has to know is what their student knows already, what they are doing right and what they're doing wrong. Of course, how could they? Learners at CSS can go from people who've just started to ride through to Thomas Luthi and Leon Camier how can one size course fit all. The CSS answer of course is to start everyone from scratch with the attendant frustration for more experienced riders. In the professional world, we accomplish this with a simple pre-test to ascertain the starting point for instruction - maybe the CSS could consider the same thing. I am of course available for consultancy on how to perfect instructional content Oh, and Fil...Why do so many good karate instructors spend hours going over basic building blocks like Oi Zuki and Age Uki with higher grades, and why are you always asked to do Taikyoku Shodan (the very first Kata you learn) at every grading? |
| #118 25-May-2006, 13:18 | ||||
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| Quote:
It wasn't a dig at you just a general comment, I guess it's like anything in life it depends on how you approach it and your attitude towards learning. It won't work for everybody and it won't necessarily result in mind blowing revelations on how to ride better but I doubt that many could honestly say that nothing on the courses would/could help their riding ? As I said, just a general comment, not aimed at anyone. I'd like to do the course but it is pretty full up most of the time, I'd like to unlearn the sidecar lines and get a lot better at solo riding. Before I get deluged with responses saying "yes you fat old git you sure need to" I ALREADY KNOW THAT |
| #119 25-May-2006, 13:25 | ||||
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Paul James
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