Why Trying Harder Doesn’t Always Make You Faster.
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When pace matters most…
….qualifying, the last lap of a race, or a personal-best attempt at a track day…riders often fall into the same mental trap. We assume that going faster requires more effort. More aggression. More risk. Brake deeper. Additional lean angle. Get on the gas harder and earlier. F$&KING SEND IT!!.
But that’s not how real speed works. AMA Superbike Racer In the mid-2000s I was working with a rider in AMA Superbike who was struggling. He was about two seconds off his normal pace and no matter what we changed on the motorcycle, nothing helped. As a general rule, when big setup changes don’t move lap time in either direction, the limitation isn’t the bike: it’s the rider. This rider disliked visible lap timers. He felt they were distracting. He preferred to rely on feel. That belief turned out to be part of the problem. Saturday morning qualifying was our last chance to set the grid. We sent him out early in the session to get his brain up to speed and confirm the setup. After a few exits, he came in, we mounted a qualifying tire, and sent him back out. What followed felt spectacular. |
He was braking aggressively into every corner, carrying maximum speed and lean angle at every apex, spinning the rear tire and wheeling off exits. He came back sweating, exhausted, and borderline terrified. He knew he had been on the edge of crashing the entire lap….this had to be a pole lap.
When we checked the monitor, he was two-tenths slower than his second warm-up lap.
He was braking aggressively into every corner, carrying maximum speed and lean angle at every apex, spinning the rear tire and wheeling off exits. He came back sweating, exhausted, and borderline terrified. He knew he had been on the edge of crashing the entire lap….this had to be a pole lap.
When we checked the monitor, he was two-tenths slower than his second warm-up lap.
So…Try Harder AGAIN?
While the crew mounted another fresh tire, we had a conversation. Instead of asking him to try harder, I asked him to slow down, not to ride conservatively, but to ride precisely. The goal wasn’t maximum risk in every corner. The goal was perfect execution in every corner. Smooth entries. Accurate braking. Perfect apexes. Clean direction. Precise exits. Maximum drives.
We had already qualified on the fourth row, so the worst-case scenario was a slower lap and more work in the race. The real danger was continuing down the same path and ending the weekend in the hospital.
He agreed to try it. We also intentionally sent him out behind a faster, smoother competitor, and someone he didn’t particularly like.
What We Learned
When he came back in, he was angry. He complained that the other rider was “parking it” in every corner, intentionally slowing him in the middle of the turn, and that it felt painfully slow.
Then we showed him the data.
He had gone two seconds a lap faster and qualified just off the front row, one spot behind that same competitor. Same rider. Same motorcycle. More speed. Less chaos. Less Risk.
The difference wasn’t effort. It was context and technique.
Body and Brain
This is where things get interesting. Effort isn’t a direct reflection of what your muscles are doing. It’s a perception, and one actively constructed by the brain. That perception is shaped by expectation, context, feedback, and purpose. Your body sends information, but your brain decides what story to tell about it.
When riders believe speed requires aggression, discomfort gets louder. When riders focus on process and execution, discomfort fades into the background. This isn’t about pretending that riding near lap-record pace isn’t hard. It’s about understanding why it feels hard.
In high-stakes situations, competition, emergencies, and moments of real purpose, elite athletes’ brains often turn down fear and discomfort. That’s not a flaw. It’s a feature. When precision matters more than sensation, the brain edits the signal. Four-time 500GP world champion Eddie Lawson is quoted as saying, “Think about your riding, what you are doing on the bike, not the competition.” This is the champion’s way of focusing on the precision of bike control over the noise of fear and discomfort.
Feedback plays a huge role as well. Hitting reference points, seeing consistent lap times, and executing a plan are all positive signals. When those signals say, “This is going well,” the brain turns the volume down on discomfort.
Expectations matter just as much. If you expect something to be easy, the slightest difficulty feels like failure. In this case, the rider expected to be two seconds faster, and when he wasn’t, effort spiked, focus was lost, and technique degraded. Change the expectation, and nothing else had to change. The bike didn’t change. The track didn’t change. The rider didn’t change. The expectation did.
That’s why your best laps often feel easy, and your worst laps often feel exhausting, not because your body forgot how to ride, but because perception, not capability, was driving the experience.
Measuring Matters
That’s also why lap timers, data, and objective reference points matter. They give the brain accurate information instead of emotional guesses. When we rely solely on “feel” as our metric for speed or success, we’re often being misled by emotion rather than reality.
When riders rush corners, use abrupt inputs, or try harder with poor results, it’s rarely a lack of talent. It’s the wrong story being told inside the helmet. And stories can be rewritten.
If effort, aggression, and risk are our only tools for going faster, the consequences will eventually become our coach. Riding a motorcycle at a high level is closer to a ballet than a bar fight, where precision, patience, and technique deliver better results with far less pain.
– Chip Spalding