(This piece also appeared on BMWBLOG on September 20th, 2024. You can check it out here.)
As I sat astride a BMW Motorrad F900GS in Spartanburg, South Carolina, instructor Terry Smith offered some sage advice: “Off-road riding makes you a better on-road rider, but it doesn’t really transfer the other way.” This would resonate over my next two days of training and challenges at the BMW Performance Center’s ADV Off-Road Rider Academy.
The Spartanburg Performance Center: A Fantasyland for BMW Enthusiasts
Located on the 137-acre grounds that house the manufacturing facility and the Zentrum Museum (itself somewhat a parallel to BMW’s Welt facility and Museum in Munich), the Spartanburg Performance Center is a fantasyland for BMW enthusiasts and motor-heads, a proverbial feast for the motoring senses. It’s what Willy Wonka would design if he were into cars and motorcycles rather than confections.
Inside the facility, lucky owners arrived to take delivery of new BMWs with all the excitement of Christmas morning, while outside, M-cars did power slides and donuts on the wet skid pad, engines wailing, and on the test track, all manner of BMWs turned hot laps, tires shrieking. Meanwhile, our class of student off-road riders ventured into the forest for instruction and to explore obstacle circuits, winding forest trails, gravel, and sand pits to learn and test our mettle.
A Brief History of the BMW Performance Academy
The history of BMW’s driving and riding academy dates back to 1999, when BMW set up a US-based delivery program for automobiles. The Performance Academy was a natural offshoot, and today owners and enthusiasts can attend classes ranging from basic defensive driving skills to semi-pro race training in BMW’s spicy M-cars.
On the Motorrad side, the list of available courses is comprehensive, ranging from Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) classes for beginning riders, to on-road Street Survival courses, to Adventure-bike off-road training. There are women-only classes, and a two-day “Authority School” featuring a curriculum tailored to the skills particular to law enforcement. Prerequisites are simple: “To participate in any class aside from the MSF Basic Rider Course, you must be comfortable operating a motorcycle.
Six months to a year of riding experience is recommended.” I’d suggest that last recommendation should be the absolute bare minimum, as being comfortable operating a bike, especially at slow (emphasis on slooooooow) speeds on challenging surfaces is essential for the ADV Off-Road courses in particular.
Choosing the Right Motorcycle for the Off-Road Course
Several weeks before the class, a coordinator reached out to inquire about my preference of motorcycle, a detail I didn’t expect, since I assumed we’d just be assigned some variety of BMW GS bike when we arrived. It was an unexpected bonus, as the class offers the full lineup of current GS machines, from the largest globe-gobbling R1300/1250GS bikes down to the more lithe, svelte G310GS bikes for those riders wanting something smaller.
I selected a F900GS, the one I’d ridden earlier in the year at the Las Vegas launch event, both for familiarity and because it offers just the right mix of maneuverability, power, and suspension compliance. (The Vegas event was where I’d become seriously enamored with off-road riding, and which sparked my desire to attend this course; in fact, I’ve been so impressed with the F900GS that I’ve actually ordered one for myself.)
The average class size for the one-and two-day course is twelve students, but our class only had eight. Given the three instructors, our 2.7:1 student-to-teacher ratio might as well have been 1:1, as all of us received an amazing amount of personal attention. Our student group was an eclectic one.
There were three pals from South Florida who had ridden their own bikes up to the class; an executive from Palm Beach (who had also ridden his own bike up); two friends who worked in IT from Maryland; and another IT guy from Kentucky, along with me. Each of us in the class had significant road riding experience, but off-road was fairly new to all of us, aside from one of the Maryland pals, who was taking the class for a second time just for fun and proficiency, and to encourage his buddy to embrace the discipline.
Day One: Learning the Basics of Off-Road Riding
Day one began at 8:00am for check-in and orientation, and also to meet our instructors: Ricardo Rodriguez (BMW Motorrad Chief Instructor), Wendy Naessens (our lead instructor and wearer of multiple hats at the Performance Center), and the abovementioned Terry Smith (who performed most of our demonstrations). Samantha “Sam” Lane also served in an essential support role throughout the class (and whose guidance ultimately saved my bacon more than once).
The curriculum for the course is straightforward, with six key precepts: Learning proper technique, recognizing bad habits, thinking about the way you behave on the bike, managing traction, developing good instinctive reactions, and a focus on so-called “perfect practice.” But if there’s one overarching instructional mantra, it’s “Challenge by Choice.” No one is pushed into a challenge before he or she is ready or comfortable, and there’s zero shame in bailing. In fact, pretty much all of us would self-select the “bail” route once or twice, even if just for a momentarily breather.
The instructors provide a supportive and judgement-free environment, and the goal is for everyone to learn at their own pace and to their own comfort level. That said, instructors encouraged pushing that limit a bit more when they were confident in a student’s abilities, and trust me, they watched like hawks.
Out on the paddock, we learned the various ways to mount the motorcycle, proper use of the center stand (a technique which I’ll admit had previously eluded me), and the three primary methods to “recover” a dropped bike. Instructors Wendy and Terry took a 1300GS off its center stand and laid it down on the pavement, then demonstrated various methods to upright the bike. It’s a foundational skill in the world of off-road riding, as we all would learn.
