Went out for a ride today, looking for bald eagles, took the camera, all was well. I finally found some hills ! and turns ! to play on, since it's a rare thing here in Tampa. I was rolling nicely through a shaded winding road, and quite proud of the gs's handling.
(http://lh5.google.com/ohgood/R12iU3Pcf7I/AAAAAAAAAGg/gtAltvTeVuw/DSCN2628.JPG?imgmax=576)
Then, after a series of blind turns, then next one was a decreasing radius turn, with road kill and sand in my path. I almost fixated on the two problems, but focused on the the road beyond instead. After a little E-braking from the rear and some interesting throttle usage, all was good.
The only problem was there were some kind of berries on the road, and they were slippery. The acceleration in the turn meant I felt the rear losing traction and it was nice when I finally got out of the mess.
I've read a few things about target fixation, how to prevent it, and try applying it on my road bike/mtb/gs but it's very difficult. Anyone know of a process for making it second nature besides just practice ?
Practice is the only thing that comes to mind really. If you just get used to looking where you want to go looking ahead, then when the emergency pops up, that's what you'll do. It's worked for me through track events and years of driving, clearly it worked for you too! :cheers: No reason why we all shouldn't be practicing it in/on everything we drive. Thanks for posting this, because if we get lazy, we get dead!
Here's another one to practice:
Building your peripheral vision.
I recommend this as an in-car exercise, I've yet to try it on my bike and cannot recommend it. While driving, (without traffic around and on a straight road first), turn your head and eyes ~15 deg off to the left or right. Keep your eyes relaxed, but off-center, gazing out towards the side of the road. Use your brain to actively scan the picture you're seeing, not your eyes. You should find that you can keep the car centered and see other traffic, road hazards and the like just fine with some practice. Try it the first few times with a passenger so they can alert you if you miss something! You can even try this AS a passenger first. But you will get better at it with practice, you could drive around all day like that if you had to. I guess it's the anti-look-where-you-want-to-go exercise. :icon_razz: But if you get used to scanning the whole picture with your brain, when you are looking ahead, you'll catch a lot more.
OhGood! Glad you're okay! :)
Yeah, I agree on practice and more practice, you are smart to practice on your other two wheelers (works on cars too!). I find rock gardens are the best place to practice NON target fixation on my MTB, if I look at the boulders I want to go around, I will hit them! So I sort of scan the path and pick a route, and try to look through it to the end point, and let the rocks come up in my peripheral vision below, and I seem to be able to get through much better. I'll bounce my back end sideways off a boulder maybe but not stick on it. Not always, I'm not a great technical rider (those cool board trails in Whistler call to me and scare the bejeezuz out of me both, I don't think I could walk them!) and I'm not into falling on rocks, so if it's too hairy or too long or I'm too tired, I get off and walk the bike through. Not an easy option on the moto!
Thanks !
I'm going to try more scanning as suggested. I've also tried imagining a birds-eye view from above of where traffic is around me. If you think about it, it makes that 18 wheeler a hell of a lot more scary. :o
I've noticed complacency when driving the cars now. Watching for red light runners and not being the FIRST person away from a new green light helps, but I'm getting rusty. I saw a T-bone just last week, with both cars (one truck) sliding within 5 feet of me (I was in my toyota) and I'm getting paranoid again.
Checking mirrors and _knowing_ who's behind me helps, but I feel I need a refresher.
Quote from: TeekI find rock gardens are the best place to practice NON target fixation on my MTB, if I look at the boulders I want to go around, I will hit them!
You know, this just reminded me of something else I've been doing to practice lately. If it's a long country road, (we have a nice, lightly traveled parkway around here that's perfect for it) I'll practice dodging leaves. Sounds pretty much like what you're doing, pick a path and keep scanning, but certianly focusing on any one of them doesn't help!
Practicing swerving around leaves sounds like a great training exercise! It's training one's brain to see it and react calmly, so that when it IS something questionable or definitely dangerous, the swerve reflex will be instinctive, and it will be much more (hopefully) easily modulated, like OhGood's getting through a hairy patch on instinct, basically, and thankfully!