Getting the right training for struggling new riders

Picture this…

• You’re a late 30-something female… passed the test on a 125 in 1995.
• You rode a 125, then a 250 for a couple of years, and were then involved as pillion in an accident with a U-turning driver in France, which resulted in a leg injury and a hospital stay.
• A year on and you have to give up biking – everyone is out to get you.
• 10 years on, you finally pluck up courage and buy a ‘99 CBR 600, to find you can’t ride it.
• You spend time and money doing refresher training with a couple of training schools.
• Even after that, you find you can’t ride your bike.
• Six months down the line, your confidence shot, you post a plea for help on an internet forum, just someone to ride with and help as a last resort before you sell the bike and give up biking.

At which point I spot the thread on www.kentandsussexbikers.com.

There are several well-intentioned “come for a ride with us and we’ll look after you” posts, but as she isn’t far away, I suggest a short ride, with radios, so I can look over her riding. She jumps at the chance and we meet up the next evening.

Before we even get onto the bikes, she mentions that one of the big problems is that she finds it very difficult to operate the clutch. It is something I’m planning to look at in any case, but I take the invitation. I see she’s tried to do something about the problem – she’s gone to the trouble of fitting a rather trick dogleg clutch lever, but the essential problem remains; with small hands, she simply can’t reach the lever to operate the clutch cleanly.

Why? There’s no free play. I spin the cable adjuster round, and wind in some slack and invite her to try. With a couple of cm’s free movement at the end of the lever, we check that mod works when she starts the bike up. Suddenly she finds she has more control over a slipping clutch.

Just before we set off, she reminds me: “I can’t do right turns and I’m really slow” she said. “OK”, I thought to myself, “we’ll start with some easy left turns, an open road and see what you CAN do.”

Off we go. The first thing I notice is that even though we’re stopped and tucked into a quiet corner of a petrol station, her foot goes straight up onto the rear brake. Once the motor is running and in gear, because the clutch isn’t biting quite where she expects, she hops along few paces like a one legged bird to maintain balance.

Hmmm. Memo to self – remember that for the debrief.

Once we get to the exit, she manages the pull-away (left!) reasonably well, given the clutch wasn’t biting where she expected it. Out through the town and off down a nice road towards Rye. She negotiates the junction quite cleanly if a little bit hurriedly in the foot and handwork department as she decelerates and turns, then surprises me with a fair turn of speed out on the open road; on one or two bends she knows she’s little quicker than me, but on the awkward downhill bends she doesn’t know so well, I have to click the radio on and suggest using the rear brake to control the speed and to keep hands off the front.

We arrive at Rye, with me reasonably happy with what I’ve seen so far, and set off on a lap of the town, which involves two right turns at mini-roundabouts and another couple where bits of the one way system merge. She runs very wide on each and is clearly tense. “Ah yes… I see what you mean.” Her take-offs from a standing start are also awkward and unbalanced; she’s keeping her left foot rigidly on the peg at all times.

So we stop and have a chat. First of all, I ask her about the ‘Safety Position’. “You mean, when you keep your foot on the brake at all times? I try to make myself do that.” Uh, right, thought so. That’s been drummed in so hard on basic training – and on her refreshers it turns out -that it’s seen as a ‘RULE’ and more important that balance and sensible control of the machine.

I tell her, to her palpable relief, that she can put both feet down if she wants!

I explain that the ideal use of the rear brake round town is to stop the bike smooth and level after you’ve used both brakes to slow down; but once stopped it’s of limited use except on a hill. We have a further chat about the brakes in general. She’s happy about the use of front and rear brakes, but it seems no-one had mentioned that particular use of the rear brake, nor that it’s a useful brake when going down (as opposed to pulling away on) hills.

Second, I explain that moving all the decision-making about brakes and gears can be moved back 10 or 15 metres giving her the chance to get the bike balanced in plenty of time and freeing up her concentration away from the controls, so that when she arrives at a junction or a bend, all she has to do is negotiate it. That makes sense to her.

Third, I suggest if she’s having trouble with right turns, angling a pull-away from a side turning slightly towards the direction you want to go will help – there’s no need to stop at 90 degrees to the white line.

Then I mention counterweighting. Blank look. I remember she did her test on a 125, and we didn’t talk about that much back then. But what about on her refresher training; “did you practice tight turns?”. It appears so but with no mention of counterweighting, and she had lots of problems with them.

I’m not surprised if they didn’t mention or use counterweighting.

