My bike handling skills are rubbish
Discussion
Pravus1 said:
Very possible with the right tyre. PR3's, hornet, some s
t body position from thinking your going to crash and there you go.
I think you are confusing peg-down with knee-down somehow.t body position from thinking your going to crash and there you go.Or you have a Victory/Harley/Indian etc that probably touch down the left peg on the sidestand
I'm no Marc Marquez, more a cal crutchlow( 
)but after riding on the road for a few years I was never the most confident rider. I started doing trackdays and my abilities improved 10 fold after just 2 or 3 trackdays. This made a huge difference to my road riding too.
My advice would be do a novice only trackday and get out with an instructor. You WILL improve inside a couple of sessions with them. They are awesome fun too so either way it's money well spent.
)but after riding on the road for a few years I was never the most confident rider. I started doing trackdays and my abilities improved 10 fold after just 2 or 3 trackdays. This made a huge difference to my road riding too.My advice would be do a novice only trackday and get out with an instructor. You WILL improve inside a couple of sessions with them. They are awesome fun too so either way it's money well spent.
brill thread same boat here...
im even more crap now having amassed fewer than 1k miles under my belt with my bike progression being a suzuki ts50x to cagiva mito evolution 125 to r6 and 9 years later a ducati 748r
im scared ill bend it and i want to take it on a track to learn to ride in safe and guided environment but ill cry if i drop it
im even more crap now having amassed fewer than 1k miles under my belt with my bike progression being a suzuki ts50x to cagiva mito evolution 125 to r6 and 9 years later a ducati 748r
im scared ill bend it and i want to take it on a track to learn to ride in safe and guided environment but ill cry if i drop it
RC1 said:
brill thread same boat here...
im even more crap now having amassed fewer than 1k miles under my belt with my bike progression being a suzuki ts50x to cagiva mito evolution 125 to r6 and 9 years later a ducati 748r
im scared ill bend it and i want to take it on a track to learn to ride in safe and guided environment but ill cry if i drop it
Just get a hire bike, they are cheap enough and even if you wreck it the excess will be a lot less than the actual damage you could do to your own bike. Then once you're confident enough take your own bike on to see what it can do. Or even better do the Ron Haslam race school and borrow all their gear too so if you do bin it you haven't wrecked your own gear!im even more crap now having amassed fewer than 1k miles under my belt with my bike progression being a suzuki ts50x to cagiva mito evolution 125 to r6 and 9 years later a ducati 748r
im scared ill bend it and i want to take it on a track to learn to ride in safe and guided environment but ill cry if i drop it
RC1 said:
brill thread same boat here...
im even more crap now having amassed fewer than 1k miles under my belt with my bike progression being a suzuki ts50x to cagiva mito evolution 125 to r6 and 9 years later a ducati 748r
im scared ill bend it and i want to take it on a track to learn to ride in safe and guided environment but ill cry if i drop it
You're not alone, so don't worry.im even more crap now having amassed fewer than 1k miles under my belt with my bike progression being a suzuki ts50x to cagiva mito evolution 125 to r6 and 9 years later a ducati 748r
im scared ill bend it and i want to take it on a track to learn to ride in safe and guided environment but ill cry if i drop it
I'm quite handy on a bike, but nowadays I seem to always be worried about throwing it down the road (something that never worried me too much 25 years ago when I actually was throwing bikes down the road). I'm out on 4 wheels daily, sliding it about and not giving it a thought however.
'You can't fall off a car' is always in my head when I'm on the bike.
If the roads weren't so s
te and unpredictable I'd probably not need the codeine, but I've got traction control now so things are looking up.Once I've run it in, anyway.....
cmaguire said:
If you're not too far away I'll pop along to see you getting your pegs down in the wet.
+1I was thinking, years ago I couldn't get my GSXR600 K1s pegs down on a trackday on Supercorsas in the wet. I just rode to the edge of the sipes (which was obvious, looking at the tyres afterwards), trying to go beyond the sipes felt dicey as fkuk.
OP, what braking problems are you having? Some people love to brake hard as much as accelerate (I'm one of these people) and the myriad options you have on a bike (separate brake controls, body position, gears, handlebar inputs) makes it hugely involving.
Dragging my 'rubbish handling skills' thread up from the depths.
Skills are still poor but confidence is generally better. I've just taken the first steps to putting some of your erudite advice into practice. On Sunday I'll be doing a police BikeSafe course. I know it's not designed to address my specific handling skill shortcomings but I'm hoping it'll provide plenty of good advice and bolster my confidence on the road. I'll report back next week.
