In today’s video we’ll dive into some advanced slow-speed riding techniques, which
I divided into 7 easy-to-follow steps.
Each step builds one upon other, and if you follow all 7 one by one – you will dramatically
decrease the chance of dropping your motorcycle on slow speed, reduce your turning radius,
so you can ride in much tighter spaces, and you will become much more confident on your
bike at slow speed, so you will never make silly mistakes like stalling on a traffic
light.
Also you’ll get deeper voice, bigger biceps and better erection.
But I don’t guarantee it though.
All jokes aside – we used this 7-step approach in our courses a lot, and once people start
to get all the theory behind it – they radically improve just in a couple of hours of practice.
Sounds great, let’s do it!
We’ll start with balance.
Balance on bike is not usually balance of your body, like let’s say balance of an
acrobat or a tightrope walker.
Balance on a motorcycle mostly comes not directly from you, it comes from motorcycle itself
and how you use its controls.
Let me explain what I mean by that.
Motorcycle itself, by design, has very good balance when it’s moving.
As long as it has some speed – it wants to stand up.
Look at this for example, you even can make an experiment like this yourself if you want
to.
You will find out that you have to apply some force to lean the motorcycle, it really wants
to stand up if you let it go.
And the faster the bike goes – the more it wants to stand up.
Now, we can use it for our slow speed riding too.
The idea is very simple.
When you are going too slow and feel like you are about to tip over – you just accelerate
very briefly and your bike regains its balance by itself.
It’s very important thing to understand – when your bike accelerates - it balances
itself, you don’t need to balance it with your body, you don’t need to dab your feet,
you don’t need to do anything – your bike will do everything by itself, all you need
to do – is to let it gain a little speed.
But there is a caveat.
For super-slow riding you can’t just open your throttle to accelerate.
First - any engine has some delay between the throttle opening and the moment when it
starts to deliver power.
And even this delay is very short, on slow speed it can be enough to not recover your
balance in time.
Second – at some point you may just need to go slower than your bike goes on idle.
And if you just try to use brake and slow down too much without using the clutch – at
some point you risk to stall your bike.
If your bike is heavy and you stall it in the middle of a u-turn, for example – you
will likely drop it.
To fix these 2 problems on slow speed we can use the friction zone technique.
With friction zone technique we can accelerate our bike not by opening the throttle, but
by releasing the clutch instead.
The main idea is that we keep the throttle slightly opened the whole time and we keep
the clutch partially pulled.
We don’t pull it all the way in and don’t release it all the way out.
Instead, we keep it released partially, and when we need to accelerate – we release
the clutch a little.
When we need to slow down – we pull it a little.
If we keep the throttle opened – we now have almost instant acceleration when we need
to.
There is virtually no lag in power delivery – as soon as you start releasing the clutch
your bike accelerates right away.
And obviously, since you don’t release the clutch all the way – you can’t stall,
as long as you keep your revs up.
With all that being said, what we do when we ride at slow speeds is when at some point
we lose the balance – we can just release the clutch a little and our motorcycle will
accelerate and stand up.
Easy, right?
You’ll never need to try to muscle your bike upright ever again.
You just move your fingers slightly – and that’s it, it’s in balance again.
Pretty good deal if you ask me.
But we can make it even better if we add some rear brake to the mix.
Now, there are a lot of instructors who teach to drag rear brake the whole time during the
slow speed maneuvers, but I personally don’t like it.
Dragging the rear brake the whole time overheats and wears out your clutch pretty fast, it
overheats the rear brake system, sometimes up to the point when it starts to boil, and
your engine has to work and produce more heat too.
For all those reasons I prefer using the rear brake just as addition to your clutch.
To slow down – pull your clutch in just past its engagement point, when it no longer
pulls you forward.
And additionally, you can add just a little bit of rear brake to slow down faster.
And when you need to accelerate and balance your bike – release the brake and release
the clutch a little.
I find it much better than if you just drag the rear brake for the whole time.
It takes like this much more time to learn it, but it’ll be much easier on your bike
clutch plates and rear brake.
As you can see, if you keep your throttle opened, work the clutch and add just a little
rear brake when you need to slow down – after some practice you’ll be able to balance
your bike pretty good on a very slow speeds without any problems.
Look closely – as soon as I lose balance – I regain it by releasing the brake and
clutch for a moment.
And just as bike regains its balance – I pull in the clutch and apply small pressure
on rear brake.
And that’s it, no need for anything else.
The best thing is that works not only on a straight line, but in corners too!
It’s just the same – if at any moment you feel like you are about to drop your bike
– just release the clutch a little and your bike will get its balance back.
You don’t need to actively steer, or try to outbalance your bike with your body or
anything else, no - just be completely relaxed and release the clutch – your bike will
do the rest.
