AWARENESS BRINGS CONCENTRATION AND FOCUS

Concentration (to bring or direct toward a common centre or objective) is the process of focusing on the task at hand. Knowledge of what we can do and situational awareness sustain concentration as the primary mental tool for doing anything good, including biking.

It is possible, stupid, popular and not advisable to drive a four-wheel vehicle while chatting with passengers, phoning, contemplating the panorama, eating, dreaming and planning the time ahead that may never come. More delicate and balanced activities, like riding a motorcycle, demand total concentration. At any speed, a momentary distraction on the bike may easily carry a very high price tag attached.

While biking, it is better to pilot… and nothing else. Let the task of motorcycling absorb our minds: it is one of the benefits of a ride to take mind and body away from multitasking, from distractions, toward focus.

If you want to enjoy the scenery around you… stop the bike and enjoy it. If you're going to talk to a passenger… stop and talk. If you want to enjoy music… stop, rest and turn on your stereo… if you're going to think about your problems… yes you guessed …stop and think till it is free and legal.

Our vehicle's in-built instability imposes total concentration: on two wheels, we do not have a monotonous stable status, an armchair travelling on rails; on two wheels, elements ignored by other road users become hazards, obstacles, and opportunities for making progress. Only bikers “know the road” in total intimacy: no driver will ever register changes in the asphalt composition, small gravel on the edges, or minor bumps in a corner. “The millions of everchanging messages that the bikers receive impose a total focus of mind to select, analyse, discard, absorb, anticipate and finally act.”

Concentration at all times is more challenging when distractions fight and sometimes win. Distractions have many sources, and I am looking back at more than five decades on two wheels to list them in order of impact.

It is my list, and I welcome corrections, additions and objections.

I consider the first source of distraction the physical conditions of the rider. Lack of sporting fitness, age, temporary disabilities such as pains, heavy stomach, alcohol and substances, and medications can transform a competent rider into a public danger. Checking regularly hearing and eyesight is as crucial as controlling weight, balance, muscle tone and flexibility.

Equally, the first source of distraction is the mental condition of the rider. Emotional, professional, economic problems, tension in relationships left behind, irritability and rage, panic and fear, and deep involvement in subjects not ride-related are all mental issues that dramatically reduce situational awareness.

In my opinion, distractions from the environment come in second place and go under the heading “vision or target fixation”. Pleasant or unpleasant sights are not fonts of distraction unless one keeps eyes fixed on one of them while the motorcycle is moving away. The classic example in this category is a traffic accident along the road: keeping a curious eye on the event while keeping on the move typically generates a collateral accident. Violent and sudden sounds, music or voices in the intercom system, unusual vehicles, good-looking people, and panoramic sites are just part of the list of environmental distractions.

Ignorance takes third place: not knowing how to control the bike in an emergency, not knowing how the bike behaves, and not knowing the code of traffic makes the mind wander, losing focus on what lies ahead. While considering which one is the switch of deep light, the bike can make many meters without the pilot looking ahead.

Finally, the motorcycle could turn into a source of dis-traction: from the simple fact that five-second looking in the rear mirrors means five seconds without looking ahead to the distraction generated by accessories and add-ons (GPS, stereo, intercom) to the amount of useless information that modern multicolour displays offer, the occasions not-to-scan ahead, not-to-focus on the road are plenty.

I recently had the opportunity to ride a new bike with a display offering five different screens, three different sub-screens on three of them, and an operational manual covering more pages than a short novel. I must confess that I found myself at risk, against internal warnings, looking down on the cockpit to collect irrelevant information such as average speed, consumption, tire pressure and range available. A clear example of the difference between knowledge and information.

Talking about the bad of distraction and lack of focus is relatively simple if one considers the time spent on the bike and the experience gained: incompetence and distraction are twin brothers and the natural enemies of “safe riding”.

Building a discipline to fight distractions is more challenging and varies from person to person. Only practice can refine tools to boost attention. After all, if one considers the word “attention”, the meaning becomes clear: “to be tense toward” or “to tend at”. And all we tend at is to keep the number of side-stand up equal to the ones of side-stand down.

Here are three tools that I found pretty effective, and I leave them to the readers to select, use all, add news.

1. Mental and Physical Relaxation. It's no good to start a ride with your mind full of problems. Leave on the left side of the bike your business problems, family preoccupations, financial worries, ego and negative attitudes. “After you got your lid and your gloves on, and before you fire the bike up, hang your hands by your sides, close your eyes and concentrate for a minute, slowing down your breathing and emptying your mind. Once you are happy, off you go, but keep monitoring your state of mind as you ride. Starting with your feet and working up through every major muscle as hard as you can, hold for 10 seconds, then relax. By the time you’ve finished, you’ll be completely supple and relaxed, and the concentration will have cleared your mind.”
2. Self-improvement. The moments preceding the ride must be used to clear the mind and to meditate on the task ahead. These are moments for “personal space” where the “ride to learn” attitude is gained or lost. Now, it is time to fix an objective for your riding time. In his book “The Soft Science of Road Racing Motorcycles”, Keith Code writes: “ It the thought that counts. Your idea of how the turn should be ridden determines how well it all works out. You turned your thoughts and ideas into motion.” The rider must use this meditation moment to establish in mind a plan for the ride. A simple one or one more challenging: from improving cornering skills to modifying position on the handlebar, from improving braking to controlling legs/feet holding. We should be focused on a personal, internal learning program and applying a valid system for correct action.
3. Planning. Consider that if you fall off ten times, only one of those crashes will be a genuine, unavoidable accident, and the rest will be down to varying degrees of poor planning, slow reaction and inattention. Planning on the “what…if?” system, refining the capacity to take clues for all the elements present in your vision and from the ones that are not there, improves the attention and puts the pilot on guard against distractions. Next time your friend complains that someone pulled out of him, put him to the test: car driver didn’t see him? Fine, but if he’d seen the car driver, he should have plotted all the likely scenarios and had an answer prepared for each one. Looking and planning ahead is an indispensable tool for keeping focus.

These three tools work against FEAR and TENSION, god companions for distraction and bad riding.

A tense pilot overreacts and moves “against” the bike and the road. When tense, every action is stiff, jerky, and unnatural: one feels away from the machine and from the road, increasing tension in a negative spiral that progresses without end.

We are riding for the joy of motorcycling, and a great smile on your face is often a sign of a focused mind.