What Looks Like the Problem Isn’t Always the Problem

WHAT LOOKS LIKE THE PROBLEM ISN’T ALWAYS THE PROBLEM

I wanted to write this because I think there can sometimes be a misunderstanding around exactly what I do. Some people see the work I do around pressure, confidence, decision making and internal dialogue and assume I’m a mental performance coach. Others know me predominantly through my years of working trackside and think of me as a technique coach.

I understand why, but I’ve never really separated the two.

And this distinction matters beyond simply understanding what I do. If you’re a rider, parent or coach trying to solve a recurring performance problem, getting the diagnosis wrong can mean spending months working on the wrong thing while the real limitation remains untouched.

You can add more training, more riding, more fitness work, more confidence work or more technical coaching and still find yourself dealing with the same problem. Not necessarily because any of those things are wrong, but because they may not be addressing what is actually causing the performance to break down.

Understanding the problem has to come before deciding on the solution.

My work has always been about rider development and performance. I look at the rider as a whole, try to understand what is actually limiting their performance or development, and then work from there.

Sometimes that’s technique or a movement pattern. Sometimes it’s race craft or decision making. Sometimes it’s confidence, beliefs, internal dialogue or how the rider responds under pressure. Sometimes it’s physical preparation or the structure of their training and development programme itself. Quite often, it’s a combination.

That’s also why neuroscience and motor learning have always interested me and influenced the way I coach. Not because I’m trying to turn motocross coaching into a science lesson, but because riding is ultimately being controlled by a brain and nervous system.

When we’re trying to change a movement pattern, develop a skill, make something automatic or help a rider execute under pressure, we’re dealing with learning. How something is practised matters. How often it’s repeated matters. What the rider is paying attention to matters. Whether they’re consciously controlling a movement or can execute it automatically matters. And what happens to all of that when speed, fatigue or pressure increases matters.

To me, those things have never belonged in separate boxes. They’re all part of performance.

That’s why I’ve never been a big believer in taking a cookie cutter programme and applying it to every rider. Two riders can show what appears to be exactly the same problem and need completely different solutions.

I don’t start with a programme and try to fit the rider into it. I start with the rider and work out what the programme needs to contain.

A situation I encountered recently is a good example of why.

When the problem has already been diagnosed

I was contacted about a talented young rider competing at a high level. I’m deliberately leaving out identifying details because this isn’t about criticising the rider, the parent or anybody involved in their programme. It’s the thinking behind the situation that matters.

The rider was described to me as talented and fast, but inconsistent. The belief was that he needed more aggression, more intensity. He needed to push harder.

At first glance, that sounds like a diagnosis. But it isn’t necessarily. It’s an observation followed by an interpretation, and there’s an important difference between the two.

By the time I entered the conversation, the problem had effectively already been decided:

He needs more aggression.

Once we become certain about something like that, everything we see afterwards tends to get viewed through the same lens. We notice the hesitation, encourage more commitment and look for ways to make the rider more aggressive. Maybe we decide confidence is the issue and start to work on mindset.

But what if that original diagnosis is wrong?

You can spend an enormous amount of time, effort and money trying to fix something that was never really the problem in the first place. Sometimes becoming too attached to the diagnosis actually makes the real problem harder to see.

Then I was told something that immediately caught my attention. The rider himself felt:

“When I push harder, I make more mistakes.”

Now we had another piece of information.

And for me, that changed the question.

What if a lack of aggression isn’t actually a lack of aggression?

From outside the helmet, a rider can look hesitant. They might not attack a section with the same intensity as another rider or, as the pace increases, they might appear to back off.

Standing beside the track, it’s completely understandable to look at that and think he needs to commit, he needs more confidence, he needs to be more aggressive.

And sometimes that will be exactly right.

But sometimes what we’re calling a lack of aggression is simply what a performance breakdown looks like from the outside.

The rider in this situation was telling us something nobody standing beside the track could feel:

When I push harder, I make more mistakes.

I wouldn’t automatically accept that as a reason for him not to push, but I wouldn’t ignore it either. I’d want to know why.

The question for me wasn’t:

Why won’t he push harder?

It was:

What changes when he does?

Those two questions can take you in completely different directions.

If increasing the intensity creates more mistakes, simply asking for even more intensity may not solve anything. First, I want to understand where those mistakes are coming from.

Does his technique start to deteriorate at that pace? Do his decisions become rushed? Does he stop seeing situations early enough? Does tension creep into his riding or his attention begin to narrow?

