Most riders don’t know how to practice. Going out to the track, riding lap after lap, burning gas and wearing out tires doesn’t mean you are practicing.

You’re just riding and wearing out your bike. You probably have fun doing that and there’s nothing wrong with having fun riding. But, that’s not practicing. If you want to make some progress in your racing career, you need to learn how to practice. Racing is made up of skills that you put together to make a complete package.

Motocross uses a lot of different skills, techniques and physical effort as well as using your brain. When skills are mastered, they become second nature and you don’t have to think about them, they are learned and stored away.

Once you learn how to do something, you file it away and move on to learning something else. As you continue to ride, those skills are always present, they just need to be honed and sharpened.

In order to get the most out of practice, pick your worst skill. It might be braking, cornering, whoops, starts or whatever you feel is holding you back. That deficiency is what you need to concentrate on when you practice. Get a buddy or your dad to watch or even video your practice sessions and you can review it.

If your cornering needs some work, pick out a corner where you ride and hit the same corner 20-25 times. Start out slowly and work on technique first. Each time you go through the corner, make sure your form is correct and try not to make any mistakes. As your repetitions increase, try to increase your speed too.

If you make one or two perfect passes out of 25, you have accomplished your goal. Just try to remember exactly what those perfect passes felt like. Try to achieve that feel every time you go through that corner. Soon, you won’t be thinking about your form or speed, as it will become imbedded in your subconscious and you’ll have more time to think about other stuff: like how you are going to pass the rider that’s in front of you.

Practice makes perfect, you just need to know how.

Don’t spend all of your riding time just making laps, pick out an obstacle and concentrate on improving your skills.

Good luck and let me know you’re out there learning something.