Riders often say that in order to get better they just need to gain confidence. Sometimes they say that they just have to make themselves go faster or brake later.

Do you just decide to get more confident or does the confidence build in other ways? How do you gain confidence when riding?

 

Repetition.

The more one does something, the more convenient one gets. Confidence has a natural way of moving the limit line...

 

You can’t just feel better about things and go and ride rings round Rossi lol. Going faster and braking later won’t make you any more a better rider than one who goes slower and brakes when he needs to.
Confidence grown is more sustainable than confidence gained. ( hope you understand what I’m trying to say lol.
Confidence will come naturally in the end and if you try and push , to see if it ends in a happy place with a “new confidence “ it will probably end a little while later in a not so happy place called casualty.
Confidence?
It all comes naturally with experience. Just wait for it.

 

+1 On both the above answers.

I think the key is both repetition and riding within your limits and as you repeat the action, whatever that limit may be, will slowly increase.

Try too hard you'll end up going backwards, loosing confidence, developing bad habits and getting frustrated. Creating a vicious circle of decreasing enjoyment/ability.

I just realised how similar it is to learning to play a musical instrument.

The principal is to learn to play something very slowly, but perfectly. As you become accustomed to playing the piece you slowly build speed while still making no mistakes.

If you rush the process, you will make mistakes and instead of learning to play perfectly and quickly you just learn to play **** very quickly. Not good

 

So simply just riding and gaining seat time will make you a more confident rider or do you have to put some attention on practicing certain things over and over and building up your skills? Some people say "seat time" makes one a better more confident rider but it is as simple as that or does it require more effort/thought?

 

I think so. Just spending a lot of time in the seat getting miles under your belt will make things become second nature and increase confidence. However, it's a double edged sword. If bad technique becomes second nature, it becomes difficult to relearn, needing a lot of repeated conscious effort to correct.

Having no habits is better than having bad habits...

 

Awesome points. Bad habits are really really hard to break so ensuring that you get the right technique and skills right away is really important. Front there I tend to believe that repetition or set time alone isn't really enough to solidify those good habits. I think that when you ride you need to intentionally put a little bit of effort and though into what you want to improve. For example, on a ride you may set out to improve your throttle control. With focus and attention on getting better at something you are more likely to improve then if you just automatically go out and try to improve with repetition alone.

So, when people talk about going into a corner faster, they often say, Just man up and go in deeper....but do you really think that just telling yourself to man up and go in deeper and faster will work? Or would working on specific riding skills that help or enable you to enter a corner faster be a better option? What might that look like?

 

Time in the saddle is good, but how do you know if you’re not embedding bad riding habits. IMO were all guilty of riding complacency, we tend to think we’re better riders than we actually are.

How many of us take time to find an empty road and practice an emergency stop, find an empty car park and practice slow speed control?

Most of us only decide to take additional training after an incident or spill.

 

Now you're talking about building on skills and improving technique. You can't just want to corner faster and end up going faster. That disaster waiting to happen. If you want to go faster you got to analyze why you're not fast, correct the action, then consciously put new actions in and repeat until it becomes comfortable and natural. I think tweaking skills one at a time is a good approach, but you got to tweak each skill equally and together. For example: You can practice (or teach in your case) body position until your Marc f***n Marquez out there, but if you haven't worked on the other things like throttle control, trail braking, and the path through the corner, there won't be any speed gained. Now work on body position a little, then throttle control a little, then braking, etc., go back to the next step of body position, a little more throttle control, more brake control, change the line a bit... now you got something. Repetition builds confidence, especially if your repeating good skills and habits.

Even the best riders in the world are always tweaking their near perfect skills to find more speed even as the track, bike, and conditions change. Isn't that why the have multiple pre-race practices and endless test days? Dial it in and repeat for the most important 20+ laps. I don't know if you saw it the weekend, but MM93 looked pretty confident running all alone in Texas.

 

Exactly.

That is why I really like to recommend a good quality riding school first BEFORE people hit the track or street so they can be sure that they are not embedding bad riding habits (which are hard to break). Starting off with good solid fundamentals is key, that way when you practice, you can be sure you are practicing correct technique and getting better.

Good points as well about taking time to go to an empty parking lot or safe place to practice emergency braking, or slow speed maneuvers. But again, you want to make sure you have the correct technique handled before you go and practice something over and over incorrectly.

Take emergency braking for example. How many times have I seen riders stomp on the rear brake and skid/slide to a stop and think that they are correctly executing the technique? How do you know for sure you are doing something right before heading out to practice?