But what if your bike doesn’t have clutch?
Hey!
We don’t take kindly to your types in here!
No worries, the basic technique is the same – you need to make little accelerations
when you lose the balance, but since you don’t have any clutch – you just have to do it
by releasing the rear brake while giving your bike a little throttle.
Yes, automatic clutch always pulls you forward, so you need to apply a lot more brake.
It’s not as good as on a usual motorcycle with clutch, but hey – you have to make
sacrifices somewhere, right?
DCT bikes are more difficult for slow speed riding, but are still capable to do it.
All right, now, when we understand balance – we can move on to understanding our turning
radiuses.
If you already feel overwhelmed a bit – don’t worry, it’ll get worse.
But with all seriousness – I understand it may seem like a bit too much theory, but
I promise you, once it clicks – as a rider you’ll just be on completely another level,
so bear with me.
It’s important to understand how your turning radius actually works and this is what most
new riders tend to get a bit wrong.
Turning radius of your bike depends on 2 things: how much the front wheel is turned and how
much your bike is leaned.
The more you lean the bike and the more you turn the handlebars – the tighter the turn
will be.
Now, what most beginner riders know, but often don’t consider is that for any given lean
angle front wheel turning angle also depends on your speed.
You probably noticed that on slower speeds your handlebars turn quite a lot, and when
you start going faster and faster – they turn less and less, until they become almost
straight.
And that’s what we can use to make our turns really tight.
Next time you are doing slow speed exercises – try to relax your arms as much as you
can and pay very close attention to how speed affects your handlebars.
As you pull in the clutch and start slowing down, you’ll feel how your handlebars start
turning themselves more into the turn.
And the faster you slowing down – the more they turn.
And vice versa – if you release the clutch a little, they will become straighter.
Once you feel that – making your turn tighter will become a piece of cake.
You just pull the clutch a little, apply small pressure on rear brake and your handlebars
turn more automatically, making your turn tighter.
It’s that easy, let your bike work for you.
But Andrei, why go through all this trouble when you can just turn the handlebars into
the turn?
Yes, you can do it, but as soon as you turn your handlebars without dropping your speed
– your bike will stand up because of countersteering effect.
And as you remember – you need both to turn handlebars AND lean your bike to have a tight
turn.
If you try to just turn your wheel more into the turn without doing anything else – you’ll
just end up with your bike going straight, which is not what you want.
So, when making tight turns try to change your turning radius by accelerating or slowing
down.
If you need your turn tighter – pull in the clutch, apply rear brake, slow down and
your bike will automatically make a tighter turn.
And to make turn wider – release the clutch and rear brake – and your bike will go wider.
Very simple.
Eventually, when you try to make your turning radius smaller and smaller, you’ll end up
in a situation when your handlebars are in a full lock position, when they can’t turn
any further.
As you remember, the front wheel of your bike constantly makes little self-steering to stabilize
the bike.
And when it goes full lock during the turn – obviously, it can’t do it anymore.
So at this moment you will probably feel that your bike is becoming very unstable and it’s
ready to tip over.
But don’t worry – your clutch is at rescue, as always – just release the clutch a little,
your bike will gain some speed, and, as we already know – this makes your front wheel
go straighter.
That’s one way.
But you can do even more.
When your handlebars go full lock and you feel that your bike is starting to go down,
you can start to release the clutch a little, but this time you are not keeping your arms
relaxed, but instead you are forcing the handlebars to remain at full lock position.
Your bike will instantly want to stand up, and the more you release the clutch – the
more it wants to stand up.
After some practice you will find just a perfect amount of clutch and rear brake to keep your
bike in full lock and you will be able to regulate the lean angle with your clutch.
On some bikes like cruisers with this method you can then easily achieve the state, when
you have the full lock and maximum lean angle.
And that means you get the smallest possible turning radius for your particular bike.
Another thing which affect your bike lean angle and therefore – your turning radius
is the counterbalancing.
Counterbalancing is a technique in which you place the weight of your body outside of the
turn, on top of your bike, to make it lean more.
And as we know – the more we lean the bike – the tighter the radius is.
The only catch here is that sometimes beginner riders tend to overuse this technique.
At slow speeds how much you turn your handlebars has much greater impact on your turning radius
than your lean angle.
Yes, if you lean your bike a lot and turn your handlebars to a full lock – you’ll
have an excellent tight turn.
But if you can go full lock and don’t lean your bike at all – you can still have pretty
decent turning radius.
Here is an example of how your body affects the turning radius.
As you can see – there is a difference, but it is not a night and day difference.
And keep in mind that this is very light bike, on a big heavy motorcycle the difference will
be less obvious.
So, my point is – don’t rely on counterbalancing heavily, treat it more like secondary option,
which is very useful, but not mandatory.
And the last thing, before we start a practice part – is our vision technique.