Both mornings, we began with “Bike Yoga” to loosen us up and build some quick confidence. We rode gentle follow-the-leader loops, balancing on one peg while sitting side-saddle on the bike, progressing into more awkward positions. If you do actual yoga, imagine doing a “resting pigeon” pose balanced on a foot peg while controlling the motorcycle’s speed with only the clutch lever and you’ll have a reasonable idea. It’s challenging, fun, and one of the first “circus tricks” we learned, and a great exercise to get a feel for slow-speed body and bike balance.
Mastering Slow-Speed Maneuvering and Bike Control
When riding off-road, going fast is rarely the point (unless you’re training for the Dakar, of course), so slow-speed maneuverability occupied the bulk of exercises. Riding a motorcycle slow is almost ballet-like, and a heady rule of thumb is, the better the rider, the slower they can go. Day one began with a simple slalom course on a gravel pad with two lanes of bollards, one lane tighter than the other, where we worked on positioning and balance.
We learned to weight the inside peg of the turn while simultaneously twisting our hips around the turn’s axis and bracing our outside knee on some fixed hard point as the bike rotates, feathering the clutch bite-point all the way. It sounds more complicated than it is, as it’s really an extension of the basic low-speed handling and turning skills most of us were taught in an MSF Basic Rider Course. (With the notable exception being that it’s all done standing up on the pegs, in the off-road manner. The class was two solid days of standing up.) By the end of the class, all of us were rounding the tightest bollards (and trees and switchbacks on Enduro Laps) with relative ease.
Slow-speed maneuvering is an essential off-road skill, and pretty handy on-road as well. Instructor Terry, who also teaches the “Authority School” course, told of a group of motorcycle cops he knows who were involved in a triple-digit chase with a guy on a sport bike. The rider kept the cops at bay for a while, but at some point, he got himself into a pickle and had to do a U-turn…which he couldn’t do. He dropped the bike. Busted.
The exercises built logically, with new challenges and skills enhancing the previous ones. We practiced “Trial Stops,” basically bringing the bike to a stop while upright, then waiting a few beats before proceeding. We learned to ride over washboards, maneuvered through ruts, practiced riding up and down “camel humps” (“clutch in on the way up, front brake on the way down”), and learned the intricacies of emergency braking by exploring what ABS can and can’t do.
When road riding, a rear brake lockup can end in tears fast, whereas off-road, we learned the trick of locking up the rear brake in a panic stop and controlling the slide with directional control. Instructor Wendy provided some germane motivation when she suggested, “Imagine you come around a bend in the woods and there’s a bear on the trail.” How hard can I stomp that rear brake again?
A Newfound Confidence
After an evening to recuperate, day two began with a quick refresher and…more bike yoga! Though this time with even tighter concentric follow-the-leader circles and figure-eights, which we managed to pull-off without a single collision. (Of note is that the one- and two-day courses have exactly the same curriculum for the first day.)
Next up were “Cowboy Mounts.” In practice, this is when a rider stands next to the bike, puts their foot on a peg, rolls on the throttle and lets out the clutch, and throws the other leg over once the bike is rolling. It’s a skill built on the morning’s bike yoga practice, but it certainly feels unnatural at first, almost dangerous. “The ladies really like this one, fellas,” encouraged instructor Wendy, shooting straight for the lizard brain of her male students.
Terry demonstrated this move from both the left and (harder) right side of the bike, with a deftness seen in Hopalong Cassidy Westerns. When it was our turn, it was pretty clear that, if we were the bandits, the Sheriff would have caught us before the edge of town. But with practice, it started to click. And it was certainly cool. It’s a useful skill to develop if there’s some obstruction or ground condition on one side of your bike that doesn’t allow a more traditional mount. But…did I mention that it’s cool?
Facing the Gravel Pit Challenge
Next up was the more intimidating challenge of the gravel pit, which simulates riding in deep loose rock and stones and, well, gravel. The pit was a rectangular mount of road gravel, roughly 100’ by 30’ and twelve- to sixteen-inches deep, looking like the sad aftermath of a dump truck accident. Instructor Wendy humorously backed this up. “The South Carolina DOT likes to just dump gravel here and there, then lets [motorcyclists] come along and spread it out.” I asked the veteran student if he liked the gravel exercise. His face turned rather gray, his voice somber. “No.” This didn’t instill confidence, and the gravel pit didn’t win a huge number of friends.
Instructor Terry demonstrated the Goldilocks zone of pace to traverse the rock pile (and also demonstrated what not to do, by once zooming through the pile at escape velocity, his big GS clattering all the way). But it was still nerve wracking, especially as one student after another bogged down or fell over or generally got all wonky. I decided speed was my friend, but it’s a careful calculation, as two slow and the bike will bog and sink into the gravel; too fast and directional control will be out the window.
