You loved our “Seven Tips to be a Faster Safer Rider” so we’re back with Seven
more tips to be a faster, safer rider!
Hi, I’m Dave with CanyonChasers.
Riders can be fast and safe; the two are not mutually exclusive.
So here are seven more tips on being a better rider
and by “better” we mean “not falling down.”
Because when it comes to street riding, getting there first is optional
but getting there in one piece is mandatory.
You’ve been riding for a few years.
Maybe even done a few track days.
Maybe you’ve been riding for 20 years or more.
You’ve got this!
Or do you?
It’s not uncommon for “experienced” riders to say they don’t need to take a
course, or they don’t think they would benefit from some track time because they have
20 years of experience.
Yet, I see them ride and I wonder how on earth they have survived this long.
I wonder, does this rider have 20 years of experience,
or one year of experience repeated 20 times?
Rust never sleeps.
Entropy is real, and we see it in every facet of our lives.
You reach your goal weight, but if you don’t stay on top of it, you start putting the weight
right back on.
- You only live in that impeccable shape for maybe 24 hours.
It’s like an orchid that blooms and dies on the same day, you know?
It take care and concern and water and the perfect amount of sunshine for six months
and it’s just… and you take a selfie.
-The exact same thing happens with our riding.
If we wish to be the best riders we can be, we would be well advised to constantly be
working on improving our riding.
There isn’t a day I go out on the bike when I don’t decide, before I even leave the
driveway, what skill I plan on working on today.
Should I focus on keeping my head and eyes up?
Should I work on being smooth and progressive with my brakes?
Should I emphasize delaying and defining my apexes?
This is even more important to keep in mind when we’ve spent any time off the bike.
Even if you’ve only been off the bike for a few wintery months, your riding skills have
suffered, not to mention that car drivers have grown accustomed to not seeing motorcycles.
To be the best riders we can be, we must remain vigilant.
Going fast on a motorcycle is the simplest thing.
It’s not hard to twist a throttle, and as a community, we’re good at turning on the go fast.
but despite how much horsepower our bikes produce, the brakes are the most powerful
tool you have at your fingertips.
If we want to become fast and safe, then the goal is to become a master braker.
The vast majority of the people leaving comments on our videos are great.
Our little community is super cool especially compared to a lot of other YouTube comment sections.
But in reading through those comments, especially our trail braking video, the most misunderstood
component is our brakes.
Particularly, the front brake.
A lot of the thinking is that because the rear tire is bigger, it has a bigger contact
patch and therefore provides more grip.
Physics tells us this is not the case.
So, if you think back to High School, you may have been taught Amontons Laws.
The force of friction is directly proportional to the applied load.
And: The force of friction is independent of the apparent area of contact.
But what does this mean?
Well, in simplest terms, science says weight determines how much grip we have, more than
the size of the contact patch.
So, here’s part two.
What happens on any vehicle when we slow down?
Well, weight shifts to the front.
A lot of the braking related crashes we’ve seen have come from riders getting scared
and grabbing or stabbing at the brakes.
Without any weight over the front tire, it is likely to lose traction.
And this is why so many of us are shy about the front brake.
A saying you hear often in the racing world is “wait for the weight.”
And it works everywhere; If you are doing an emergency stop, or trail braking into a
decreasing radius, downhill corner, we need to wait for the weight to shift onto the front
tire, so that there is adequate friction to keep the tire stuck to the road.
As that weight shifts onto the front tire, it also deforms the tire and the contact patch
gets even bigger.
As opposed to what's happening to the rear tire; more weight shifts away from the rear
tire and it’s contact patch gets smaller.
So as you go out on your next ride, keep this phrase rattling around in your head.
When it’s time to slow down; wait for the weight.
Squeeze that brake lever slowly, and progressively, wait for the weight to shift onto that front tire.
Do as one very wise seven year old rider once said to me; Don’t surprise the tire.
One Christmas, when I was a kid, I was watching my mom prepare the Christmas ham and before putting it
into the oven, she cut off both ends.
Which seemed kinda’ odd to me so I asked why.
She said she’s always done it this way because it’s the way her mom did it.
I continued, but why.
Mom didn’t have an answer.
So later that night she called grandma, her mother, and asked.
