MSF or self-learn riding

[beginner]

beginner. Check your pms.
(Curious, I notice you didn't quote/respond to MY post).

I've seen your PM. Better to make your points here. I respond when there is something I want to say about a point.

have you considered maybe you're just not a good motorcyclist?

I'm more skilled than some, less skilled than others.

I mean your basically saying "If I practice this much and I STILL can't ride safely then NONE of you can possibly be any more proficient since you don't practice like I do". That just doesn't seem to make sense.

I didn't say safely or unsafely. I compared my riding in an emergency to driving my car. You can ask yourself the same thing about your own abilities and decide for yourself. I figure my motor/balance aptitude is about average. I spent years bareback crosscountry riding and inline roadskating so I don't think I'm timid. I'm impressed by how much work it's taken to get to my present skill level. I'm glad I split my first 300 hours 50-50 between PLP and riding around.

[RhadamYgg]

beginner. Check your pms.
(Curious, I notice you didn't quote/respond to MY post).

I've seen your PM. Better to make your points here. I respond when there is something I want to say about a point.

have you considered maybe you're just not a good motorcyclist?

I'm more skilled than some, less skilled than others.

I mean your basically saying "If I practice this much and I STILL can't ride safely then NONE of you can possibly be any more proficient since you don't practice like I do". That just doesn't seem to make sense.

I didn't say safely or unsafely. I compared my riding in an emergency to driving my car. You can ask yourself the same thing about your own abilities and decide for yourself. I figure my motor/balance aptitude is about average. I spent years bareback crosscountry riding and inline roadskating so I don't think I'm timid. I'm impressed by how much work it's taken to get to my present skill level. I'm glad I split my first 300 hours 50-50 between PLP and riding around.

Honestly, I increased my following distance to the car in front of me and the things I do in a car I never do on a bike... That little panicky slow down in heavy traffic - don't happen when I ride.

Of course, I see loads of bikers riding their bikes like they drive their cars - right up the "O Ring" of the car in front of them... And I see the articles on news.google.com about bikers unable to stop in time for a traffic slow-down in front of them.

RhadamYgg

[beginner]

Most documentation that I've seen in the MSF proposes that people be 'lifelong learners' - including books like the Proficient Motorcycling book and I believe the Motorcycling Excellence book.

MSF defines "life-long learner" as taking more courses. That ducks the issue of whether onging drills and exercises are advisable. The human motor/balance system only learns by direct experience. To be talented it needs lots of repetitions spaced close together in time and the lessons have to be renewed frequently.

If your point is leaning towards that MSF honeycoating the dangers of motorcycling or the capabilities it requires... I actually think you are right.

The honeycoating is avoiding the ongoing practice issue.

But I also think you are putting wayyyy too much effort in to motorcycling. I didn't hit the roads until I was comfortable with doing it.

The lesson I learned from so many drills and exercises is that there is a huge gap between "comfortable" and proficient. The PLP is not a chore, I enjoy it a lot.

Now, specifically you talk about doing figure 8's and that this take a lot of effort - and you know in the MSF course I had trouble with it, without a doubt. How much I think figure-8's will save my life on the road is another story.

Figure 8 is the grand daddy of turning exercises. It improves overall balance skill on the bike. You have to continuously adjust steerning, body weight, and power to make a clean pattern. I did figure 8s every day, day after day, in long sessions and they continuously improved all summer. It was worth every minute spent on them.

Making a U-turn? I don't make many in real life - and the turns I make in store parking lots are no where near as tight as U-turns. Now, U-turns are nice for teaching you about what you can get your bike to do. But it isn't what I would consider a lifesaving skill.

Uturns are more than a convenient slow speed maneuver. Doing a snappy 18' diameter Uturn in second gear is different from the same diameter circle. They are both foundation exercises that improve balance and general turning skills. Through the summer I'm sure I did some thousands of Uturn repetitions and they are still improving.

