I hate to start a story this way, but I have some bad news: You're not as fast as you think you are. No matter how talented, accomplished, brave, determined or just plain lucky you may be, there's almost no way that you can actually ride a motorcycle as quickly or as well as you think you can. How do I know this? Because I used to not be as fast as I thought I was. But thanks to a two-time World MX champion with a thorough knowledge of the complex processes involved in hauling the mail and a knack for conveying this information, I'm slowly learning that it's not at all about going as fast as you think you need to, it's about breaking things down and building them back up in the correct order. Confused? Keep reading, this will all make sense in a minute.
Tortelli gained a lot of knowledge...
Tortelli gained a lot of knowledge during his long, successful career.
Last issue, you read Pete Peterson's view on a one-day motocross school with Marty Smith. This, the sequel to that feature, is the recap of my experience on the next rung of the Moto School ladder, this time in a two-day intensive training camp with MX hero Sbastien Tortelli at his legendary racetrack in Perris, California. Now, I'd never received any sort of formal riding instruction before save for some much-welcomed tips from local pros and friends, and it didn't take long for my perceptions about moto education to be completed shattered by Tortelli's iron fist. Like most racers, I was under the impression that you show up at a riding school, fill your brain with little tips and tricks and then leave at the end of two days about four seconds faster than before. Not so! One of the first things that Tortelli stresses to his students is that the purpose of his riding school is not to make you faster immediately, but to give you the tools to make yourself faster over time. In fact, the champion warned in his still-present French accent that, "Eew may eeven become slover een zee next few veeks." Sacrebleu!
This leads to Tortelli's next key point that all improvement comes from progressive steps. According to Sbastien, rarely will a rider stumble upon speed and chop three seconds off of his lap times. Rather, increased speed comes as a result of working on the most fundamental elements of riding and perfecting them in a specific order. And so, our day began with work on the basics, and the class of just over a dozen riders and I spent a good portion of the morning doing simple drills in the parking lot that, to be quite honest, felt awfully silly at first. That is, until I realized how much I needed to work on them. For example, Tortelli broke down the fine elements of braking and then stressed the specific succession in which they must be executed. You'd be surprised how easily the whole process can go wrong when you forget just one step! But when performed in the correct order, Tortelli's finer points of braking become one smooth motion, and doing this for the first time provides a quick taste of what it feels like to work with the motorcycle.
For MX Schools Part 1, click here.