Hi! Today we’re going to talk about trail braking and braking mid-corner in general,
for a street riding. What are the benefits of this techniques, what are the drawbacks,
how to do it properly and why every good rider should learn how to trail brake. Everything
you need to know about trail braking, with examples and exercises. Let’s go!
First of all – I’m going to try and sell you the idea of trail braking. Why should you bother to
learn it in the first place? That’s because trail braking can solve a lot of possible
cornering problems for you. Knowing how to trail brake will massively improve your confidence in
corners in general, but it will be especially useful in special case scenarios, like when you
are going downhill on a winding road, or when you are going through decreasing-radius turn,
or when you are going through the blind corner and suddenly see an obstacle. In all such cases
trail braking can be a very useful tool which will make your riding much safer. And also it can help
you become faster in corners if you choose so, but that’s of course, optional. Sales pitch is over!
Now, what exactly is the trail braking and how is it different from simple braking
mid-corner? Trail braking originates from racing as a way of improving lap times,
so originally trail braking is not so much a braking technique, but a fast-cornering technique.
And it is not exclusive for motorcycles, it is being used in car racing as well. As opposed
to a more traditional method where we do all our braking before the turn, then entering
the turn and then accelerating as we see the exit, in trail braking we continue to brake as
we are entering the turn, gradually releasing the brakes as we increase the lean angle. For
track riding this gives several advantages: we are not losing any time in transition
phase – we are decelerating or accelerating the whole time, we can start our braking later,
by gradually releasing the brakes as we lean more, we are making the weight transition from the front
tire to the rear smoother, and by compressing our fork under braking we make the wheelbase shorter
and steering geometry steeper, which additionally help to lean a bit faster. Awesome, but there is
one tiny-tiny problem – it’s difficult! Trying to manage precise amount of braking power as
you lean your bike close to the edge of limit of traction for your tires requires a lot of
skill and practice. Being a bit too greedy with the brake can easily lead to a lowside.
Fortunately, in street riding we usually are nowhere near the limit of traction.
At least I hope so! So, the trail braking for street riding gets a whole new meaning.
It is no longer a way to take a corner as fast as you can, now it is more a way to greatly improve
safety. How it works on the road? Again, as opposed to a classic Slow, Look, Press and
Roll method, we are keeping some pressure on the front brake as we lean our bike. But since we are
not on a track now, and we don’t need to lean to a maximum lean angle – we can keep some amount of
brakes through the whole turn if we want. More so, we can modulate the amount of pressure on brakes
as we see fit. If at any moment of the turn we need to slow down more – for example, if there
is an obstacle mid corner – we can gradually increase the pressure on brakes and our bike
will slow down more. We can easily do it because we were pressing the front brake the whole time,
so we kept the front tire loaded and it had plenty of extra traction. That’s the main advantage of
trail braking over simple braking mid-corner. When we just brake mid-corner we have to make the whole
process – release the throttle, gradually apply brakes, wait for suspension to load,
wait for front tire to load properly and only then apply a significant braking force. On common road
bikes without hi-tec suspension and hi-performance tires it actually takes a significant amount of
time. With trail braking on the other hand as we go through the corner – we are already compressing
the suspension and loading the front wheel, so we can apply the front brake much more efficiently.
And we actually can apply surprisingly high amount of brakes due to the nature
of traction. It can be explained with a concept called the Traction Circle.
As we know, there is a maximal force in the contact patch of a tire which we can achieve.
It is limited by two things – the load on a tire and the coefficient of friction, which
in turn depends on the tire compound, pavement quality, temperature, etc. This force can be spent
to accelerate our wheel in any direction – we can open throttle and go forward, we can apply brakes
and slow down or we can lean our bike and turn left or right. Also we can do any combination of
all the above – we can turn and accelerate or turn and brake at the same time, to a degree. All these
possible actions form a circle which is called a traction circle. Anything outside this circle
will lead to a loss of traction, for example, if we brake too much, or lean too much – we lose
traction and lowside our bike. But anything inside this circle we can do. For example,
we can lean 50% and brake 50% at the same time – and we’ll be well inside the circle, so we’ll have
plenty of extra grip to spare. Just to have an idea of how much we can brake in the corner – if
we lean about 70% of maximal lean angle, we still can apply roughly about 70% of braking force
before we run out of traction. Of course, it’s all for ideal conditions, in reality we have to give
some safety margin, but it’s still quite a lot. This possibility to apply a braking force
mid-corner offers us a lot of options in case something goes wrong. For example,
decreasing radius turns, which a lot of people are afraid of – if we’re going through the turn
and realize that it becomes tighter and tighter – we can add more braking and loose speed. And
less speed means tighter turning radius, which is exactly what we need in this case.
