We mention 'weighting and deweighting' the motorbike in lots of our training vids.
But it's such an important concept it deserves more attention.
It is a key concept for almost every facet of riding...
jumps, obstacles, ruts, clearing gaps, hill climbs, and finding traction.
In many cases, if you are sitting on the motorbike in rough terrain or tackling
obstacles, your body is just dead weight on the motorbike, and becomes part of the problem.
If you stand then weight and deweight correctly, your body weight becomes the solution.
Originally weighting and deweighting was a trials technique.
The rider's weight compresses the suspension to either hop the wheels,
get traction up a difficult climb, hop up large obstacles, wheelie, or clear gaps and ruts.
You push down on the footpegs to compress the suspension.
As it rebounds, you also take your weight off the footpegs to lighten the motorbike.
You can do a small jump on the footpegs first in order to get
some height then really jump hard on the footpegs.
If you combine this with clutch and throttle, you get a lot of
drive because you temporarily flatten the rear tyre and get a bigger tyre patch.
Timing this can be difficult at first, so often it's best to not worry about the clutch.
But once you get the hang of it, then start to combine a controlled
drop of the clutch too as this makes a big difference for more advanced techniques.
We've looked weighting and deweighting the motorbike for all sorts of techniques...
Many of these are low speed techniques, but weighting and deweighting is also very
effective at speed for jumps, gaps and ruts, and traction.
Weighting the motorbike at the right moment can dramatically increase how
far your motorbike jumps if you need to clear rough ground after the jump.
Conversely, if you deweight at the right moment, you minimise your air
time and can get the motorbike back on the ground and accelerating sooner.
If you see a gap or series of ruts ahead,
weighting and deweighting the motorbike allows you to clear these if you have enough speed.
With ruts, even if your wheels are hitting them you are less likely
to be deflected if your weight is not on the pegs.
Here you can see Chris Birch weighting and deweighting to get traction in loose terrain.
But you can also do this at speed, and particularly with hill climbs where
you can weight the motorbike on solid patches where you will get traction,
then deweight the motorbike over slippery patches, tree roots and ruts.
And remember if you are in rough terrain,
you can still weight your motorbike even if you are dabbing the ground with one foot.
Where possible, keep one foot on a footpeg so you can still
weight and deweight the motorbike as needed.
Remember start with easy practice drills on flat ground to get your timing right,
then work this into all the techniques mentioned. Good luck!