Riding Skills: Hard Braking
Apr 14th, 2009 by Leo
Let’s talk about braking. It’s so simple, and yet so hard. If you look at the acceleration times of mediocre riders vs. acceleration times of highly skilled riders, they are pretty much the same. Yeah yeah skilled riders will have a little bit of an advantage in terms of managing traction and shifting gears… but compare a squid vs. a pro rider in a rolling start (on liter bike) and they are pretty much neck and neck going in a straight line. Try that with braking (or cornering, but that’s another story) and you get vastly different results. Hard braking is, well…hard.
What makes braking so difficult? Most people with decent brakes on their bikes can get a sense for squeezing it to the threshold before it locks up, then ease up a bit. Most people can develop a pretty good sense of that. The hard part is getting your body locked on to the bike with your legs, so that you’re not holding on with your arms. You can’t threshold brake, and you certainly can’t hard-brake then swerve if your arms are locked up on the bars…and in city riding an emergency braking situation will probably require swerving around manhole covers or potholes…
How can I get better at this? The standard way is to find an empty street, make sure there are no cars behind you and practice your emergency braking coming up to a stop sign or light. The rule of thumb is if you ride at 50 you should practice emergency braking from 50, if you ride at 100 you should practice your braking from 100. And as you do, check the weight on your arms. You should be able to brake with just your right hand on the bars.
If that’s too easy, try this: go to a parking lot and do some figure eights. Only instead of the easy 8′s where you’re concentrating on just turning the bike, really roll on the throttle for the straight parts and use your front brake to slow down before dropping into the turn. If you’re really good with braking, you should be able to roll on the throttle half way or three quarters before braking and turning (depending on how big the 8′s are).
If there were only one skill that you could master on a motorcycle, I’d say forget the wheelies or getting your knee down, learn to brake hard under any condition, in any situation… Cheers!
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