Given that we’re just out on a ride, and not doing my course, we’re not near a handy carpark, but I briefly explain the theory and make the best use of a wide factory entrance to demonstrate.

Anyway, I then suggest we try that on another lap of Rye, as she’s now got enough new stuff to think about; feet, rear brake, getting the gears/brakes sorted earlier, angling stops and counterweighting. Thank heavens for the radio!

Off we go back to the town and she practices the counterweighting on the way in, then with prompting over the radio gets all the gears and braking sorted early so she can concentrate on a bit of counterweighting on the tight corners.

Qualified success. Not perfect but much tidier turns, not running nearly so wide. Not bad for ten minutes discussion and five minutes riding!! We stop briefly and she’s happier.

We leave Rye behind and enjoy one of the roads across Romney Marsh, at which point the only car that caught us up passes us. So not too shabby in the speed department either.

Though her steering has been pretty tidy, I felt there was an underlying hint of nervousness about getting round unknown corners, translating itself into a slightly hesitant approach. Nothing awful, but not very positive at times.

So I mention countersteering. Blank look. This is getting predictable unfortunately. Not her fault at all, she can only repeat what she knows. And clearly she doesn’t know about countersteering.

Again, as we’re at the side of the road, I don’t have my diagrams, models or videos, but I do my best to explain, and although she struggles a bit to follow, she’s prepared to put it on trust and give it a go. I also mention the differences between dropped bars and the flat ones on her training bikes and the need not to lean on them when trying to steer.

The first attempts to use countersteering on the move only elicit a tiny wiggle from the bike, but by careful use of an analogy of sliding a drawer in, she gets the idea and suddenly the bike’s turning faster and zipping across the road. A mile or so down the road and there’s quite a nasty little S bend over a blind crest. She whizzes round and with no problems deals with another sharp bend at the top of a long straight road where there had been a fatal bike accident only days earlier. That had clearly worried her. The little bunch of flowers at the side of the road are mute testimony to a rider who didn’t survive his ride.

A few more awkward bends, including a nasty decreasing radius turn that caught me out years ago are put behind us and we’re almost back at our meeting point. We pull in, doing a “dreaded” right turn nice and smoothly onto the forecourt, and pull up.

Almost her first question is “do you think I should sell the bike?”

I reassure her that she’s ridden quite well, and that her speed is quite OK – she’s not a mobile chicane by an stretch of the imagination. The ride wasn’t perfect, there are faults to sort out, and skills to build, but she’s safe enough and now knows what the worst of her problems are and what to do to fix them.

I point out that “too slow” is relative. Relative to being able to stop in an emergency. Just because some riders are faster, it doesn’t mean they’re making the right choice about speed.

By now it’s 9pm, and getting dark, so we head off in our own directions, she with a big grin on her face, me with an impromptu gift of a chocolate bar!

I ride back, having on the one hand a good feeling about having helped keep an aspiring rider on the road, and on the other I’m having an internal rant about the “training” schools that took her money for “refresher” training and failed to fix her problems.

Neither took her out on her bike, as I understand it.

One of them stuck her out with a bunch of learners, I think on 125s, so I very much suspect that will have been with a CBT-only qualified instructor, and quite obviously his main job would have been to look after the new riders.

But she’d also been on a 500cc school bike, presumably with a DAS-qualified instructor.

And… not to mention counterweighting when she can’t do even moderately tight turns? Appalling.

And countersteering? I know it’s not officially sanctioned by the DSA but it’s a key technique for DAS and a “must know” in my book, particularly when someone is having steering issues. Unbelievable.

I’ve always defended CBT/DAS instructors when the argument has cropped up about who is best qualified to fix what are actually fundamental and basic riding faults in riders with a full licence – some advanced instructors certainly aren’t!

But I have to say this experience has left me wondering about the quality of training from the local schools. It quite clearly failed this particular rider badly. It’s likely the school simply making a fast buck by bunging her on a part-filled 125 course, but the wider question is whether the instructors were up to the job. It doesn’t look like it. And if not, why not?

None of the faults were obscure – they would be something a DAS instructor would see virtually every course – and a hangover from learning on a 125.

Rather more worryingly, both schools are offereing instructor training. Are they simply churning out clones of their existing instructors?

And the really scary thing? DAS instructors from these schools will no doubt use their DAS card to get onto the advanced instructors register (RPMT) at some point, probably persuaded to do so by the school itself so they can offer advanced training. So much for the DSA’s claims of quality control.

The worst of all possible worlds.