Is fatigue or physical capacity changing his ability to execute? Does he possess the individual skills, but they aren’t yet sufficiently embedded to remain automatic at that speed? Or does he have the capability, but something psychological or emotional is preventing him from accessing it?

Any of those things could look like hesitation to somebody watching from outside.

Until we investigate it, we don’t know.

When the solution comes before the diagnosis

There was another part of the conversation that became just as important. The family had previously worked with mental performance coaches and hadn’t got the outcome they’d hoped for.

Their feeling was essentially:

“We’ve already wasted money on mental coaching.”

And I understand that. If you’ve already spent money on something and it hasn’t worked, why would you spend more money doing what appears to be the same thing again?

Except I wasn’t suggesting mental coaching.

I didn’t know what the rider needed. That was the whole point.

Because some of my work involves confidence, pressure, decision making and the mental side of performance, my work had been interpreted through that lens. But I wasn’t looking at this rider thinking, he needs mental coaching.

I was thinking:

Something changes when the demand increases. Why?

That’s a very different starting point.

None of this is a criticism of mental performance coaching. I use mental performance principles extensively within my own work. But mental coaching is an intervention. Technique coaching is an intervention. Strength and conditioning is an intervention. More riding is an intervention. More race experience is an intervention.

Before deciding which intervention a rider needs, we need to understand what is actually creating the limitation.

Otherwise, we naturally start seeing riders through whichever lens we know best. A technique coach sees technique. A mental coach sees psychology. A strength coach sees physical preparation. A parent might see effort, confidence or aggression.

Any of them might be right. But seeing something and understanding why it is happening are not necessarily the same thing.

The intervention should follow the problem. Not the other way around.

Development constantly exposes new limitations

One of the reasons I’ve always been interested in neuroscience and motor learning is because riders don’t simply learn a technique once and then spend the rest of their careers doing exactly the same thing faster.

Skills develop in layers. When a rider first learns a new movement or technique, it usually requires conscious attention. They might be thinking about body position, timing, braking, throttle control or what the motorcycle is doing underneath them.

With enough correct practice, that movement becomes more reliable and eventually requires less conscious attention.

That matters enormously in motocross because, as speed increases, the amount of time available to consciously process what is happening decreases.

At one pace, the rider might have enough capacity to manage everything. Increase the intensity and suddenly everything is arriving faster: braking points, lines, bike movement, other riders, track changes, decisions and consequences.

A movement pattern that looked completely stable at one pace might not yet be embedded well enough to survive the next. The rider starts consciously managing something that previously appeared automatic. Now their attention is being used there instead of somewhere else. Their timing changes, their decisions become later, tension can increase and mistakes start appearing.

And from outside the helmet, what does that sometimes look like?

Hesitation.

So somebody standing beside the track says:

“Just commit.”

But commitment might not actually be the missing ingredient.

The rider might need greater competence before greater commitment becomes sustainable.

That doesn’t mean protecting riders from intensity. It means developing their underlying capability so they can handle it.

And this process never really stops. Greater speed exposes something new. A bigger motorcycle exposes something new. Stronger competition or a more technical track exposes something new. Fatigue exposes something new. Pressure exposes something new.

Every increase in demand has the potential to reveal the next limitation.

That’s development.

Confidence and competence are connected

This is also why I’ve never been comfortable separating the mental and technical sides of performance too neatly.

Imagine repeatedly asking a rider to operate at an intensity where their performance becomes unstable. They push and make mistakes. They push again and make another mistake. Maybe eventually they crash.

After enough experiences like that, they start hesitating.

Now we say:

“He’s lost confidence.”

Maybe he has.

But why?

What if that uncertainty isn’t irrational? What if experience has repeatedly taught the rider that once they reach a certain intensity, their ability to control what is happening starts to deteriorate?

You can work on confidence all you like, but if the underlying capability still breaks down at that speed, you may only be treating the symptom. Improve the competence and confidence may begin to change with it.

But it can work the other way as well.

A rider can have all the technical ability they need and still struggle to access it when the gate drops. Pressure can change attention and decision making. It can create tension. It can interfere with movements the rider performs perfectly well in practice.

Now the technical mistake you’re seeing may actually have a psychological or cognitive trigger.

That’s why I don’t see these things as separate.

The rider is one system.

Change the pressure and technique can change. Change competence and confidence can change. Change attention and decision making can change. Change preparation and the response to pressure can change.

Everything interacts.

The breakdown is information

This is probably the most important part.

