THSCC Forums

After reading everyones methods, I tend to think I fit in better with how Jim F. does it. I DO try to visualize the entire course, but mostly from a looking ahead and car placement point of view. I also focus on where I want to car to be, want to be able to know that when I am looking ahead, I am seeing the course and not looking for it. And when trying to determine where I want the car to be, I tend to look backwards at times. I have also found that if I try to pick braking points, etc. that I may get them wrong and then have a hard time trying something different later on (i.e. doing the same thing each time is not going to improve your time).

I walk the course as much as possible. Usually the first walk is just a basic familarization with the course. I am not trying to memorize (much) or solving difficult car placement issues. I may socalize on my first walk and less or non at all on the later walks. 2nd, 3rd, etc. are when I try to memorize the course, pace cones and work on placement. I try to make my last walk a dry run as much as possible and not an "analysis session", but rather practicing looking ahead and trying to get some type of muscle memory as far as the looking ahead part is concerned.

I pretty much try to not use course maps other than resolving issues like "optional turn arounds". I sometimes will create my own map later and that only may consist of key cones, notes about cone spacing, car placement notes. Sometimes I may have a hard time "getting it all in my head" as I walk it and I may refer to my notes prior to my first run.

Using this process, "for me", I feel that I have not been suprised by courses at all and feel that I have been able to attack on my first run.

_________________
Richard Casto
1972 Porsche 914
2013 Honda Fit Sport
2015 Honda Fit EX
http://motorsport.zyyz.com
Money can't buy happiness, but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than a Kia.

Personally Donnie I think you should elminate course walks entirely, at least when your at THSCC events that is, especially if you've brought the Sypder out. For a person with your level of natural ability, its just a waste of energy. Just sit and relax. Heck, have a couple beers while your at it, I'll even provide the beer.

As for my two cents. Anyone who has walked a course with me knows, I pretty much suck at it so I don't even know why I'm posting my opinion. But here goes anyway.

Any precise plans I try to lay out, are usually wrong and not what I do once in the car. I think it is faster to not fight the car, or attempt anything too abrupt or unsettling to get the car back where you "planned" for it to be during your course walk. I don't think I've ever been able to make the mental speed leap from walking speed to driving speed. But I do know there were a couple years where I got lazy and showed up late all the time, would barely get 1 course walk in talking with others rather than concentrating, and those years were not my most successful ones. Once I got myself back into the habit of at least 2, preferrably 3 course walks and some memorization/visualization practice, I started moving up in the results ladder again.

I've experimented with trying different techniques throughout this year, but haven't had any epiphanies. My main goal with a course walk is to assure I'm not too surprised when I get out on course in the car and know exactly where I'm going next after each element. This can prove to be challenging on long courses with my memory capability, but is my goal. I try to be able at the end of my course walk to have a general picture of the course I can play through, but not alot of details. I try to look ahead while walking to get it in my head where I'll want to be looking. I try to identify any "gotchas" and find straights where they aren't obvious. But thats about it. You will see me doing "the dance" after a course walk, but that is more for memorization confirmation to me than a visualization. I have been trying more lately to do what you might call partial visualizations between runs, but this is more of trying to remember what I did wrong on the last run, and how I could do it faster.

So, I guess after saying all that, I'd say I'm for visualization, but don't believe in getting lost in attempting too much detail. That being said, I also think that course walking and line selection are the areas in which I need the most improvement.

If I understood Jim F's approach correctly I do pretty much what he does. Kelly asked me years ago to tell her where my braking points were and I really couldn't say. I brake where my experience tells me to based on what I see and feel. The big issue is really knowing what the car and I can do. At big events I've been known to brake just before where the tire marks from the guys who broke too late start.

I do have a very poor visual memory for courses so I need to first make sure I can figure out where it goes next at speed. Then I do as Jim said and figure out where the line is for getting back to full throttle ASAP (without slowing down too much or driving into the marbles). I use a variety of tricks to remember which side of an optional slalom to enter after I determine which side I plan on using. For pro solos when I walk the course I tend to think "inside or outside" of the course since "left/right" changes depending on which course you are on.

If there is enough time (such as Pro Solos and Nationals) I will memorize the course but I don't even try to estimate the speed. Mostly it is because there is so much pressure and the site is very hard to visually follow when your head is less than 2 feet off the ground and you are in one of the fastest classes.

_________________
Dick Rasmussen

FS 50 2018 Mustang GT

I have a super car, not super talent. If I had super talent I would have beaten you in your car when we codrove.

Also, campaign for fewer runs in a day. I generally seem to only get to TH events in time for one course walk, so the more runs I get, the better I do. Note how if that last Sanford event for me had been a National Tour, you would have *owned* me. It was runs four and five that were finally good. Same with the last time I took FTPax (that 2005 Laurinburg where we ran the same course nine times over two days). I stunk until runs eight and nine!

