What’s the Point
What does it really matter if you get training? What will you learn that you can’t just teach yourself? There’s always YouTube university. Or your friend could teach you. There are a ton of different ways to learn what you want to learn and getting information isn’t all that hard these days. Just plug in what you want in a Google search and off you go. So what’s the point in taking motorcycle rider training?
This is a personal question with a personal answer. Attending any motorcycle training requires time and money. Those are not easily given away. Especially on a non-tangible such as training. There is generally so much more satisfaction when buying a new helmet (which can cost close to the same as training). The challenge for most people is that skills take time to build. It’s like wanting to lose those ten pounds in the first week back in the gym. You buy new workout clothes, sneakers, a gym membership, and maybe a weight lifting belt. You can spend all the money you want, but your effort and dedication to losing the weight is the only way you will lose the weight. We’ll continue to use the gym as our example. You do the research on the internet for some regiments and diets that fit your weight lose desires. That costs you time. You take what you’ve learned from reading or watching videos to the gym and feel really good about your progress in the first weeks. You might loose a few pounds but then begin to plateau. You then spend more time digging around on the internet for more information and techniques. Possibly falling pray to the “lose weight now” schemes, maybe even spending money on it in the hopes of having some results. The pounds may or may not come off, and it might take you months, and only if you stick with it. In an attempt to loose the weight, you push harder. Adding more weight to the machine, doing more reps, increasing your time spent in the gym, drinking some weight lose concoction. You’ll be lucky if you don’t end up gaining weight back or injuring yourself at this point.
Finally you give in or give up, having only lost few pounds, or worse, gained some back, and spend the money to hire a personal trainer. Your personal trainer takes an assessment of where you are now, what your goals are, and builds a workout regiment that will work for you. You spend one hour a week with your trainer and they fix all the things you are doing wrong from your self-taught techniques. They straighten your back, have you set your feet a little further apart, and actually decreases the weight you’ve been pushing because doing the exercise the correct way is actually harder, because it’s right. The body and the mind is lazy and we’ll use any work-arounds we can to avoid the challenge of nearly any given exercise. Not having the skill and knowledge necessary to keep your body safe is how injury occurs. Your personal trainer has the knowledge and experience which allows them to assess you during your time together. They’ll teach you new things, help you avoid injury, and set realistic expectations for the weight you want to lose. They’ll give you homework for the week and see you in seven days.
What your personal trainer can do that you cannot is see you. Sure there are mirrors, and you could record yourself, and those can come in handy, after you’ve learned the basics. Even if you do get to a point in your training where you are have the knowledge to self-assess, nothing can replace another set of experienced eyes. They’ll see things you will not. Similar to editing your own written work, you’ll blindly skip over the obvious errors because you’ve looked at it so long. Having a friend check your paper for error is always better. Plus they may offer a few helpful suggestions for improvement.
How is learning to ride a motorcycle any different than this gym journey? It’s not. It’s nearly the same. Remove losing weight and replace it with wanting to ride long distance or harder terrain. You have options for how you want to spend your time and money. The internet is a great place to start when gathering the information or inspiration for your goals as a motorcyclist. Check out a few YouTube videos too. Just remember that nothing can replace the knowledge and experience of a coach watching and assessing you.
Not all coaches are created equal. Think back on your school career. You had teachers who were ok, teachers who were awful, and teachers who were wonderful. They were all teachers, tasked with educating you, and how they approached that task likely made you like, dislike, or feel completely stupid in that subject. At CLEAR Moto we are coaches and not instructors. Instructors instruct by telling you what to do, and how to do it. Coaches encourage, inspire, and motivate while also teaching the skills and techniques for growth and success. We recognize, respond, and adjust our coaching style to each rider as much as possible. Some riders will need a very gentle approach, while others may find drive from a little friendly ribbing. Similar to a coach of a sports team, our coaches are driven to help you reach your goal. We aren’t going to let you drag your feet, you can do that on your own. If you come to us we’ll accept your goals and will help get you there. Your time and money are precious and we want to honor those by progressing you at a pace which is appropriate for you and your desired goal. Note that anything worth having doesn’t come for free. You’ll have to invest something, be it time, money, energy, and/or effort. The more ambitious the goal, the longer it may take, and the greater the investment may be.
So what’s the point? This remains to be a personal question with a personal answer. Only you can decide what is important to you and how you want to spend your irreplaceable time and hard earned money. We hope you’ll spend it with us.
