ATELIER
Bike Inverted
Shifting Perspectives to Understand the Brain’s Limits When Facing the Unexpected and Safety Rules
Why is it so difficult to consistently apply safety instructions, even when we know them by heart? Why can our highly capable brain fail us when confronted with the unexpected?
The “Bike Inverted” workshop offers a surprising yet revealing experience: learning how to ride a bicycle… in reverse.
Through this fun and destabilizing challenge, participants concretely experience resistance to change, the power of habits, and the limitations of our ability to quickly adapt. This activity, far more than a game, draws a direct parallel with behavioral safety challenges in the workplace.
The objective: to trigger awareness that knowing a rule does not automatically mean being able to apply it, especially in complex or unexpected situations.
OBJECTIVE
Through a fun and disorienting experience, understand the brain’s limitations and learn how to train it to improve safety.
CONTENT
- Practical exercises: inverted bike experience
- Topics covered: brain mechanisms of learning, the power of habits, resistance to change
- Safety strategies and solutions
FORMAT
- Coaching : interactive discussions, role-playing exercises
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Format & Target Audience
The “Bike Inverted” workshop is conducted in-person, with personalized guidance from an expert behavioral safety trainer.
Target audience: All employees, operators, supervisors, managers, and executives.
Recommended group size: 6 to 12 participants, allowing for strong engagement, individualized practice, and meaningful discussion.
Learning Objectives
- Understand how the brain manages habits and change
- Recognize the gaps between intention, knowledge, and actual behavior
- Experience the challenge of unlearning in order to better integrate safety rules
- Reconsider the importance of safety countermeasures as concrete action guides
- Develop an active vigilance culture, addressing both routine and unexpected events
- Encourage risk awareness and promote constructive self-questioning
Training Methods
This workshop incorporates the following approaches:
- Immersive physical experience with the inverted bicycle
- Guided group discussions led by a human factors expert
- Simplified neuroscience insights on attention, learning, and decision-making
- Case studies and real-life work scenario parallels
- Creation of a customized safety action plan by group
Depending on the time available
Workshop Programme
1Practical Exercise: The Inverted Bicycle
Each participant is invited to attempt riding a few meters on the “Bike Inverted” — a bicycle that steers in reverse.
What seems simple at first quickly proves impossible, as participants struggle to perform a movement they have fully automated.
Objective : Experience firsthand how the brain reacts when it needs to unlearn an ingrained habit.
2Immediate Debrief: The Brain, Habits, and Safety
A guided group discussion allows participants to share their feelings: frustration, confusion, loss of control…
The trainer then explains the brain’s learning, automation, and change-resistance mechanisms.
Direct connections are made with safety behaviors: over-learned gestures, misplaced confidence, unconscious lapses, etc.
3Unexpected Scenario Simulation: Reacting Without Thinking
Participants are then confronted with a second exercise based on a simple rule they believe they have mastered — but which is intentionally disrupted.
This sequence illustrates how our brain is far less equipped to handle the unexpected than we often assume, and how stress or surprise can override good intentions.
4Group Discussion: When the Rule Is No Longer Enough
Using real-life examples from their professional environments, participants identify situations where safety rule application becomes unclear: under time pressure, while fatigued, during technical emergencies, etc.
Together, they reflect on:
- What happens when a rule is known but not followed?
- What “countermeasures” can help secure actions beyond the rule itself?
5Safety Countermeasures: Mental and Collective Tools
The trainer introduces the concept of safety countermeasures: a set of concrete mechanisms (rituals, key questions, buddy systems, warning signals, etc.) designed to compensate for the brain’s limitations and reinforce safety in real-world situations.
Participants co-develop a behavioral toolbox adapted to their roles and work environments, identifying:
- habits to strengthen,
- weak signals to better detect,
- collective safeguards to implement.
Why choose
this Workshop ?
Because it challenges assumptions, creates a positive “wake-up call,” and demonstrates — in a playful yet rigorous way — that:
Knowing a rule
does not guarantee effective application
Our habits can become our worst enemies
in risky situations
Humility is a critical quality
in safety matters
Strong, shared safety countermeasures
are essential
This workshop fosters genuine behavioral awareness, free from guilt, combining enjoyment,
hands-on experience, and meaning.
Conclusion & Call to Action
“Bike Inverted” is a striking and highly educational workshop. It invites participants to reconsider how they approach learning,
risk, and safety, using experimentation and collective intelligence.
Contact us to incorporate this unique experience into your safety training programs, or to tailor it to your specific industry challenges.
