The learning process usually begins with un-learning. Whether it’s a natural, inborn reflex or a pattern established through previous practice, we rarely start with a clean slate. Nor can we erase what exists and write new instructions on a blank surface. Instead, we must forcibly overwrite what’s already there—and what’s already there puts up a fight!
In Zen Buddhism, there’s something called “beginner’s mind.” In his book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki says, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” This can be understood in different ways. A defining aspect of expertise is that many incorrect and irrelevant considerations have been pruned in the advanced learning process. Experts can discern what’s happening and what’s needed using a minimum of data points, and their approach to problem-solving is thereby streamlined. By contrast, beginners get confused by too many inputs and stumble down numerous dead-ends. However, experts can also be handicapped by narrowmindedness and rigidly preconceived notions that impede innovation, whereas beginners, unencumbered by orthodoxy, freely explore areas experts might mistakenly dismiss as pointless.
Paradoxically, true expertise requires a beginner’s mind. Avoiding mental myopia means deliberately broadening our perspective to sustain growth and illuminate our blind spots. There’s a perpetual, unresolvable tension between the secure confidence of knowing and the uncomfortable vulnerability of openness, which is necessary to attain and continually refine our knowledge—and sometimes even replace it with a whole new paradigm.
This applies to physical skill acquisition and improvement. We cannot simply install the reflexes and muscle memory of an expert, at least not the expert we want to be. Instead, we’re stuck with the stubbornly entrenched “expert” we already are. This one has drawn its conclusions about what works and doesn’t, and has no interest in alternatives. After all, our inborn reflexes have been proven by eons of evolutionary trial and error. A specific set of bodily sensations automatically coalesces into a certainty we’re falling. Then, with equally involuntary conviction, we execute preset muscular initiatives designed to save us from toppling over. Such certainty and conviction are built into our central nervous system and usually serve us well. They aren’t particularly amenable to conscious control. Reconfiguring such neurologically hardwired connections requires tremendous effort; wearing in a new groove takes lengthy, arduous repetition. Yet wear in a new groove we must! That certainty we’re falling is mistaken when leaning a motorcycle into a curve, and that conviction about how to react will lead to disastrous cornering.
Alongside any attempted rewiring of instinctual assessments and responses, we must also contend with deeply ingrained problematic habits acquired via intentional or unwitting repetition in the past. These tendencies may have been based on legitimate, logical strategies at the outset, but they’re no longer a function of analytic thought and the initial rationale may have been flawed, anyway. Longstanding habits can be about as neurologically hardwired as anything with which we were born. If not, we could change them just by arriving at a new understanding. What we find instead is, even when we’re determined to alter course based on fresh insight, we keep returning to the old ways of “knowing” and doing. If only we could forget everything and start over—utter ignorance would be an asset! It turns out beginner’s mind is incredibly hard to achieve. A motorcyclist may be intellectually convinced by diagrams, explanations and testimonials that strong use of the front brake is safe and most effective in a panic stop on the street, assuming proper technique. But if they’ve spent years avoiding this because of a mistaken belief they’ll flip over the handlebars, their right hand will resist their mind’s command in the moment of truth.
To reacquaint myself with the rewiring process, I spent a couple hours practicing static balance on my dirt bike in the back yard. This is a skill absolutely essential for riding moto-trials, which I haven’t done in many years. It’s also very useful in technical off-road situations on a dirt bike, dual-sport or ADV, and it even transfers to low-speed maneuvers on a street bike, like tight U-turns. The exercise is deceptively simple: just stand on the pegs with the motor off and don’t “dab” (put a foot down to stay upright). The measure of success is how long you can go without dabbing, which you obviously need to do at times. Newbies will manage only a second or two; accomplished riders can last indefinitely. The difference is the extent to which each has rewired their innate perceptions and reflexive reactions. Despite the fact I’d had some past experience with this, I knew my muscle “memory” would now be long forgotten and I fully expected to start virtually from scratch. I had the advantage of knowing what I was supposed to do, but that’s not the same as having muscles that would comply with those mandates. Indeed, mine did not.
Having been taught how to do this by professional instructors, I knew some ways to improve my odds of success. A slight downhill slant helps load the front suspension and lower the bike’s center of gravity, making balancing easier. A divot dug out beneath the front tire increases the size of its contact patch and therefore its leverage in propping up the bike’s weight as the bars get turned inward toward an impending fall. Similarly, the straighter the front wheel, the less its leverage, so practice begins with the bars at almost full-lock (actual full-lock would preclude further movement to the inside when the bike starts tilting that way). And, since I’m working with a mere 30 inches of inseam on a bike with a 37-inch seat height, I positioned thick slices of tree trunk on both sides to reduce the physical exertion of dabbing, as well as my worry about catching a fall too late. (This exercise is worlds easier on a modern trials bike, with its tiny proportions, deeply scooped frame and no seat.) The learning process should be as comfortable and low-stakes as possible to free the mind of distractions and fear.
