How to…Lift Your Bike Up
Aug 6th, 2008 by Leo
A couple of weeks ago during the MotoGP race at Laguna Seca, Casey Stoner…a brilliant motorcyclist, number one in the rankings, running 12 seconds ahead of everyone else, (while head to head with Valentino Rossi) managed to drop his bike at 5 mph in sand…
This just goes to show, it can happen to ANYONE. He then picked his bike up and finished the race in second place.
It’s VERY easy to drop your bike on gravel (or ice or snow or whatever) when you’re going slow. Especially when you’re going slow (or coming to a stop)…because the wheels aren’t moving fast enough to provide that gyroscopic effect that keeps the bike steady at speed. These sorts of accidents aren’t deadly – to anything except maybe one’s ego, but the key to recovering is being able to get the bike up quickly and ride off before anybody recognizes you.
Just one problem…motorcycles weight between 400 and 800 pounds, so unless you’re a weightlifter, you probably can’t just pick it up like a bicycle. How are you supposed to pick it up? The basic idea is you need to just lift the bike enough so that the wheels are touching the ground. Then the way you “lift” the bike is by pushing laterally into the seat making sure to use your leg muscles…
There are two methods people use, for heavier bikes (video above) you face away from the bike and lift it backwards. Here’s a step by step: Crouch down and
- Put one hand on the handlebar (that is closest to you),
- the other hand on the frame under the seat, and
- your butt in the area by the seat.
- Now squat down and lift straight up using your legs just enough so that you can put your butt in the seat. Once you can do that instead of trying to lift the bike, [5] push backwards into the bike with your butt, using your legs.
For lighter bikes and sportbikes, the principle is the same only instead of putting your butt in the seat you can use your arms and your chest to push forward into the bike (once the wheels are touching the ground) to tilt it upwards (See this second vid)
So there you have it. Hopefully you won’t need to know this any time soon! Cheers!
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