Works on a bicycle, too, so feel free to practice it there first.

There you go, you’ve mastered the art of the countersteer. Then go out on the road and start incorporating that into your riding. Ride along at 25 mph or so and give the bar on the inside of the direction you want to turn a little nudge. To do it, go practice in a big, empty parking lot. If it’s moving away from you, the corner opens up and you can begin accelerating. If it’s moving towards you, the corner is tightening. If that point is holding a steady distance from you, the corner is continuing at a constant radius.

In the absence of other visual references, simply look at the horizon point where the two sides of the road appear to meet. You’re in a blind corner, wondering when you can start getting on the throttle. Cross the two and you’ll be laying on the ground, watching your bike cartwheel through a gravel trap. As you near max brake, you also near max grip. The more you lean, the less you can brake and vice versa. Leaning and braking both require grip from the same, finite source. Trail braking will help you avoid that obstacle in a safe, fluid, smooth manner.īe aware of the grip a tire has available. That pays huge dividends on the road, where you often come around a blind corner to spot a patch of gravel or similar. Because the front suspension will already be compressed, the front tire’s contact patch already maximized, you’ll be able to use that brake lever to tighten or widen your line, without upsetting the bike. Blip The Throttle To Make Downshifts Smoother Barely enough to provide a little friction, just enough so you won’t coast if you were to pull in your clutch. To do it, don’t just stomp on the brake lever and hold it there, graze it with your toe and keep a minimal amount of pressure. But it really will help you eliminate wobbles and uncertainty at walking-pace speeds. Or maybe it's simply the added smoothness. Maybe that’s because it allows you to focus on only side-to-side movements, without backward and forward heaves. We can’t help you with the first three, but here’s a trick that’ll help make threading through cars less like walking a tightrope: drag a little back brake.ĭoing so smooths out power delivery and preps you for emergency stops, of course, but by pushing the front end down as you accelerate and easing the bounciness that occurs as you move between acceleration and deceleration, it also seems to help with lateral balance. Managing a heavy, unwieldy motorcycle while watching out for drivers and trying to figure out if your 'bars are going to fit between those mirrors ( You do lane-split, right?) requires complete attention, strong situational awareness, good hand-eye coordination and, sometimes, an extraordinary sense of balance. Picking your way through traffic at low speed is one of the hardest things we have to do as riders.

Line rider 2 tricks