[totalmotorcycle]

I believe in the MSF training for new riders and believe it does help them. We have a guide for the past 8 years: Total Motorcycle Beginners Guide to Motorcycling: http://www.totalmotorcycle.com/school.htm and new riders have referred to that over a million times. It also has a section on self learning in there if you can't get to a MSF course. But a MSF course is preferred and plus after you take the MSF course you can also do the self-learning part as well. The MSF course is about instilling confidence, balance, safety and active thinking while riding. Which are some of the basic foundations of being a great rider.

Initial training aside, I agree that all riders should put in a little practice each year to brush up on any rusty skills, more so for those of us who winter store our motorcycles and get back on in X months later. Of course we all get practice when we ride and improve our riding skills constantly while riding as we are faced with changing conditions of other drivers on the road. But a little practice never hurts.

I don't like riding in/on loose deep gravel, but I do spend a few hours doing that each riding season just to get a little better at it each time.

Mike

[beginner]

I believe in the MSF training for new riders and believe it does help them.

Training is valuable, practice is a necessity if safety is a consideration. A golf lesson from Tiger Woods doesn't qualify anyone to play in the PGA. A couple days on the golf range or motorcycle range only teaches some of the useful techinques and things to be careful about. It takes thousands of repetitions to be skilled at golf or motorcycle maneuvers. It took 40 hours of PLP before this lesson was obvious to me.

We have a guide for the past 8 years: Total Motorcycle Beginners Guide to Motorcycling: http://www.totalmotorcycle.com/school.htm and new riders have referred to that over a million times.

What I would include in that guide is to spend 50% of riding time doing drills and exercises until the rider is certain he can maneuver his bike in a panic situation as well as his car. Even that might be just a starting point. I'm not there yet.

Initial training aside, I agree that all riders should put in a little practice each year to brush up on any rusty skills, more so for those of us who winter store our motorcycles and get back on in X months later.

Instead of a little practice each year I would advise practice every day of riding. On the first ride of the day I need 15 minutes of warmup before I'm as smooth on the bike as the day before. I do that in a parking lot instead of riding cold on the street. My bike is parked for most of the winter. It's going to be interesting to see how much PLP time it will take to bring me back to the skills I had last fall.

Of course we all get practice when we ride and improve our riding skills constantly while riding as we are faced with changing conditions of other drivers on the road. But a little practice never hurts.

Riding around does not practice emergency maneuvering skills. Those have to be practiced continuously or they become unreliable.

[storysunfolding]

Beginner,

I don't understand your fanatical attitude in this thread. Your post is titled "MSF or self learning?" yet you state that you find training valuable. You've found some statistics that back up your claim while ignoring others. I'm confused. Here's how I see the issue.

Rider Training has significant inherent value. Self learners will take much longer to get to the same level of proficiency while developing bad habits and failing to understanding key principles. While there is no study that takes a global view on Rider Training in regard to motorcycle crashes, there is currently a bid in place for someone to undertake that challenge.

Here are some statistics from Virginia
-1 in 11 riders takes a motorcycle safety course (not limited to MSF)
-126 riders died in 2007, none had taken a motorcycle safety course.

Now what should I make of that?

Step back a second and look at your experience building. In my area my average speed while riding is 50.3 mph. My GPS calculates it everytime I ride and this includes time at a stop. What are you doing that increases your experience at these speeds? In traffic? With decreasing radius turns? Pot holes and couches in the road (remember a couch is a BIG obstacle and I'm in the DC metro area, give a guy 3 second following distance then someone merges in front of you)? How are your sharp downs on downslopes? What regular drills and exercises do you have for these?

Lets look at another one of your assertions that you can't gain experience just riding around. I'm guaranteed 10-20 swerves in a ride, and at least two quick stops a day from speeds up to 80 mph. Sure I practice a few times a month, but mainly to reorient myself to different motorcycles such as the sidecar which pulls left under hard stops. The parking lot pales in comparison to real world experience.

Your point is " That a significant percentage of crashes are from lack of skills that require regular drills and exercises to maintain no matter how "experienced" the rider is. "

Give me the statistics, tell me where you found them- or stop zealously championing an unprovable point.