The way we use our head and eyes when doing slow speed riding greatly affects our performance.
Our natural instincts usually tell us to look down, just in front of our front wheel, or
look at the cones we don’t want to hit.
And that’s really just the most counterproductive thing we can do.
It will be much better if we use our vision to look for our path of travel in advance.
When riding a bike – don’t look down, look for your line instead, as far as you
possibly can.
More so, for better sense of balance, keep your head up and try to place your main vision
at some distant objects.
And meanwhile try to watch out for the cones and look for your line with your peripheral
vision.
This way you’ll start to train your peripheral vision in safe and controlled conditions and
you will be able to really rely on it for your daily riding.
If you have good, trained peripheral vision – you’ll have much, much better awareness
on the road, you’ll have complete picture of the current road situation and in case
of emergency you’ll have much less chance of target-fixation.
So, during your slow-speed training really pay attention to your vision, turn your head
and look for your line in advance and use your peripheral vision extensively.
Alright, now, when we got all the theory – it’s time to practice.
Almost all slow speed exercise will do for practicing, for example, we have 13 exercises
on playlist for our members – check it out by the way.
But the best exercise to illustrate all the stuff we talked about today is a circle exercise.
You can practice it with cones if you have them, you can use tennis balls cut in half,
or you can simply make circles without any markers if you don’t have them.
Let’s go!
Go on first gear on slow speed, approximately 5-7 miles per hour.
Start making a circle, at first you can do a pretty big one.
Keep your arms and upper body relaxed, remember to keep your throttle slightly opened and
regulate your speed with the clutch.
Try to turn your head at least 90 degrees.
Your brain will tell you to look straight at first, but don’t listen to it - try to
really turn your head and look across the circle.
It would be very good if you manage to not only turn your head, but also turn your chest
and shoulders into the turn.
It’ll put your arms in more natural positions and help you to turn your head even further.
Now try to slow down gradually by pulling in the clutch a little and applying very light
pressure on rear brake.
Pay close attention to what happens with handlebars.
If you keep your arms loose and relaxed – you’ll notice that your handlebars are turning more
and more into the turn.
And when you start releasing the clutch and rear brake – you’ll see how your handlebars
become straighter.
Try to experiment with the clutch while going in circle, and really get used to how your
front wheel responds.
Pull the clutch in more and more, until your front wheel turns to a full lock.
As soon as you reach full lock – you’ll feel that your bike starts to tip over.
As soon as you feel it – release the clutch a little and your bike will become balanced
again.
Now you just have to repeat this process over and over again.
Try to reach full lock more and more.
Eventually you’ll be able to go full circle with your handlebars at full lock position.
Your circle at this point should look like this: head turned at least 90 degrees, chest
and shoulders turned into the turn a little, arms and whole upper body should be relaxed.
You don’t need to actively steer, all the steering should happen automatically as you
accelerating or decelerating with your clutch.
If you use rear brake – use it very gently.
Try to keep your vision up, look far at the distance, don’t look down.
If at any moment you feel like your bike is going down – release the clutch a little
and release the rear brake.
If you manage to do everything right – soon you’ll be able to make very tight turns
on any bike, regardless of its weight.
And you’ll probably start to save some money on your footwear, since you will never have
to drag your feet ever again!
Very nice, now all we have left to do – is go over some typical mistakes, so you not
only know what to do, but also what not to!
First of all – pay attention to your vision.
A lot of times students tend to stare down under the front wheel.
Remember – there is nothing interesting there, you should look over your shoulder
at least 90 degrees and find your line in advance.
Second common mistake is when rider turns his head, but keeps staring down at the pavement.
Don’t do it – this way you’ll just have your head spinning.
Keep your chin up and look far at the distance, this way you’ll have much better feel for
balance.
If you choose to practice with cones, you may encounter the next mistake – turning
into the circle too soon.
If you enter too soon you may run out of space later.
To fit into the circle, you better track your front wheel alongside the cones for some time.
This way you will have more space inside the circle.
It may seem like unsignificant nuance, but actually if you get into habit of planning
your line in advance – it’ll come in very handy in your daily riding.
Next common mistake is when rider goes too slow and fears to lean the bike.
Remember – there is nothing to fear.
At any moment if you feel like your bike is going down – just release the clutch a little
and it’ll stand up.
As soon as you develop this habit – your fear level for dropping your bike will reduce
99% and will be almost completely gone.
Your clutch control is seriously one of the most important things for confidence on slow
speeds.
If you would like to know more about friction zone and how operate the clutch – here is
the video about that.
And here will be video on how you can avoid burning your clutch when practicing the friction
zone technique.
Well, I think that’s it for today, I hope you like these videos, and if you do – please
like and share them, and subscribe to the channel.
Hope to see you next time, Adios!