Setting the tone for 2020: It is all about enhancing your skills

The picture speaks a thousand words. Tim took this picture right before the class started. Any rider that sees this picture can actually guess the weather this time of the year: in the 70’s, sunny and a great day to ride!

This is exactly what Artem, David, Devin, Gilberto, JC, Julian, Martin and Neil experienced on Saturday, January 18. The day could not have been better to learn and enhance your skills without humidity and heat. Many of them have been riding for years but lacked advanced training past their initial motorcycle endorsement class.

Lots of the techniques required for effective and safe motorcycle riding can be perceived as counter intuitive, the reason many students struggle at the beginning. However, practice might or might not make perfection but it sure does enhance your skills.

The Slow Cone Weave is the simplest of exercises in the class and it allows us to assess rider skills:

• Use of friction zone
• Ability to perform full lock turns
• Level of fear to lean the motorcycle
• Proper braking technique for maneuvers (rear brake feathering)
• Head/eye coordination (the motorcycle goes where you are looking!)

As the class progresses throughout the day, you can see how rider skills and confidence increase after 3-4 hours of twisting and turning on their motorcycles.

One of the biggest rewards for us as instructors is to see our students excel in these exercises, knowing that they are going back out to the mean streets of South Florida with skills that can get them out of trouble and avoid injury.

Remember, these skills are perishable. If you don’t practice them you will lose them. Try to practice at least once a month and as a recommendation, take the class at least twice per year, not because you have to learn something new but because we can easily assess if you are using the proper technique and to continue to polish up your motorcycle skills even further.