[totalmotorcycle]

Beginner, why don't you point form what your Pro's and Con's are. I think we have a good idea of what you are trying to get across, but putting it to list will help others out who read this thread.

Q. Did you take an MSF course? If you did, did you come out of it feeling that the instruction wasn't adaquate or you felt you didn't have confidence in your skills?

I don't want to pick apart your statements as I feel they are not wrong exactly, but misguided by inexperience. I'm definately a "safe rider" advisor, in fact, I setup Total Motorcycle to be an information and education website to help motorcyclists worldwide.

Reading more indepth of your posts I read/see what new riders go through, it's uncertainty of your own skills. Usually, this is taken care of after the MSF course is passed, sometimes it takes longer to build up that important foundation of confidence.

Practice is important, the more practice you have riding a motorcycle, the easier it gets in basic riding. If you want to ride in MotoGP, you'll need more skills than the MSF course will teach you. That's why they have Advanced MSF courses for experienced riders. "Experienced rider" is one who has "mastered" the basics of riding a motorcycle in normal road conditions over the years, who has learned from their mistakes, encounted "oh snap!" emergency conditions and feels confident on the bike to ride in the rain or down a gravel road or go on a motorcycle trip.

A brand new rider like yourself isn't an experienced rider (yet), and the world is unknown place, you never know what you'll encounter around that bend, if you'll stop in just the nick of time or what you'll do in that second you hit a patch of gravel on a corner. But you'll learn, like we did, trial and error. Sometimes you'll drop your bike (been there many times myself!), sometimes you get the cold sweats (yup that too), sometimes you'll surprise yourself and you will react faster than your brain does!

That's what good riding is about, not thinking, just acting. Reactions are faster than thinking "ok, what do I do when...". That's how riders gain experience out of the parking lot and become better riders. We build up a learning curve, each new lession we learn is built upon something we learned in the past. That's why I suggest starting on a SMALL cc motorcycle as you'll learn faster than starting on a BIG cc bike. Why? It's all about confidence at the start. Your skill curve will grow faster when your confident (but not over confident!).

Read the Total Motorcycle Beginners Guide to Motorcycling: http://www.totalmotorcycle.com/school.htm
I wrote it for new riders, like yourself, and you'll see that there are a lot of practicing lessions to do that boost your skills and confidence up.

Remember you can practice as much as you want a skill, and yes, you'll master it eventually, but like school grades, you do the best you can, you might not master it all, but you move on to learn new things.

Mike

P.S. I ride a motorcycle better and more confidently than I drive a car; and I'm not a bad car driver at all (no accidents, no tickets).

[storysunfolding]

On the first ride of the day I need 15 minutes of warmup before I'm as smooth on the bike as the day before.

To me this just screams the fact that you aren't as proficient on a bike as you claim. Not only can I ride a bike cold as smooth as the day before, I can do the same on a different bike.

I don't mean to sound harsh but you may want to consider if riding is really for you. It sounds like you're afraid of the bike, and that fear will get you killed. Tense up in the wrong spot, have your outside arm fight your turn arm and that's all she wrote.

Maybe you should consider dirt bikes, or if you're serious about improving your skills try trials riding. No cars, pressure or fear of panicking.

[Gummiente]

P.S. I ride a motorcycle better and more confidently than I drive a car; and I'm not a bad car driver at all (no accidents, no tickets).

After 26 consecutive years of riding, I actually feel safer on my bikes than I do in my truck.

[totalmotorcycle]

I'd like to add Beginner, that please take all advice given here to you as well intentioned advice. It's all meant to be helpful to you so you can learn from it and use it as you like.

We are all friendly here and just want to share our experiences with you, what we have learned (sometimes the hard way) along the path of becoming better riders. Really, who knows if we got it 100% right, but we did get it right in the end and are "good" riders today.

Even with 16+ years of riding experience myself I highly doubt my skills are good enough to win a MotoGP, but then again, I could try.

Hey, I'm not bad at swinging a golf club too, but I bet Tiger Woods would have a good laugh.

Mike