Unfortunately I seem to need 14 runs at ProSolo to get decent times (I've run much better times in the first round of the challenge a couple times than I could put down in the event).


--Donnie

We're supposed to walk the course???

_________________
In need of car.

Not when you're just here for the drift portion of the show, no.


--Donnie

I agree with the comments that say "do whatever works for you."

I'll try to comment on some different points about visualization that I've not mentioned before.

I never visualized a course until about 3 years after I started autocrossing. After talking to Tim Aro, before we started co-driving, he told me he visualized the course about 30 times and it made his first run seem like he'd already made multiple runs on the course. He explained it in great detail to me and it made sense. Even back in 1997 he was taking people to the woodshed, so I gave it a try. I did it for a few events, hated it, quit doing it, and didn't try it again until 2 1/2 years later when we started to co-drive in 2000 - that was the right decision for me at the time. FWIW, I had some pretty decent years of autocross during that time, without visualizing.

Why did I hate visualizing? If the ideal visualization routine is like a movie of the course, my movie had big gaps & appeared as if I had taken LSD with shots of Everclear It was frustrating and I seemed to drive worse. When I started to do it again in 2000, it was a lot of hard work! I still had the same gaps, but kept working at it. My sport psychologist friend and Tim kept telling me to keep up the visualization because it was very important. I had hit a plateau in my driving and needed to try something different and this made sense to me. In short, I learned to do various types of visualization and it was a *really* big help.

I made the aforementioned points to encourage everyone to trust your own instincts - there is no right or wrong. Don't be scared to experiment, but do what works for you. I feel confident there will be times in Donnie and Aaron's careers that they will use a lot of visualization. And, I'm sure they would be quick to admit that will likely be the case. I also think they are doing the right thing now by listening to their inner voice! By the same token, there are times when I don't do any visuals or dial it back based on how I'm feeling on a particular day. The weekend of the Arkansas Pro I decided to break from my routine and only do a few visuals total before the event. Whether it was laziness or understanding what I needed, it was the right ticket that weekend.

Though, after driving the course during that event and most others, I often do one or two visuals between runs to help ID where and how I want to make adjustments on the next run. I went back to my normal routine at the Peru & DC Pros and it worked fine, too.

Most of the time I visualize the path I want to drive on course, focus on the "feel" of the car (I think this is called kinestetic), and where I want to be looking. Every once in a while I'll think about inputs such as steering, brakes, and gas, but not much thought goes into those factors unless my core mechanics are off. Generally, these are reactive elements and you should trust those basic skills to just happen. I visualize up to the point where I'm sick of it or have just reached my mental "saturation point," then I quit and don't think about the course again until I literally dump the clutch on Run #1.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, before a long trip with Donnie I visualize how utterly miserable I will be listening to all his deathly boring stories about how he's the god of the computer engineering world and how he took Ricky Rudd to the woodshed at G-Force karts like 30 years ago. I sincerely believe that those visualizations have kept me from ripping his face off on hundreds of occasions. Then, I visualize how I'm going to have to talk him out of going into every single strip club and porn shop along the highway on the way to Topeka (which is a lot). Of course, that is a tough chore because all these places offer a 10% discount to folks with a Class A license (at least that's what the billboards say) and Donnie is all about the 10% discount Just kidding about all that.


Sincerely,

Anonymous

But did Donnie ever beat David Hasselhoff? I should say not. QED.

_________________
Has no responsibility whatsoever.

I guess I forgot to put the "natural ability" in quotes. Now, that's better...

All interesting reading, but off my original offer which was to teach (demonstrate/explain) to anyone who is interested how Donna and I use a "naming" method memory aid to simplify a course so it becomes easily memorized. A familiar memory aid almost everyone was taught as a child was "singing" the alphabet. I'm not much of a singer, but that might even work for some in AX? It's not that you must "name" the course as we do but the technique can be applied to whatever aid works for you. Mental gymnastics performers use memory aids to remember dozens of people's names after only hearing them one time or a long string of numbers. This offer is aimed at those who have trouble remembering a course because they are tryng to remember every cone and turn like drawing an exact course map from memory, i.e. left 90* turn thru a gate; right 90*+ turn thru two more gates; short left around pin cone; back right; tight right 90 thru two more gates; short straight to left 180* with 2 inside cones and wall outside; short chute thru another gate; 180* right with entrance and exit cone on inside wall on outside; etc etc. Anyone recognize that description? It's the first 1/2 (more or less, since I didn't memorize every gate or cone) of Sunday's NCAC course. To us that same section was "left out and around": tight; "nota slalom": don't get sucked in; "big humpy": look for pointer on the first chute, stay tight, look around corner set up early for second turnaround. To us it wasn't a line drawn on paper but a visualization of what the driving line was, where the transitions were, what to look for, and we could play it back in our heads or more often out loud while we drove it. Further, I could easily say to Donna: you broke too late in the first part of "big humpy" back it up to the pointer so you don't push out. and she could immediately understand where and what I was talking about and add the info into her next run without us having to spend precious minutes deciding exactly which pointer cone or left thru a gate I was talking about.
Our method may not be for everyone, especially people who have several years or multiple championships under their belt, but that wasn't who I was offering it to.
The offer still stands, email or PM me if you're interested in joining us and having our system explained at the next event.

