There was a time (and it wasn't very long ago) where a practice field like the one we're seeing in this new Adam Riemann video would have intimidated me. I know, I know; it's just dirt, right? It doesn't look particularly sandy, or rocky, or muddy, or rutted, or even like it's at any sort of particularly steep angle.
But the thing is, I didn't grow up riding at all, and while I played in the dirt as much as any small child probably does, I didn't usually do it on anything other than my own two feet. When I did learn to ride, it was on the street. So the idea of losing traction and having that back end step out on me in ways I couldn't control was genuinely a situation to bring on a cold sweat, you know?
Over the past few years, I've been lucky enough to take a few different off-road trainings. I started with the MSF dirt bike course, which was held up at Road America and so was actually mostly on grass. Didn't make me any less nervous on the little Yamaha TTR 125 I was riding, and I went home sore from that class not because I'd fallen a lot, but because I'd been so tense the whole time that my body was basically clenched up every hour we spent on the bike.
