I just started a topic in the Driving section that relates to instructing as much as it does to driving itself. I'm talking about how we, as instructors and coaches, need to focus on developing strategies that focuses in on specific skill improvement - how we need to break things down into small, well-defined, deliberate, specific and manageable bites that our drivers can work on to improve.

If you're an instructor, and you have some experience with the approach that I'm talking about in the "What's your practice strategy?" topic in the Driving section, it would be great if you shared it here.

Perhaps this is too simple, but with novices and beginners, as an instructor I always start with ESP: Eyes, Smoothness and Path in that order. Only once my driver has trained his or her eyes, begins to show smoothness in hand and foot controls and learns to be in the right place at the right time, do we begin to spend a session on a single skill.

I've seen great improvement in brake release technique, for exammple, if the driver spends an HPDE session fully concentrating on that. I heartily agree that breaking things down to small, easily digested bites helps all drivers at all levels.

I'd love to have folks suggest drills that we could put into play during driving sessions to aid our students.

I'm a big vision guy. I find that about 80% of the evils out there are a result of poor vision. How can a student be smooth and put themselves in the right place if they are staring down the hood of the car. If you can solve the vision problem, a lot of the other problems will solve themselves.

I like to instruct by telling the student where to look. Once you have seen something, start looking for the next thing. I want them looking 2 things ahead. As they are approaching the turn-in cone, I want them looking through the corner visualizing the track-out cone - even if they can't see it. Looking for the cone you can not see yet will really help you visualize your way through the corner.

Once that is accomplished, I switch to smoothness and focus only on that. Turn the wheel progressively. Get on and off the pedals progressively. I want to feel the flow of the track.

If a driver starts to over drive, I want them to feel guilty. "Did you feel how much speed you scrubbed off in that corner? If you feel the car squishing into the corner with your body pushing hard into the door, you are wasting all of your hard earned momentum." If it feels fast, it probably wasn't.

If they accomplish those and have not found the line yet, I will make adjustments to the line at that point.

I like to stick with one topic at a time. Don't overload them. You don't need to teach them everything in one session.

And the most important rule for me is to make it fun for them. If they're not having fun, I have failed.