In today’s age of Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat everyone videos everything. It is especially important to video drills when you are learning, not only for social media posts but as it might help your riding too!
When we started off-track training on a motorcycle I was advised early on to video the drills. It allows review of the drill so you can analyse it in detail, really focussing on technique. Crashes were poured over frame by frame– what happened? “No idea – there was gravel on the ground”,” the tires were dirty”, or perhaps - as the video really showed – the footpeg dug in the ground lifting the rear wheel off the ground as the bike was leaned over too far and it slid out; or both bum cheeks were hanging off the bike unweighting the rear of the bike which just let go and catapulted you off. The video doesn’t lie, it just records what it sees.
Sometimes kids (and adults) don’t like other people telling them what they are doing wrong.
“No I didn’t do that”, “Dad, you don’t know what you are talking about!”, “the throttle was constant”. So I would video 10 laps of the drills and then together we would review the video on the phone then and there - in the car park; Dad and son reflecting back on what the coach had told us was good or not good. We would identify the next thing to work on – off again videoing another 10 laps of the drill. We would even use the video to time 10 laps and figure out if we were getting faster at the drills.
The review break gave us both a time to reflect, regroup and refocus. It wasn’t “Dad the Coach”, but Dad and Son together remembering the coaching points that we were previously given. It was a collaborative approach, “What do see happening?” ,”remember Coach telling us to keep the weight on the front of the bike, lets try moving the head further forward a bit and see how that works”.
When we couldn’t figure out what was wrong or if we wanted to progress we would send videos to our coach for analysis, or as a check in in progress.
We still video our drills: a few of the crashes and a few of the good slides get posted, but they pretty much all get reviewed to see how we can improve.
We watch other people’s drills videos too – figure out what they are doing well and how they could be better – not to gloat but to see what works and what doesn’t.
I love looking at race photos or video
to see how the training is put into real life racing, when the heart is pounding and your body relies on its learned state, with muscle memory kicking in. It makes all the hours in the car park worthwhile.
So Video, review, repeat!
Check out Torin’s progress on IG @torincollinsracing & FB torincollinsracing and www.torincollinsracing.com