Look where you want to go, go where you look?

[The Spin Doctor]

We had a pupil recently who when he first started doing loops on the training pad managed a left hand circuit no problem gently in 1st gear on a little GN125 Suzuki and appeared to have listened to the "look where you want to go" input as he was tuning his head, look left steer left ....all good
A66-BCFA-7-C977209-A3-F2.jpg[/img][/url]

All was going well till i put him onto right circuits which involve turning towards a building and sure enough he would ride straight at the building while turning his head right ....... took a couple of goes till i stood right in front of him as he turned, head went round to the right but then saw his eyes go left as far as they could to lock on the building ... and again he rode straight at the building

It was solved by me standing a little way past the end of the right turn and shouting "LOOK!!!" which would draw his eyeline away from the building. 2 or 3 times doing this and all good and onto the next thing. Its such a simple thing yet can be very difficult for people to get their heads round (so to speak) but can make such a difference to their riding

Even now when doing Fig 8s on advanced courses with a rider who's struggling with them, I run back and forth positioning myself 90 degrees from the direction the bike is pointed and keep shouting "look at me". I learned that a few weeks into my CBT instructor days.

Even riders who advanced riding gongs galore can still find it really difficult to decouple their eyes from the direction that the front wheel is pointing. It doesn't just manifest itself on slow turns, but on all sorts of riding from city centre stuff to twisty rural roads.

For me, the need to be able to do just that became apparent very quickly in London traffic!