I've been riding 30 years. I've never taken a safety course, or had any type of training., or anyone to ride with when I first started.
Lately i've been thinking that I should be trying to improve on my skills. I know that my cornering is not as good as it should be. I'm having a hard time teaching myself to look thru the curve. It's hard to break old habits.
If you have ever been to the Celina M&G you know how straight the roads are around here. There are not a lot of places to practice curves.
I started doing some parking lot practice on u-turns and figure eights, and sharp turns from a stop. I think I'm getting better at them.
I wish we had some of the training options here in Ohio like you guys out west have. Like the track where the guy follows you and tells you what your doing wrong.
Currently I'm watching YouTube videos then trying to copy what I see in the parking lot.
What do you do or suggest for improving ones skills.
I have also thought about taking the safety course, but wonder if after 30 years of riding if it would be a waste of time.
Do any of you practice slow speed skills? Do you think there is any benefit to them other than parking lot riding?

Feel free to add anything you want to the subject, not just answered to my questions.

A lot can still be learned from books and videos,
if you are willing to practice with the new information. Watching it once and moving on will not help. Same with taking a training class, they are showing you something, but it is up to you to practice it.

I think most skills that keep you safe on the road are in the head, observation and keeping your mind in the game, more than being able to throw the bike around.
(trying to stay out of situations where you need to turn fast or brake hard, someone else can still put you in a bad position, but it should be more rare)


As for low speed riding, the trouble is you are supposed to drop the bike to learn the limits of how far you can go without dropping the bike. The Ride Like the Pros classes charge a hefty fee, and then tell you to show up on your bike wrapped in towels, because you should plan on dropping it.

Now if they were rent bikes for the classes...

drumsonly2002 wrote:


Went to help a guy who dropped his bike and told him when practicing in parking lots dropped mine more than 20 times. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. To drop a bike that many times hopefully gives you an idea of how much effort and time I spent practicing. I do not take the saftey course lightly, though my rant seemed like I treated it like a game.

Check your local Harley shop.
Here they offer new rider safety training on their bikes!

cike, I took an eight hour advanced riders class at the Honda plant in Troy a couple of years ago. Look at motorcycles at ohio.gov. I thought it was worth the time and money. Glen

Empty parking lots are your best friend. The parking spaces are great tool in using them as markers. I do not use cones, and one can practice a lot of the exercises like the offset cone weave, figure 8 etc. using the marked parking spaces. Set up a log and what you are going to practice. Even if it is a short session, say 10 minutes before and after a ride those sessions will ingrain muscle memory. At first, test the waters and access your abilities. If a 21 foot turn is a bit much, try a larger radius that is comfortable and keep working it. Muscle memory takes consistent effort to ingrained itself. Consistency is the key, goals and a plan. The basics will do wonders, like a simple offset cone weave, and figure eights. I practice because I have been riding a short while and need to catch up with you guys here in the experience department. If you can set time before or after a ride like I suggested even for small amounts of time but be consistent muscle memory is the key. As a drummer, It takes about 1 to several months to learn a new technique depending on difficulty. When it becomes ingrained it is a reflex requiring no thought. The guys on this forum taught me a lot with great advice and it saved my neck a few times.

Find better roads. Seriously, there are some in Ohio. I think it's 83 that runs north from the Coshocton area. I rode it a few times coming up to visit. Not crazy curvy like the Dragon or some of the roads down here in the VA Carolina area but pleasantly curvy, like a good women.

There are a lot of videos out there, but I like this guy. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC4gEs8RahtTYiBqsiziudQ

What I wouldn't give to have few miles of straight stuff to let this bike stretch it's legs, but all we have around here are twisty little roads cut into the side of a mountain. It probably sounds like a lot of fun to some of you guys but it's dangerous as hell. Last night I was enjoying an evening ride out to the lake and on the way back into town I picked up a big one ton Dualie ahead of me. A tourist no doubt like most of the traffic this time of the year, so I lag back to give him some room and enjoy my ride. Not a half mile down the road I come around one of the fifty blind corners that make up this ride to find him stopped in the middle of the road. Shit like this happens all the time, so it pays to be ready for the unexpected...ride safe!

Well, I'm out flogging the shit out of my SV today on the least traveled, best sight line curvy roads I know of. It's been a strange spring and staying that way into summer and severe storms have been plentiful, so I have not been weekending or commuting hardly at all since my 700+ mile day about 5 weeks ago. Reading and watching is fine, but doing is where the learning happens. BTW, I'll be damned if I pay someone to teach me who expects me to drop my bike. I can't think of a single time I was ever caught out because I could not do less than a 12 foot turn. A useless pursuit, and I'm not smoking my clutch for it either.
Practice HARD braking. Will serve you far better than that tight turning. As to looking through corners, you have to teach yourself to scan as far forward down the road as you can. Your focus will naturally drop to where you should be looking in the turns eventually.

jd750ace wrote:
As to looking through corners, you have to teach yourself to scan as far forward down the road as you can. Your focus will naturally drop to where you should be looking in the turns eventually.

That last bit of advice is so important if you want to ride fast. It's one of the more unnatural feelings compared to driving, but it makes sweepers so much easier to ride.

Striknein wrote:
jd750ace wrote:
As to looking through corners, you have to teach yourself to scan as far forward down the road as you can. Your focus will naturally drop to where you should be looking in the turns eventually.

That last bit of advice is so important if you want to ride fast. It's one of the more unnatural feelings compared to driving, but it makes sweepers so much easier to ride.Did a nice 120mi yesterday through these Ozark Hills , the Dragon Tails got nothing on these twists and turns. These are sudden UP and DOWN in the middle of BLIND Curves!!! Anyway it's an Ozark thing you live with here. Got to practice my looking through the curves and real improvement had me scraping boards on both sides with pure JOY and CONFIDENCE !!YEE HAA !!!