Riders can be fast and safe; the two are not mutually exclusive. Today we're going
to cover the top seven tips to becoming a faster, safer rider.
Hi, I'm Dave with CanyonChasers dot net. Do you want to be a faster rider but at the same time you
don't want to crash. Or maybe you have crashed and now you get a little bit
nervous when the speeds kind of come up. Or maybe you're just getting tired of
not being able to keep up with any of your riding buddies and being the last
person to pull into the gas station. So here's our top seven tips on becoming a
better, faster, safer rider; and by better we mean not falling down. Because when it
comes to street riding, getting there is mandatory. Getting there first is optional.
It sounds so basic but if you want to be a faster, safer rider, the
first step is to make sure that your bike is in tip-top shape. That means you
need to have fresh tires, that match, fresh brake pads and your brake fluid
needs to be clear. Not all black and murky. No leaking fork seals, and your
chain needs to be well lubed and adjusted. If you're on a nappy, poorly maintained,
clapped-out motorcycle, there's no way you're gonna' be a safe rider.
Have you ever held on to a baby bird? No? Have you ever opened a Capri-sun?
You know the moment when you put the straw into the packet? That's how tightly you should be
hanging onto your handlebars. When we hold on tight, we lose fine motor control,
our arms get stiff, our shoulders get stiff, and it even makes it hard for us
to turn our head and look through the turns. If we can't hang on to the
motorcycle with our hands. How do we hang onto the bike? Well, we use our legs;
the same way you would hang onto a horse.
We squeeze our knees and legs against the gas tank and that frees up our upper body
to stay relaxed and deal with the motorcycle much more efficiently.
Do you know when the first motorcycle race took place?
The moment the second motorcycle was built. It's kind of ingrained into motorcycle culture.
[grunting]
The need to keep up or the need to be first is actually a recipe for accidents.
When riders start traveling at speeds faster than they are comfortable going,
they start making more and more mistakes, and their riding gets exponentially worse.
We've seen riders go from riding beautifully to riding just the opposite of that
just by increasing their pace by a few miles an hour.
Twisting the throttle is easy any; monkey can do that.
A willingness to twist the throttle doesn't make you a fast rider.
Your bike might be fast, and you might be willing to take more risk
than any of your riding buddies, but that doesn't make you fast.
We all want to be faster riders, but what is faster anyway?
Faster as compared to what? A brand new MSF graduate?
Valentino Rossi? The rider you were ten years ago?
Don't make faster a goal. That's not the objective.
Speed is a byproduct. Going fast.
But remember, the car is you.
You are the the car.
Okay?
Don't ride beyond your ability, or go faster than you feel
comfortable going. Don't let good riding technique go by
the wayside out of the desire to keep up with that guy in front of you.
The guy that's going faster may not be a better rider, they just might be willing to take
more risk than you're willing to take. I would much rather ride with a slower
rider, who rides within their limits, than to ride with a faster guy that's
taking lots of risks, any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
All the time working with students
I'll see them completely screw up a section of the racetrack
and when I ask them about it, often times they'll say
"Oh, well I got off line and I couldn't figure out how to get back on line."
Do you remember that movie, The Matrix, when Neo is just starting to figure things out?
Do not try and bend the spoon.
That's impossible.
Instead, only try to realize the truth.
What truth?
There is no spoon.
It's the same thing here, only there is no line.
When we talk about "the line", we're using it to describe where we've been
It's not a planning tool to identify or define where we want to go.
It's not like the video games where there's that green line on the track that turns orange
if you're going a little too fast, and red if you're going way too fast.
In the real world, there are lines all over the place. There's cracks
and seams in the asphalt, or those beloved tar snakes.
None of them help us get through the corner.
What we do have is we have is entrances, apexes and exits
all of which can be identified and defined.
The entrance is the beginning of the turn, it's where we tip in.
The apex is the point where we're closest to the inside of the turn,
and the exit is the point where the motorcycle is straight up and down again.
As you enter every turn, enter with a plan.
Think ahead and identify your tip-in point. Typically it's going
to be pretty far to the outside of the turn so that affords you a lot of extra visibility
and then we want to stay wide and wait for our apex. Our apex is
typically going to be about 2/3, sometimes even 3/4, of the way through the turn.