When performance breaks down, I see information.

Arm pump is information. Repeated mistakes late in a moto are information. Hesitation is information.

A rider who looks brilliant in practice but changes when the gate drops is giving us information. A rider who can produce incredible speed for half a lap but cannot sustain it is giving us information. A rider whose mistakes increase when the intensity rises is giving us information.

The mistake is jumping too quickly from what we see to what we think should fix it.

He looks hesitant → more aggression.

He gets tired → more fitness.

He looks nervous → mental coaching.

He makes mistakes → technique work.

Maybe.

But why?

That’s the bit I want to understand first.

Sometimes the rider knows something we don’t

There’s another lesson from this situation that matters for parents and coaches: listen to the rider.

That doesn’t mean blindly accepting everything they say. Riders can misunderstand their own performance. They can rationalise things. They can avoid uncomfortable work. Their perception isn’t infallible.

But neither is ours.

The rider has access to information nobody outside the helmet has. They feel when the motorcycle starts getting ahead of them. They know when they’re suddenly trying to consciously process too much. They experience the tension and feel when their timing starts disappearing. They know the difference between attacking something with control and simply hoping it works.

So when a rider repeatedly says:

“When I push harder, I make more mistakes.”

Don’t automatically translate that into:

“I don’t want to push.”

Get curious.

What mistakes? Where? When? What happens immediately before them? Does it happen everywhere or only in certain situations? At what point does the performance begin to change? Is there a pattern?

In this situation, the parent believed the rider needed greater aggression and intensity. The rider was reporting that increasing that intensity made his performance less stable.

Neither statement should automatically win.

The contradiction itself is useful information.

That’s the point where somebody needs to stop prescribing and start investigating.

Listen to the rider. Observe the performance. Then diagnose.

What happened next

Ultimately, I never got the opportunity to properly assess this rider. Because the family had previously tried mental coaching without getting the results they’d hoped for, and my work had partly been interpreted through that same lens, they decided not to progress.

That’s their decision, and not every enquiry should become a client.

Some time later, I learned that the rider had been injured and would consequently miss an important event they had worked extremely hard to qualify for. I was genuinely disappointed to hear it.

And I want to be very clear about something.

I cannot say that the performance pattern we discussed caused that injury.

I wasn’t working with the rider. I wasn’t there when it happened. I didn’t see it, and I’m not going to retrospectively create a connection I cannot prove.

But hearing about the injury did make me think back to that original conversation.

The rider had been telling us that when he increased the intensity, his mistakes increased. To me, that deserved investigation.

Not because the rider was necessarily right or the parent was necessarily wrong. And certainly not because I somehow knew the answer from a few messages. I didn’t.

But the breakdown was information.

Something changed when the demand increased.

My job would have been to find out what.

The objective isn’t to make riders scared of pushing. Quite the opposite. I want riders to be able to push, but I want the performance underneath that intensity to be strong enough to support it.

So what do I actually do?

That brings me back to why I wanted to write this.

I’m not simply a mental performance coach, and I’m not simply a technique coach.

My work is rider development and performance.

I look across the whole performance and try to understand what is actually limiting the rider, what is missing and what needs attention next.

If it’s technical, we work technically. If it’s a movement pattern that isn’t holding together as the demand increases, we work on that. If it’s decision making or race craft, we address that. If beliefs, internal dialogue, confidence or emotional responses are interfering with execution, we work there.

If physical preparation is limiting performance, that needs addressing. And if the structure of the training programme or wider development environment is contributing to the problem, then that may be where we need to intervene.

Often, several of those things are connected.

That has really been the basis of my coaching for years. Technique, learning, movement, attention, decision making, confidence and pressure don’t exist independently of one another.

They’re all being expressed through the same rider.

And sometimes the most valuable thing I can do is recognise that the thing everybody has been trying to fix isn’t actually the problem at all.

Every rider arrives with a different history, different strengths, weaknesses, experiences, movement patterns, beliefs and a different environment around them. So I don’t believe in forcing every rider through exactly the same programme simply because that happens to be the programme I sell.

I don’t start with a programme and try to fit the rider into it. I start with the rider and determine what the programme needs to contain.

That’s the thinking behind the MotoMind Performance Method.

Diagnose.

Direct.

Develop.

Because the objective isn’t simply to make a rider push harder.

It’s to develop a rider whose skills, movement patterns, decisions and performance are strong enough that when they do push, the performance underneath them can support it.

If you want to explore how I work and what working with me can look like, click here.