Passes & Canyons Blog

Balance and shifting of weight are important at slow speeds.

I’ve had my V-Strom for a couple years now and while I’ve been off the pavement a number of times with it I really want to do so a lot more. Now, in previous years I have gone on some good rides in the dirt with Ron Coleman but we didn’t get out this year.

What we did do, though, was spend a little time in a nearby empty lot working on slow speed maneuvers. Ron has a lot more off-road experience than me and he figured he’d help me with my skills.

It turned out, however, that I actually am more advanced than he expected. He wanted to teach me about trail-braking and he started off by demonstrating. Now you try it, he said. So I did, going in tight circles and figure 8s and while I wasn’t as good as he was he immediately saw that I was no novice.

So, not to make assumptions, but you do know what trail-braking is, don’t you? If not you really ought to learn. It’s just a matter of revving the engine while pressing lightly on the rear brake as you make slow-speed maneuvers. Revving the engine bumps up the gyroscope effect of the engine, creating stability, while using the brake keeps you going slow. Done right you can move at walking pace and just walk around in circles or–more usefully–make a U-turn in a tight area.

But Ron was making his turns tighter than I was and that’s where he was able to teach me something. It was counter-balancing. Making those tight turns he didn’t just rev and trail-brake, he leaned way off the seat to the side away from the turn. The more you can lean the bike the tighter you can turn, but you don’t want to lean the bike so far it falls down. If you lean way off in the other direction your center of gravity remains stable and you don’t go down.

I’m accustomed to leaning in the turns at speed, but this is different. When racers go around curves you’ve seen them leaning way off into the curve, scraping knees and elbows. Same principle in the opposite direction. At speed like that the idea is to shift your weight off so the bike can stay more upright and not low-side on you. At walking speed you lean the bike, not your body, into the curve and shift your body the other direction to counter the weight of the bike.

So I tried it and sure enough, I could make those turns even tighter. I wasn’t really good at it and was a bit unsure, so I definitely need to practice. And I will. And I’ll become a better rider. Thanks Ron.

Biker Quote for Today

Straights are for fast bikes, turns are for fast riders.

Tags: motorcycle skills

This entry was posted on Monday, December 28th, 2015 at 10:50 am and is filed under Dirt biking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.