We all love it, but do we know why? Guide us "Oh Enlightened One..." I've been asked by countless people over the years why I do what I do. I mean, why even ride in the first place? Have you ever stopped to consider why it is you enjoy riding?

The fact is that the answers to this question are as varied as there are individuals on the planet. We all ride for different reasons. We all have different likes and dislikes. In my role with the Superbike School I've come across a number of individuals with a similarly vast number of specific, individual reasons as to why they ride. Interestingly, the riders themselves are often last to know!

There are things you know about you that nobody else knows. There are things about you that you know and everybody else knows. The above doesn't really need to be proven for us to believe it's true, but what if I told you that there are also things about you that everybody else knows that you don't! How would you cope with that?

One of the things we get to deal with is riders hitting mental barriers they don't necessarily understand. They may look at a particular aspect of riding from as many different angles as they can. They may seem to be able to repeat the information. They may be able to observe it in others. They may even be able to perform it to a certain level, but they never really feel comfortable with it and there is something about it that just "doesn't feel right."

As trainers, our role is not to teach you anything. Our role is not to get you to repeat a riding skill. Our role is simply to help you arrive at a new awareness of what is going on when riding the motorcycle. Once you have that awareness, then you can make the changes needed to have what you are doing now match what you instinctively knew was the right thing anyway. If you didn't instinctively "know" what was right, how would you "know" that you weren't doing it? Let me guess. You didn't feel comfortable, right?
Maybe you felt yourself "lock-up" on the motorcycle. Maybe you keep rolling off the throttle at the wrong time and even though you know its not right, you just can't stop doing it. Either way, you "know" what's right and what's wrong. Our job is to help you recognise the cause of it and fix it.

When I first started racing, all I wanted to do was win. I was prepared to do anything it took. Broken body parts were less of a concern than going fast. This is definitely the case for successful race riders. Why do they have to win? I dare say their reasons for riding are very different than a "born again" biker that comes back to the sport after a 20-year absence.

I'm sure that broken bones and falling down are not exactly high on the "Born again" rider's agenda! I dare say that a "Born again" is not even likely to want to compete, they are going to just enjoy the freedom of riding that they have missed while being good boys and girls.

Every now and then we get a "Born again" rider that complains they can't do something as well as the focussed racer. When that happens I kinda look at them a little sideways with a smirk that I've become semi-famous for and wonder if it's the right time to help them see the picture others have of them that they have obviously not seen themselves. Not sure why you ride? Not sure why you can or can't perform particular actions of riding as well as others? Ask someone around you that you can trust and you might just surprise yourself!