“Don’t look down. There’s no answers in the gravel pit,” instructor Ricardo sagely advised. I might suggest that there are, actually, answers to be found staring into the gravel pit, but they’re the sort of answers in the same family as touching a hot stove or sticking a fork into a power outlet, so best to leave them right where they are. We did three runs, and I managed to make it across all three, my first successful run being attributable to dumb luck, but the next two more comfortable and controlled.
The Sand Pit: Testing Dynamic Control and Balance
Once we finished with the gravel pit, we took a leisurely route through the woods to our next challenge: The sand pit. We quickly realized that, solidity of materials aside, this was a progression from the frying pan into the fire of difficulty.
“As you get into looser surfaces, you just have to be really dynamic on the motorcycle,” advised instructor Wendy. In practice, this translated into kicking your backside backwards on the bike, moving your weight as far rearward as possible and lightening up the front end. The bike wants to squirm and shimmy like a greased eel, but with a right hand full of throttle and your weight back, the motorcycle almost surfs over the sand.
Just don’t slow down and do your best to not follow the inevitable ruts, and also try not to turn the bars much to avoid making the front tire into a plow. My one face plant in this exercise was when my bike’s front tire found a deep rut and I didn’t weight up the rear enough. POW!, down I went. (Pro tip: When riding in sand, remember to close your face shield.)
At one point, instructor Terry made what initially seemed a rare mistake. His GS bogged, his front tire tracked into a rut, and he went flying. He practically launched himself off the bike, doing a half-summersault in the air and completing the move when he hit the sand, immediately popping up. “Terry’s really into the martial arts,” explained instructor Wendy. “He does that all the time, for fun.” He bounced up laughing. We students all chuckled and glanced around nervously, but none of us made even half an effort to emulate the move. Fortunately, crashing dramatically in the sand pit wasn’t a required part of the curriculum, though some of us inadvertently gave it our best effort.
After we’d all made five passes through the sand, our sense of both relief and accomplishment was palpable. The sand is fun! I’d have taken runs at the sand pit all day if we could have, and jokingly suggested to one of my fellow students, a Floridian, that this would be so fun on the beaches near his house. “It certainly would!,” he answered, quickly adding, “Of course, I’d be immediately arrested.”
The connecting threads of the course are the Enduro Laps, which carefully and seamlessly tie together each cumulative skill of the curriculum in ways that build confidence, muscle memory, and capability. It’s one thing to carefully work on your skills traversing hillocks and mounds when the lesson is deliberately step-by-step, instructors giving patient feedback throughout; yet quite another when you round a tight bend on a wooded track to see a grooved camel hump in the middle of a damp path, while also getting whacked in the helmet with low-hanging branches and brambles.
Much of this comes down to reflex, when you string together a group of new skills in unfamiliar terrain (the instructors are great at looping through the same general route in a variety of ways), only to realize that the skills that seemed somewhat perplexing when taken solo actually made complete sense in the “real world” as you put them together.
On the Enduro Lap, you come upon a challenge, react, then quickly think, hey, I did that, cool!, then the next little challenge is right on top of you. Lather, rinse, repeat. As the Laps got progressively longer and more challenging, individual skills started to flow together reflexively, and with them the confidence of pretty much every student built and swelled.
All of this was under the watchful gaze of the instructors, who encourage students to freelance as much as they’re comfortable, always offering gentle guidance and correction throughout. (Or more pointed guidance, when appropriate. “We just need to get you out of your own head” was a common refrain, or maybe that was just to me.)
Day two ended with several additional essential skills, including emergency stopping on steeper slopes and recovering a bike if it falls on a hill. By that point, we were generally comfortable at least trying spooky new things, and the overall tapestry of two days of work was coming together. And finally, it was time to apply it all on the longest, most challenging Enduro Lap of the class, which ended way too soon. And then: It’s a wrap.
Our student group, to a person, had nothing but positives about the course, the instructors, and the overall experience. And in what may be one of the underlying motives for putting on the school, I’m pretty confident BMW Motorrad sold two or three bikes out of the class (one of the Maryland guys had moonbeams in his eyes about the F900GS he’d ridden for the two days and was already googling insurance rates).
Without question, we all left more confident and capable riding off-road than when we’d arrived, and we were all angling for more opportunities to ride in the dirt, rocks, and woods. I know I’m certainly looking forward to the arrival of my own F900GS, and I’ve been searching for quality off-road routes around Tucson, Arizona, where I’ll keep the bike. (For the record, there are many.)
Conclusion: Becoming a Better Rider On and Off the Road
I finished the course vastly more comfortable riding off-road than before, and while I may not be quite ready to apply for the next BMW International GS Trophy team, I certainly have the newfound confidence to explore formerly intimidating off-road trails, and do so with a fresh set of skills.
And did the course, as instructor Terry hinted at the beginning of day one, make me a better, more confident road rider? Absolutely. The day after I got home from South Carolina, I went for a ride on a road bike over a country road route I know well, feeling a newfound effortlessness in bike handling and control, along with a heightened awareness of my surroundings. I also found myself frequently glancing into the woods, thinking, man, I wish I could explore there. Thanks to the instructors at the BMW Rider Academy, I’ve now got the confidence to do just that.
