Hello and welcome to Simplified this is PowerDrift.
Simplified is a series that we do where we take complicated ideas and break them down
into something simple and today we're talking about how do you use your brakes.
But before we get into that, please do hit the subscribe button, the bell notification
icon and if you liked this video, please do like and share it with your friends.
So, the brakes, what most people don't realise about their motorcycles is that the most powerful
control on their motorcycle is not their engine, it's the brakes.
To put a number out of a hat, if you have a 40bhp motorcycle it probably has 80bhp brakes,
that's how strong they are.
Most motorcycle engines today will struggle to get to 1G of acceleration, that's 9.8 metres
per second squared, but most disc brakes today will easily achieve 1G if the grip levels are okay.
So, it is really important to figure out how to use the brakes and the reason why this
is important is because when you have a really powerful tool, then you need to learn how
to use it, or you will hurt yourself, your brakes are so powerful that using a lot of
force on the brakes is always going to cause problems.
To see what this means, take a pen, hold it as tightly as you possibly can and try to
write something on a piece of paper and you'll realise your handwriting has just gone to
like the dogs, right and the reason is, you're using so much force that it becomes difficult
for you to modulate.
So, the first thing you want to change about braking on a motorcycle, especially one with
disc brakes is instead of using four fingers to stop the motorcycle, you use two, if you
have really powerful brakes, use one.
The second thing you have to understand about a powerful control, especially this powerful
control, is that you can't really slam on them.
When you do this, what happens is that the brake absolutely locks the wheel instantly
and as soon as it does that, the ABS kicks in and unlocks the wheel and that means suddenly
you feel like I could brake a lot harder before ABS kicked in, but once the ABS kicked in,
the motorcycle just sort of runs on and ABS is making your stopping distances longer.
It is, but the problem is not the brakes, it's not the ABS, it's how you use them.
When you hit the brakes on a motorcycle, you transfer a lot of weight to the front of the
motorcycle, right and if you know what traction is like, put your hands together, they slide
easily, put them together with pressure and they don't slide easily anymore, that's traction.
As I load the front wheel harder, so let's say this is the ground and this is my front
wheel as I load this up, I get more and more grip and the idea that you want to use for
your front brake is, the more grip I generate by braking, the more braking I can use right
after that and you basically ramp the curve, so as you generate more grip, you can use
more and more braking, so in terms of suspension movement, a great braking manoeuvre should
be like it dips, dips, dips, dips, dips, dips and come to a stop like that, but if you do
this, the brake force comes on very strong, but the tyre doesn't have enough grip to deal
with it and therefore you kick yourself into ABS or if you don't have ABS, you have a crash.
So, how do you use the brakes absolutely right.
First, we have to eliminate the rear brake from the situation because remember, if I'm
transferring weight forward by using the brakes, what I'm also doing is unloading the rear
wheel, which means the amount of traction at the rear wheel is now coming down, if I
continue to use the rear brake heavily, either I will kick the rear into ABS, which is not
really a crisis but you will, it's inefficient, or you lock the rear wheel up, which again
you can recover from, it's not difficult to do as long as your vision is up there, you
will usually fall back into line, but it's inefficient, it slows you down
and it's just a waste of effort.
There are exceptions to this and we'll come to that last, so what you want to do is focus
entirely on the front brake and today's motorcycles go into a stoppie and what a stoppie means
is 100% of the weight of the motorcycle is on the front wheel, there is no weight on
the rear wheel at all and at that point you should be using 100% front brakes and 0% rear.
For most of us, in decent conditions, you'd use something like 80% front brake, 20% rear
brake, 70% front, 30% rear, on the racetrack, we don't use the rear brake almost at all
unless there is a stability issue with the motorcycle as we go into a corner, at which
point you might be using the rear brake just to settle the chassis a little bit and control
that movement, but you don't really use it to slow down the motorcycle a lot.
The manufacturers who'd like to err on the side of caution will always tell you to use both
brakes equally, that's a good starting advice, but as you learn to use your brakes better
you should be relying on your front brake more and more and more.
So what should you use the rear brake for at all?
The rear brake comes into play when traction is slightly dicey, so if the roads are sandy,
if there's water on the road, you want to use a lot more rear brake than you would otherwise.