_________________
SPIN or WIN!
there's no glory for going slow.

This is kind of an interesting thread. Maybe something to consider is the left-side vserus the right-side of the brain. If you are more left-side inclined, the visualization technique probably will not work. You get mired in the details and hence the "box".

If you are right-side oriented, visualization is an effective tool. You picture the course, feel the flow and how it translates back to you. You do not get lost in the details of where to brake, how much to brake/throttle.

Eric pointed out that he had to really work hard to teach himself to visualize. All research shows that you can enhance your weak side of the brain by working at it.

I like to visualization the run while walking (if I am not jabbering away while scoializing) and before I more the car to grid. After that, it is chill time.

Eric, I remember Tim telling me that he made it through the long trips visualizing you as a 5'8" blonde Now that is awesome visualization.

[edit]cause I had the sides mixed up[/edit]

_________________
Jim Pastorius
2008 Silverado VortecMax
1992 Camaro CMC#92
2002 BMW R1150R

2009 3rd Place CMC Mid-Atlantic Championship
2009 CMC Hyperfest Winner

Just another point in all this...while I wouldn't call it visualization myself, I'm guessing that re-running a run in your head after you do it to analyze it really *is* visualization of some form. I definitely do that. Some parts of that are a blur to me sometimes, but I think that only happens when I did it fine. The parts that jump out at me are the things that felt bad or just unnatural (sometimes course elements feel bad or unnatural even when you've run them well, so don't dwell on those too much if you can help it), so I try to see if there was something I could have done different there.

Most of the time it's really obvious (pushed out and got late going into a slalom, for example). My guess is that for those who want to practice visualization, one good way is to attempt to not only visualize before you run, but re-run your runs after you do them. And don't just think about what inputs you gave the car, think about where you were *looking* when you were doing those things.


--Donnie

Visualization occurs before, during and after your run. Aro taught me to visualize the perfect run everytime. When you are driving, your brain tells you that this is not where I had hoped to be or even better, you are where you want to be.

One way to start visualizing is to talk someone through the course while walking with them. The talk should have a flow to it; where you are looking, giving steering input, slowing, accelerating. Not a choppy talk such as; brake here, turn here, hit the gas....but a natural flow like you are car and the car is you. I remember walking the course with Tim and he would want me to talk him through it. He was teaching me how to visualize it.

Me thinks a person who favors the left-side of the brain will have find it more difficult to do this at first.

_________________
Jim Pastorius
2008 Silverado VortecMax
1992 Camaro CMC#92
2002 BMW R1150R

2009 3rd Place CMC Mid-Atlantic Championship
2009 CMC Hyperfest Winner

Very interesting discussion.

According to the discussion in this link:
http://www.web-us.com/brain/LRBrain.html
I apparently am left brain (I am an engineer). This linear processing approach may explain why I don't visualize the whole course other than to be absolutely sure that I know exactly where it goes "next" when driving. This allows me to put the car in the correct place (line) and apply power ASAP.

The main thing, no matter what technique is used, is to KNOW where the course goes NEXT soon enough to place the car on the optimum line at the best possible speed.

Keep in mind, however, that the correct line, etc. is not much use if you are driving below (or above) the traction limit of the tires (or hitting a cone on your best run(s)). Getting to the limit and staying there is another topic and, for me, a much bigger challenge.

_________________
Dick Rasmussen

FS 50 2018 Mustang GT

I don't think"Visualization" is limited by what portion of the brain is dominant!! I saw a study in the seventies that was done at UCLA. 150 non basketball playing students were divided into three groups. Each group shot ten baskets per member from the foul line, and average percentages were approximately even for all three groups. As I recall about twenty percent. One group then practiced every day for three weeks three hours per day. At the end of the three weeks they shot 70% from the foul line. The second group vizualized shooting the baskets for three hours per day, at the end of the three weeks they shot 66%. The last group did nothing for the three weeks and they remained the same 20 some odd%. After I read that I always vizualized anything I wanted to excel at and for the most part it has worked for me. Bowling, tennis, handball, racketball, etc. It seems to work for all sports, I guess I need to apply it to autox!!!!!!

_________________
2004 C5(415whp,390ft/lbs),
1997C5,1997Trans Am, 1986 C4,
1990 Miata, 1976 MGB,1997 Protege, 1989 MR2