Next good example would be riding downhill on a winding road. Again, a lot of people can
feel a little intimidated by this. With trail braking riding downhill is not an issue – we
can just add a little more braking, so our bike stops accelerating too much.
And another case which can be solved by trail braking is an obstacle mid-corner. Because in
street riding, we are not leaning to the edge of traction we still have a lot of traction
left for braking. So we can even stop mid-corner completely if we need to. We can add more and
more braking force as we bring our bike more and more vertical. In this case we will not go wide,
because as we are slowing down our turning radius decreases, so slowing down and standing up cancel
each other out and we end up with constant curve. So, as you can see, there is a lot of good stuff
we can do with the trail braking. Now, how to learn it in the safe environment and
hopefully without dropping your bike? There is only one way – practicing, with gradually
increasing the difficulty. And don’t worry, I’ll give you the exercises which you’ll be
able to practice almost anywhere, at any parking lot, you won’t need a track. Let’s start from the
easiest exercise, which will give you some idea of the finesse you need with the front brake.
And yes, by the way, for trail braking we mostly use the front brake, because when we brake we load
the frond wheel and unload rear, so the front wheel has much more traction. And with our hand
we can control the front brake much better than we control rear with our foot in a motorcycle boot.
Rear brake in trail braking on paved roads makes sense at slower speeds, like roughly below maybe
25-30mph, and it is mostly being used to smooth the jerking of the engine when we start to open
the throttle. I have a separate video about it, I’ll leave a link in the description. On higher
speeds the rear brake really doesn’t matter much, but when used incorrectly can lead to a highside.
Anyway, back to our exercise. To understand the amounts of braking which we will operate,
do this. Push your bike forward like this and start to apply the front brake
very slowly. At some point you’ll feel the resistance of your front
brake. This is about the minimal force which you will use for trail braking,
and you should be able to control your brake with such amount of force. If you can’t feel
it and grab the brake a bit too much – chances are you’re going to lowside you bike. Spend some
time developing a fine feel for your front brake – just enough to feel the resistance of the brake.
Then build yourself a 90 degree turn which you can comfortably enter at roughly about 25mph.
You can go faster if your parking lot is big enough, but around 25mph is usually enough.
Now do this – as you approach the turn do all the braking on a straight line like you normally do,
but as you lean the bike - don’t release the front brake completely – leave that very
small amount of the front brake which you had in previous exercise, all the way through the turn,
up until the moment you start rolling on the throttle. Repeat this several times, and as
you become more and more confident – leave a bit more and more front brake. You even can keep the
brake to slow down and stop your bike completely, just don’t forget to bring it to upright position.
After you get comfortable with this exercise do the same with 180-degree turn. Notice how
here I hold the brake up until the point where my bike faces the exit of the turn.
Only then I finally release it and start to open the throttle. Do the same thing – in this exercise
you teach yourself to trail brake up until you see the exit. This way later on the roads you
will never be surprised in a corner, you’ll always be ready to slow down and stop if it’s necessary.
With this exercise you can experiment quite a lot and eventually you’ll find
out that you indeed can leave quite a lot of brake even on rather high lean angles.
Just don’t try to do everything right away, take your time and learn gradually, don’t push it.
One more thing worth mentioning is when you start doing all this stuff on higher lean angles
and with more brake pressure, you’ll probably notice that your bike wants to stand up a little
bit under braking. Don’t worry, this is normal behavior, it happens because while in a corner
the contact patch of the front wheel is offset and the braking force in it starts to turn the
steering wheel, producing the effect similar to countersteering, which makes the bike to stand up.
You’ll not go wide though, because as we discussed earlier, even if your bike is standing up it also
slows down, so these two processes cancel each other and your line remains more or less intact.
The important part here is when you feel your handlebars starts to turn a little under
braking – don’t fight them too much, it’s normal. You can apply some amount of pressure on them to
make small corrections, but don’t resist them too much, because on high lean angles and with a lot
of braking you can lowside pretty easily. With some practice you’ll get used to it, but it’s
important that you practice in safe environment first, so you wouldn’t, you know, freak out,
run off a road and fall from a cliff somewhere. All right, I hope this video was useful. If you
think so – please put a like, so more people could watch it too! And be sure to check out
this video about braking technique, because if you master the straight-line braking you’ll
have much easier time learning trail braking too. Thank you for watching and have a nice day! Bye!