Succession of CSS Drills

[Jaybird180]

I almost feel ashamed for asking this question, but putting that aside here goes anyways:

Starting at L1 as the sessions build from classroom to on track and back to classroom, etc is the student supposed to apply each previous drill into the next session?

I'm thinking "yes", as it would totally rebuild the riders skill and making it all fit together as a puzzle.

I'm thinking "no", because the new skill may not have had sufficient time to become part of the rider's skillset and may be a distraction to applying the new drill the student (rider) should be working on.

[CoffeeFirst]

Probably best if Cobie or Hotfoot reply to this, but in the mean time I'll share my thoughts.

The simple answer is "yes".  What I experienced in L1 through L3 training is students learn a core concept in each classroom session and then immediately practice it during the next track session through the appropriate drill. While the human brain can learn through several methods, it has been proven that the vast majority of people do well with kinesthetic or physical learning, which is very much a "learn-by-doing" model.  These active or participatory learning methods are great because students experience the concept / improvement / benefits first hand and have these wonderful "aha" moments for themselves, which in turn helps ingrain it in their knowledge base for the long term. It is important to note each track session focuses on only ONE drill or skill at a time - there is a lot to be said for single-minded focus when learning something new!

It is true one track session is highly unlikely to make you a master of a new concept or skill, but at least your initial personal understanding and practice of it has been achieved. Worth noting that even though my brain may fully understand a new concept or skill, physically mastering it on track takes endless amounts of practice, and even then absolute perfection is always just out of reach, especially when I am constantly striving to also elevate my pace. I think chasing perfection, one skill or drill at a time, is why so many of us periodically go back for more one-on-one L4 training sessions.

Dave

[Cobie Fair]

Jaybird,

The skills build one on the other, with quite a thoroughly researched progression, and relationship.  That being said, working on one skill at a time is the proven approach. 

Let's say a rider works on his Throttle Control, but has no clear idea of line.  In the next class for Level 1, we discuss lines, and the components of them (one of which is good Throttle Control).  So when we set out the Turn Points (to help create good lines) the rider often finds out he had a line that didn't allow for good Throttle Control.

We do realize this is a lot to master, all the skills of each level.  The coaches are trained in how to deal with this, and adjust the "drinking from a firehose".

There is more to this, of course, but there's a mini-view.

CF

 

[yakaru]

The rule I tended to follow was to integrate the drills but to not let a previous one distract from the current one. I mean, throttle control and turn points are obvious in this regard but some more challenging drills (for me) sometimes required I not overwhelm myself by trying to do everything. If hipflick hurts my turn point accuracy (within reason) for the hipflick drill then I note it and let it go but try to clean it up later.