Coaching in Motocross Part 1 – The Problem

(This blog posting is intended only to bring to light the issues of coaching in motocross and to be a stepping stone for all coaches to help further their abilities and understanding as a coach. At no point is this intended to be malicious to those in the industry and is written with the understanding that those who are coaching in motocross do so with their best foot forward and to truly help others. My goal is simply to shed light on the scientific aspects of coaching that I feel haven’t been developed in our great sport because of the unique nature of motocross. Also there are many more aspects of this that could be elaborated on and will but, at a later point in time.)

The reality is that coaching in motocross is fairly primitive. By all other comparisons of coaching with more traditional sports, we could say that coaching as a whole in motocross is still somewhere back in the stone age. They tend to lack formal direction, only understand how to train the very basics and don’t understand how to progress the athlete after they have reached a certain level of abilities. In my opinion and my opinion only; the majority of effective coaching for motocross racers ends around the intermediate class. From the outside it looks like once they reach this level of proficiency as a racer, progress comes to a slowing halt and any movement forward in their abilities is a result of their own utilization of the Malcolm Gladwell concept of 10,000 hours of practice to become expertly skilled at a task. Overall rather slow progress that can be as unpredictable as throwing darts blindfolded.

If you’re a high school football player and get recruited to college a whole new world of training opens up. Some schools now have more advanced technology than some NFL teams thanks to research grants and sport science divisions that house a couple hundred students for the teams use however, the majority of them are a step below still. Returning to the point, in college that football player now gets exposed to more frequent training, more effective training and in turn you see many of these athlete’s grow through their senior year. Then they make it onto the pro’s and now they have world leading experts driving practice every day, monitoring their state of physical readiness, sport psychologists to help them overcome problems, nutritionists, every technology available and an entire team of analysts to support the decision of each thing done in training and game. This jump in quality of training and level of advancement is something not seen in our sport.

The majority of the coaches in our sport are former racers who may or may not have been successful and believe that their experience can help other young kids get better. While I support the notion that you could help others succeed by following this traditional method in motocross, most of these guys don’t realize that their ideas are tainted by the very thing they plan to use to help others, their experience. Every human being has a set of what are called cognitive biases. In fact Wikipedia’s site on cognitive biases lists what must be near 100 different types (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases). These are our thoughts and views of everything in life, shaped by our own experiences. To accompany this is one of my most hated sayings, “What someone else perceives is reality”. We've all heard this before from our parents, our boss and others. The truth is that your perception is typically misguided by your cognitive biases and what you many times believe to be right or the truth is only a small sliver of it or not even close to reality. What someone else perceives is not in fact reality many times. People in Salem Massachusetts used to believe that there were witches living among them that were vessels of the devil. They burnt those people at the stake because they perceived this to be true when in reality it wasn't. A grim and extreme example but, think about that when you’re coaching and what that means for yourself as a coach.

Frequently these things make you a less effective coach. Many times you will see the rider do something wrong in practice or during a race and you will give them feedback that doesn't accomplish anything. It lacks true analysis of the underpinning issue and a real way to solve it. The solution is usually, do this or that without clear instruction in the HOW department. Following this it is unknown by many how to get the brain to grasp and apply this concept, resulting in improper execution and a reoccurring vicious cycle of frustration. You tend to try and change something the rider is doing that previously was actually effective for them and their riding style. Frequently a coach will get to a point where he and the rider feel like they are going in circles around the same two or three things without a solution.  The true art and understanding of coaching is missing in many of these situations

To be continued……