If you have a pillion also, remember you've loaded the rear wheel with the pillion's weight,
then you can use a lot more to brake as well.
The reason why we say use the rear brake a lot more in these conditions is primarily
because of front wheel sliding out because of braking or otherwise is much harder to
save than a sliding rear wheel and therefore it is safer to err on the side of caution
and in the wet I will use almost 50-50 braking pressure, I will still rely on the front for
the maximum part of my braking, but I will bring a lot more rear into that picture.
So, in sum, you have to learn to use your brakes and the only way you can do that is
to practice.
I promise you, I've been riding the racetrack for I think 12 or 13 years now, braking is
still my weakest point, it is still the thing that scares me the most, the fact that they
decelerate so much harder than I can accelerate, that learning how to use that control is a
much more complicated skill for me.
So, how should you practice braking?
When I began, what I used to do is, on my commute, I identified stretches of road that
were always isolated, deserted, there was no traffic around and you need 50-100 metres
of space and you go into that place, check your mirrors once and ensure there's nobody
behind you and then do a panic brake manoeuvre.
When you do it the first time, what you are going to do is grab the brake like this, you
will kick yourself into ABS immediately and have a lot of trouble stopping.
What I want you to try the next time is to ease into the brakes and continuously and
gently increase the pressure on the brakes, as you increase the pressure, you increase
the grip level, you'll realise that your motorcycle stops a lot shorter and it should feel like
the suspension is compressing, compressing,
compressing, compressing and comes to a stop like that, that's what it should feel like.
The other thing that you need to know about brakes is that this is okay when you're stopping
the motorcycle and coming to a point of zero, but most of the time we use the brakes to
control the speed of the motorcycle as we go into corners, right, and at that point,
you don't want to let the brake off like a spring because what that actually does is
make the springs in the suspension work, so if I'm braking really hard and the front is
compressed and I let the brake off, the bike will basically jump up like this because the
pressure on the suspension releases and the spring starts to work.
When it does this, it's an unstable system and you will not be able to turn the motorcycle,
so what you want to do is brake, brake, brake, brake, brake, and then release the brake gently
allowing the suspension to have a controlled expansion rather than an uncontrolled explosion,
right, so that you can decide how the chassis feels when you turn it
and this is for beginner and intermediate riders.
Advanced riders may not let off the brakes even as they are turning the motorcycle because
the pressure on the front-end suspension compresses that, it creates a sharper motorcycle, a more
responsive motorcycle and we can use that to turn the motorcycle onto an even tighter
line if we need to. So, fundamentals of brakes, they are the most powerful control on your
motorcycle, do not be hamfisted with them, try to use two or one finger to use them,
try to learn to control the brake force.
If you do this, the ABS intervention will come very late and you'll have very, very
short stopping distances.
The only exception to using the front brake so heavily is in the wet or if there's sand
on the road and stuff where you don't want the front to wash out and you're okay with
the rear sliding a little bit, in most of the other situations the rear brake doesn't
really contribute much to the process of stopping a motorcycle hard.
But, when you're riding along normally and using the brakes only to control your speed,
remember not to let off the brakes like a spring, it will unsettle your motorcycle and
you'll have to wait for it to settle before you can do the next thing, so you do want
to control the brake on and you want to control the brake off as well.
Famous riders like Freddie Spencer would actually have the throttle on while they were releasing
the brakes so that the suspension could be controlled in terms of how much expansion
it has, so that they had the smoothest possible entry into a corner.
Thank you so much for watching, this is Simplified on PowerDrift.
Today we were talking about how to use the brakes, if there's more you'd like to discuss
on this, leave us a comment.
If there's other topics you'd like us to attack, leave us a comment as well and if there's
any other topic at all in the motorcycle universe that you'd like to discuss, leave us a comment
and we'll get right on it.
Before I leave you, I would invite you to do the usual thing, please hit the four buttons
for us, subscribe, the bell notification icon, like and share.
This video, I do think you should share with your friends because braking is the least
understood skill on motorcycles as mission critical as it is and that beggars belief
as far as I'm concerned and I'm hoping that this video will change things a little bit.
Thank you.