At first, I had so much difficulty I decided to leave the kickstand down on the left wood round and merely lift it off by getting the bike vertical, a movement of only several degrees I could initiate with both feet already on the pegs. After I could do this consistently and hold it, I put the stand up and used my outside (opposite the front wheel’s direction) quadricep to slowly lift my body as my inside foot left the ground and found its peg—all while maintaining the bike’s balance. Once I could do this with the wheel turned to one side, I worked on doing it with the wheel turned to the other side. And once I could do both, I started over with the wheel turned less to each side. The aim was incremental progress, not direct attainment of the finished product. Next time, I’ll reduce the downhill grade and the divot’s size, and ultimately pause-and-hold while moving. Good instructors know ways to break skills down like this and good students make use of them. If you can’t stomach props, hacks and small-scale objectives, you’ll likely end up frustrated and discouraged to the point of quitting without making any progress at all.
Eventually, I developed the desired reflex: I would, without thinking, nudge the bars in the direction I began to fall, which would right the bike’s position. This was not what my hands originally “wanted” to do. Without my insistence otherwise, they instinctively squeezed the grips more tightly and jerked the bars too vigorously, creating an overcorrection worse than the original problem. With a lighter touch, I began to really feel the handlebars’ leverage against the chassis’s roll, as opposed to just understanding it theoretically; I was gaining experiential evidence—the basis of new conviction. I knew to keep my knees wide to broaden my counterbalancing range, but anxiety would reflexively draw them together. Deliberately defying this automatic reaction gradually replaced the unwanted move with the one I intended: I eventually kept my knees wide and swiveled my hips to the outside of the lean—standard street bike counterbalancing writ large. At the same time, my body English corrections became progressively smaller. I was detecting tilts earlier, so less fix was needed, but I also had to develop a gentler response so as not to overdo it. Then a muscular epiphany occurred. Without conscious intention, I began moving my hips and hands together: hips a bit to the outside paired with turning the bars slightly to the inside. Two actions that had been discreet and separate melded into one coordinated, integrated operation; now it was a single rotational movement to remember and enact.
The bike’s pressure against my leg on its low side (the direction it started to lean) became more salient. Feeling it was reassuring, as though I were holding the bike up with that knee as my other knee jutted away from the bike on the opposite side. I recalled this awareness as extremely helpful in riding trials, but the sensation came first, reminding me of the concept. Generally, however, it was the other way around: ideas were gradually replaced by attention to the associated sensations. Instead of thinking my way through an action, I started feeling my way through it. Muscle memory was under construction—a very satisfying realization! The scaffolding of instructions (from my teachers to me, and from my mind to my muscles) was becoming less necessary as the rewiring firmed up. By the end, I could balance in this contrived arrangement for a full minute.
Along the way, I noticed things that helped and hindered my progress. First, I was struck by the glaring contrast between my struggling and how easy static balancing looks when a skilled rider does it. I had to remind myself that’s because those riders are skilled, not because it’s actually easy; this reduced my self-criticism and allowed more patience. Realistic expectations are extremely important! Next, although the long-range goal was an integrated collection of moves, I had to begin with focusing on isolated, individual elements. Our attentional bandwidth is limited and trying to do everything at once ensures we’ll do nothing right. Making small gains not only yields the most reliable progress, it also boosts confidence and enthusiasm; I was proud and excited about each micro-achievement. The best attitude was curiosity (the openness of beginner’s mind); the worst was applying pressure to perform. The sticky/abrasive surface of my grips irritated my bare hands so I put on gloves, eliminating a distraction. The wood rounds worked like yoga blocks, compensating for a bodily limitation and allowing me to work right at the edge of my own ability. Learning happens most efficiently when we can play comfortably at that frontier, wherever it happens to be.
The leg and back exertion of static balancing is surprisingly intense; I worked up a sweat just standing still. If I kept pushing when I was tired, I did worse and wound up practicing errors instead of what I wanted to learn, so I rested whenever my performance decayed. I waited to advance to the next challenge until I was good enough at the current level to feel bored with my success—not boredom with the tedium of practice, which only propelled me to rush ahead before I was ready. I strove to relax, mentally and physically, trying to notice nuances and react with subtlety and finesse instead of frantic force. Once I could do something specific, I added variations. For instance, when I found a balance point with my weight forward, I worked on maintaining it while moving my body rearward. This expanded and solidified the learning. Likewise, each time I changed my front wheel position, I found I was better at the previous position when I returned to it later. Variations reveal the common thread that underlies all of them, distilling our understanding and reactions to what’s essential. Finally, when I returned to this exercise the next day, I had improved overnight and started in a better place than I’d finished the prior session. Downtime, especially sleep, is a vital part of learning consolidation.
Static balancing is just one example of the rewiring required for riding competence; the principles described here apply to many other skills. We may not be able to forget everything we know, but we can overwrite what’s there. It takes deliberate, focused effort and tons of repetition to wear in a new groove. We can’t expect results from work we haven’t done! Mastery is never fully achieved; there’s always room for improvement and practice is an eternal requirement. Without it, our minds and bodies revert back to older patterns we wish we could forget.
The Ride Inside with Mark Barnes is brought to you by the MOA Foundation. You can join the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America quickly and easily to better take advantage of the Paul B. Grant and Clark Luster training reimbursement programs offered by the Foundation.