The reason why grandma cut the ends off the ham?
The only pan she had at the time was too small, so the only way to get the ham to fit in to
the pan; cut off the ends.
We need to be inquisitive and adaptable.
Just because that's the way it’s always been done doesn’t mean it’s the best way
to do things.
In fact, motorcycling has seen a dramatic shift with data logging which has led to a
much more complete understanding as to how a motorcycle works the way it does.
A lot of programs, and a lot of well-intentioned riders coach based on how they ride, which
may not be the best way to ride.
Think of all the really awful advice you may have heard over the years.
Never use the rear brake, you’ll high-side.
Never use the front brake, you’ll flip over the handlebars.
If things get scary, lay ‘er down to avoid a crash.
So for us, this means, if we want to become the best riders, we need to be skeptical.
Perusing the internets, we read all manner of crazy advice, and some of it sounds really
convincing, but when put under more intense scrutiny, a lot of it simply doesn’t hold up.
Verify everything.
Which is why we always try to attribute and provide sources in the description.
Motorcycles and jazz have a lot in common.
If you like jazz, I’m sorry, but I dare you to disagree with what I’m about to say.
As a matter of fact, if you do like Jazz, I’m willing to bet you like it for a lot
of the same reasons you love motorcycles.
Okay, so where am I going with this?
Jazz is unpredictable, you think you know the melody, the pace, the rhythm, the beat,
you’re singing along to the chorus and just when you think you got it …. BAM!
It completely changes.
- Jazz is stupid.
I mean just play the right notes.
- How different is a good motorcycle road?
Its tipping left and to right, the asphalt is smooth and flowy…
You are getting into the groove.
You’re feeling it…
- Huh, I could get used to this.
- And then, as you tip into a sweeping left hand bend ... BAM! a downhill button hook
to the right.
True story: A buddy of mine on a mellow, sweeping road, charged into a sorta’ blind, off-camber, or
fallaway, corner, panicked, stabbed the brakes and totally augered in.
His response?
Stupid road.
It wasn’t a stupid road.
You can’t assume what's around the next corner based on the last ten corners.
You can’t assume whats around a corner based on the last time you went around it.
Don’t expect any road to be a Taylor Swift song with catchy melodies and a hook that
makes you sing it in the shower.
- [singing] She wears short skirts, I wear t-shits
- I mean, it might be, but more likely it’s going to be a Miles Davis jam session.
- It’s conflict and it’s compromise.
And it’s just…
It’s new!
Every time!
It’s brand new every night.
It’s very, very exciting!
- If this explanation causes you to like jazz, again, i’m sorry.
Tires are what connect you to the road.
They are an expensive consumable, but equally critical.
We’ve seen so many crashes that could have been avoided if riders would have taken better
care of their tires, or simply replaced them sooner.
So, what are the tire rules?
First, buy a quality tire gauge and check your tire pressure regularly.
Run your tire pressure according to the information listed in your owner's manual.
And keep in mind that most manufacturers are going to give you cold pressures, meaning
that you want to check pressure before riding on the tire and generating heat.
Second, replace them in pairs, or at the very least run matched sets.
We go into a lot of detail about why this is important in our video specifically about tires.
Third, get a quality tire gauge and check your tire pressure regularly.
You should be able to tell someone your tire pressure with a less than one-percent margin
of error at any given moment.
And finally, when in doubt throw them out.
So, you are not sure if that newish tire will last that ten day road trip but to save some
cash, you head out anyway.
But the tire wears into the cords six days later and now you lose an entire day or more,
of riding as you try to find a motorcycle shop in whatever rural town you happen to
be in, then you get to pay “market price” for a twelve year old supersport tire.
Not only do you lose time riding and probably had to cut your planned route short, you paid
out the nose for a tire that you’d never have chosen for your bike to begin with.
Or what about the guy who thought he could do one more track day on an pretty tired set
of race tires on his ultra-low horsepower SV650.
The rear tire slid out exiting a slow, mellow corner and the end result was a high-side.
When you amortize tires over how long they last, he was saving about $40 to get one more
day, and it cost him about $1000 in damages including needing a new helmet, not to mention
all the bruises.
Take care of your tires.
They are your first defense against falling.
