Why take advanced training?

I snipped this one from the recent post bag as I think it’s worth putting up for perusal.

“So, if I do more than average miles a year, ride reasonably quickly, and don’t have accidents or scare myself and I take the time and effort to think about my riding, why should I get advanced training? How do I tell that the bloke teaching me is going to any good, or even have anything relevant to tell me?”

“Why should you take training if you think you are good enough” is a reasonable question.

So ask yourself honestly; have you never read a book about any subject at all and thought “I never knew that… never thought about it that way… never considered that might happen”?

Or an alternative question to ponder; how would you like to go about doing more or less what you did before, but with bigger margins for error – after all, riding is arguably a ongoing exercise in disaster management!

In some ways I don’t try to teach “better” riding. Once the core ‘advanced’ skills are in place, I teach riders to have a greater awareness of the pros and cons of what they do, and then to be able to use that knowledge to bend the odds in their favour.

And how do you know if the trainer can teach you anything? Well, can they ask you questions you can’t answer? That’s a good start if you’re not going to rely solely on certificates.