This past weekend my son Levi came in second in his category and was on the podium for the first time. This is a significant milestone and hopefully the first of many such weekends.
This is also a learning opportunity for Levi and I sent him the following email this morning to help him learn from this experience:
Hey Levi
Great race! I was sure a proud dad seeing my son up on the podium. It’s all coming together. There is still lots of work to do in getting toward your ultimate goal. This is a reminder that you need to do a post race analysis so that you can learn from what went well and also help you identify where you can improve. Knowing what to keep on reinforcing and knowing what to adjust is going to help you save the seconds you need to move up. You need to go through the race turn by turn, stunt by stunt and analyze the whole race. This will help you to improve and make necessary adjustments and also give you a record to look back on for next year when you race the Ranch again. The following structure should help you pull your analysis together:
1. Identify and describe what went well. What lines worked? What things did you nail and why.
2. What can you do to improve? Where could you pedal more? Where should you have not pedalled (you mentioned hooking your pedal on one berm)? Where should you have stayed on the ground more? For example on the step up you got amazing air and landed at least 8 – 10 feet further than other riders but the time in the air cost you time because you weren’t on the ground peddling. DO NOT think in terms of what went wrong! Think in terms of what can I do to improve? What do I need to adjust? Remember you are fine tuning your skills and your performance.
3. Identify aspect about your bike and equipment you many need to adjust. For example we talked about going to Marzocchi to get their help in dialling in your suspension. Make note of key suspension issues that you need to talk to the Marzocchi people about. Consider your other equipment and race prep.
4. Identify nutrition and hydration issues that you need to remember for next year.
5. Finally consider your mental preparation. We just started working on your race preparation programming and have a lot more work to do on this aspect but you still need to identify what has worked so far and what else do you need to consider.Once again Levi, I am proud of all the hard work you are putting into this and I assure you all this effort is going to pay off. You have come a long way and are so much closer to the end goal.
Luv
Dad
Why is it so important to encourage Levi to analyze his race? Without significant reflection there can be no improvement. Learning how to critically and analytically assess his performance is a skill that will carry over into so many aspects of Levi’s life. Learning to do this with something he loves addresses the issue of motivation–he is motivated to do this because he wants to race at the World Cup level and this is the way that he can get there.
Learning how to continue to motivate Levi to move in this direction is my learning challenge. It was a wonderful learning weekend and we have so much more to learning.