And then once we find our apex we can look for our exit,
and only once we can see the exit of the turn
do we want to get back on the throttle and start accelerating.
if you find yourself running wide on corner exits, that means you apexed too soon.
Try moving your apex later and later into the corner,
until you are no longer running wide.
Why do so many riders hang their butt out of the seat?
And why does so many other riders give advice to tell people to hang their butt out of the seat?
Well, it's actually an antiquated riding technique back from
the days of noodley, steel frames and bias ply tires.
But as frame technology has improved and
even more importantly as tire technology has marched on
this ass-off-the-seat riding technique has become ineffective,
and may actually increase rider risk.
One of the big problems with this technique is that it
disconnects the rider from the motorcycle, so that
if you hit a big bump, you can actually fall off the bike.
The other problem with this technique is
that riders tend to hang onto the handlebars tighter, and so it pulls their chest
and head up above the gas tank, which increases the motorcycles lean angle,
which increases the level of risk for a given rate of speed.
But let's back up a second. Why do so many riders hang their butt off the seat?
In many cases, it's because they want to drag a knee,
and if that's your goal,
getting your butt way out of the seat will help you put your knee on the deck.
But if we want to be faster and safer, then we need to approach this a little differently.
The real reason the pros hang off the bike is to reduce lean angle so that
they have more traction. And as it were, the best way to reduce lean angle is by
where you place your head and chest, not your ass.
We want to work on getting our head down and to the inside of the bike.
As one of the most influential riding coaches in my life has always said,
let the corner come to you.
a corner isn't something to be attacked and dominated, it's the best part of riding.
It's a partnership. We want to let it flow through us and bind us together...
It surrounds us and penetrates us.
it binds the Galaxy together
So yeah, be patient. let the corner come to you.
There's actually an old racing adage that goes;
The fastest riders use their brakes the most.
What do you suppose that means? Do you think that means they brake really
hard at the very last second? Actually, braking really hard at the last second
is a racing technique and it's extremely risky. That's why watching
motorcycle racing is so exciting. It's also why
one of the most common single-vehicle motorcycle crashes
happen at the beginning or the middle of the turn.
It's from entering turns too fast.
"The fastest riders use the brakes the most" means
fast riders go to the brakes early and lightly and carry them...
carry the brakes for a long time.
If you brake to 99% of your braking pressure at the last second,
and that turn, turns out to be tighter than you anticipated,
what options do you have?
But if you brake early, and longer, and lighter, for a
longer period of time, and that turn turns out to be tighter than you
anticipated all you need to do is add a little bit more brake pressure.
Or if the turns not as tight as you anticipated you can ease off the brakes a little bit.
You have way more choices available to you, if you go to the brakes early, light
and carry the brakes for a long time.
Entering turns is far riskier than exiting turns, so be conservative with
your corner entrance so you have more left over to accelerate hard out of the turn.
You should always come out of every turn faster than you went into it.
This is the golden rule of the fast and safe motorcyclist.
Slow hands make fast riders.
And the only way to have slow hands is to have a lot of visual lead.
When we look down at the ground our sense of speed is high,
so our anxiety is high. But when we look off in the distance our sense of speed is lower
and our anxiety is lower, and we have a lot more time to deal with things as they come towards us.
I know, I know... A lot of us, our greatest fear is gravel in the corner so
we tend to keep our focus down so that we can see the dirt. But the problem with
that technique is if we're looking down for it, by the time we see it it's kind
of too late we have very few choices left to us. But if we look further down
the road, we want to be able to see that gravel as soon as humanly possible so we
have the greatest amount of time to deal with it. The further ahead we look the
easier it is for us to have nice slow hands, and slow inputs, and slow inputs
are less likely to upset the chassis or the grip of the tire.
If there's only one thing you take away from this video let it be,
looking further ahead, slow hands make fast riders; And visual lead. Nothing will
benefit your riding more than a great visual lead. Thanks so much for watching,
if you would like us to discuss any of these subjects in greater detail, leave a
comment below and we might dedicate an entire video to just one of these
techniques. Be sure to check out our YouTube channel,
or CanyonChasers dot net for more great content.