You may be able to save a few bucks but it may cost you a grand, or even worse, an injury.
If you live in America, even something as simple as a collar bone can cost you upwards
of $20,000.
Spending money on tires will end up saving you money in the long run.
Look, it happens to all of us, a tire wears out faster than expected and we're caught out.
But tires are a riskly place to scrimp.
As an added bonus, a little effort to manage tire pressures will extend the life of your
tires, offering you better grip while saving you some money and
extending the time between tire swaps.
When it comes to cornering, we see two rider mistakes over and over again.
The first, entering the turn too fast, which is why we go on and on about the value of
trail braking and even have an entire video about it, but the second mistake we see repeatedly;
Entering a corner shallow, or tipping in too soon.
Sure, I get it.
We’re excited for the corner, we don’t want to run wide, we like the whole leaning thing.
And it’s easy to get a little overly enthusiastic and start the turning as soon as possible.
So why should we enter a corner from the outside?
There’s a couple of reasons.
Cars lean the wrong way when they corner.
They lean to the outside, putting more weight on their outside tires.
This means that those outside tires are effectively scrubbing that outside path of travel
making it the cleanest part of the road.
If the corner has less than ideal visibility, you can enhance how far you can see into and
through the corner by entering from the outside path of travel.
And finally, motorcycles turn better and more efficiently when you delay your apex.
What is an apex?
In the context of motorcycling, the apex is where the motorcycle is closest to the inside
of the corner.
In most cases, you want to apex your corner about 2/3rds of the way through the turn,
and the only way we can really do that is if we stay wide for as long as we can.
Or, least until we can see the exit of the corner and identify where the apex is.
Only then do we want to move towards the inside of the corner, kiss our apex, and accelerate
out of the turn.
Oddly, because of how motorcycles like to turn, tipping in early, or apexing early,
or running a tight line through a corner makes it far more likely that we will do the thing
we are trying to avoid.
run wide in the later part of the turn.
By being patient, staying wide and apexing later not only are we are less likely to run
wide but we’re spending more time on the cleanest part of the road, and we’re in
better shape to stay on the asphalt.
Okay, so this one I kinda’ stole.
I had a student who was a Vietnam-era/Cold War fighter pilot.
- I feel the need, the need for speed.
Ow!
- When I was coaching him about the importance of looking ahead, he was “Oh yeah,
stay ahead of the aircraft.
Got it.”
And, as you expect, he went out and rode like a pro.
Later I asked him, “Stay ahead of the aircraft, what did you mean with that?”
An he said, you have to think and plan for where the aircraft will be in 30, 60 or 90
seconds from now.
Remember, he said, you are traveling at 700 to 1,500 miles an hour,
- Whoo!
- if you allow the aircraft to get ahead of you,
where you are trying to mentally catch up to the aircraft; that’s when pilots crash.
There’s wisdom in that, right?
So for us, stay ahead of the motorcycle.
We need to be thinking and planning and making decisions on where we will be in 30, 60 or
90 seconds from now.
We may only be going 70 miles an hour, but we’re also flying well below the hard-deck.
- The hard-deck for this hop was 10,000 feet.
You knew it.
You Broke it.
- Many riders we’ve worked with who’ve participated in advanced rider training, came
in hoping for a magic bullet, that one secret that will suddenly launch their riding to
the next level.
But this is it.
This is the secret sauce that you have to master if you want your riding to progress.
And remember, It’s not enough to just to keep our chin up or keep our eyes up.
We have to get our mind up and in front of the motorcycle.
We need to be actively planning the next step, every step of the way.
And you can tell when you get better at this because everything slows down and the world
becomes quiet and peaceful.
Every move you make, and every control input will be slow and precise.
it’ll go from a rock concert in your head
and become more like the music your mom listens to.
- [Singing] On any sunday, like the tail of a kite flying and dancing in the wind.
- But a warning; you’ll never master staying ahead of the motorcycle.
Work on this skill more than any other.
We’ve provided links to some great resources in the description, including two outstanding books.
Sport Riding Techniques, and Motorcycle Dynamics, which lays out all the physics and maths as
to the hows and the whys motorcycle behave the way they do.
If you’d like us to cover one of these topics in greater detail, please comment below.
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Thanks so much for watching and ride well.