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There were a number of things that filtered down to my past seat position. During an exercise of panic stops, my right calf began to feel a muscle cramp. The instructor pointed out that I'm more or less pointing my toe and pushing the brake pedal with my foot pointed forward. There was no other way to accomplish this due to my seating position being too far back concerning my legs and too far back concerning my arms, in other words having too much arm extension. When your arms are outstretched, you're steering inputs are accomplished by slight movements of your shoulders, which is tiring and does not lend to accuracy. Take two or three dinner plates and hold them like a steering wheel. If you hold the plates outstretched and move them like a steering wheel, you'll feel your shoulders doing the work. Now take the two plates, lower them, and put more of an angle at your elbows.....you'll now feel the rest of your upper body assisting in this effort and the strain will be off of your shoulders. Moving the seatback forward and putting more angle at your elbows allows other muscle groups to assist with steering. So, instead of just using your shoulders to steer and also having your shoulders do all of the steering corrections, you're now utilizing your whole upper body....chest, lats, biceps, forearms, and triceps. The instructors said that a 90 degree bend at the elbows is optimal, but I'm more at 75 degrees at this point.....I'm really not muscling the car through an autocross course. Also, in this new position, my upper back is supported by the seat which virtually eliminated the pitching and swaying feeling that I THOUGHT was the car.....it was my unsupported upper body swaying slightly and my brain was amplifying the feeling of imbalance. In my new position, steering corrections are accomplished with the entire upper body's combination of muscle groups, so the car now tracks perfectly. The correct position also causes your right leg to be at a different angle to the pedals. The leverage now utilized to use the brake pedal now encompasses my ankle, calf, and thigh and allows you to modulate the brake pedal much accurately. Hope this answered your question to some degree.
Steve
posted by 24.12.7...
, Sat, 15 Dec 2007 10:59:54
, Sat, 15 Dec 2007 19:14:32, Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:51:07
, Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:10:39
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