Then I've got my first track day booked at Brands in June. I've included a tuition session with this and I'm really hoping that this is where I'll learn and improve. I'm going to use my own bike ('06 CBR600RR) , which I'm apprehensive about dropping, but hiring a bike is prohibitively expensive, so I'll have to try and be careful. Easier said than done.
Any advice ahead of the BikeSafe course appreciated.
Skills are still poor but confidence is generally better. I've just taken the first steps to putting some of your erudite advice into practice. On Sunday I'll be doing a police BikeSafe course. I know it's not designed to address my specific handling skill shortcomings but I'm hoping it'll provide plenty of good advice and bolster my confidence on the road. I'll report back next week.
Then I've got my first track day booked at Brands in June. I've included a tuition session with this and I'm really hoping that this is where I'll learn and improve. I'm going to use my own bike ('06 CBR600RR) , which I'm apprehensive about dropping, but hiring a bike is prohibitively expensive, so I'll have to try and be careful. Easier said than done.
Any advice ahead of the BikeSafe course appreciated.
I haven't read the history on this thread. It happened while I was on holiday last year and I don't fancy catching up on 5 pages of posts.
Your problems are all very easy to solve ... by simply looking further down the road. You're not looking at the vanishing point thus a constantly trying to "catch up" with things as they happen. Looking further will allow you to see things sooner, giving you longer to prepare thus handle them better.
Ask your BikeSafe assessor about looking at the vanishing point, then concentrate on doing what they say. the improvement will be almost instant.
Your problems are all very easy to solve ... by simply looking further down the road. You're not looking at the vanishing point thus a constantly trying to "catch up" with things as they happen. Looking further will allow you to see things sooner, giving you longer to prepare thus handle them better.
Ask your BikeSafe assessor about looking at the vanishing point, then concentrate on doing what they say. the improvement will be almost instant.
Dick Seaman said:
I'm going to use my own bike ('06 CBR600RR) , which I'm apprehensive about dropping, but hiring a bike is prohibitively expensive
Are you sure about that? smallboy rent 600's for £240/day, it might seem a lot but that gets you on a newish bike with new tyres and tyre warmers, plus full support and all you have to do is turn up, your maximum liability is £500 if you turn the bike into a ball of scrap, seems cheap to me compared to potentially trashing your own bikehttp://www.smallboytrackbikes.co.uk/our-service.ph...
Jazoli said:
Dick Seaman said:
I'm going to use my own bike ('06 CBR600RR) , which I'm apprehensive about dropping, but hiring a bike is prohibitively expensive
Are you sure about that? smallboy rent 600's for £240/day, it might seem a lot but that gets you on a newish bike with new tyres and tyre warmers, plus full support and all you have to do is turn up, your maximum liability is £500 if you turn the bike into a ball of scrap, seems cheap to me compared to potentially trashing your own bikehttp://www.smallboytrackbikes.co.uk/our-service.ph...
I am keen to use my own bike though, I want to learn what it (specifically) can do and gain confidence from that. Think I'll take the risk, fingers crossed and try to take things fairly easy.
black-k1 said:
I haven't read the history on this thread. It happened while I was on holiday last year and I don't fancy catching up on 5 pages of posts.
Your problems are all very easy to solve ... by simply looking further down the road. You're not looking at the vanishing point thus a constantly trying to "catch up" with things as they happen. Looking further will allow you to see things sooner, giving you longer to prepare thus handle them better.
Ask your BikeSafe assessor about looking at the vanishing point, then concentrate on doing what they say. the improvement will be almost instant.
Thank you, I'll do thatYour problems are all very easy to solve ... by simply looking further down the road. You're not looking at the vanishing point thus a constantly trying to "catch up" with things as they happen. Looking further will allow you to see things sooner, giving you longer to prepare thus handle them better.
Ask your BikeSafe assessor about looking at the vanishing point, then concentrate on doing what they say. the improvement will be almost instant.
If it's not too late . . . as suggested above look where you want to go, keep your head up and then try to practice one or two things at a time.
Trying to remember and practice everything in twist of the wrist or police motorcycle roadcraft is impossible so choose one thing to get right, such as road position. Read up on it, practice it for a few days until it becomes more natural, then move onto the next thing. There are only 4 things which are important - apart from looking where you want to go, they are road position, gear, speed and acceleration. If you practice those one at a time and get them right, you'll find your natural speed and cornering ability will improve dramatically. It won't be difficult to corner, it will just flow and you'll really enjoy it.
Trying to remember and practice everything in twist of the wrist or police motorcycle roadcraft is impossible so choose one thing to get right, such as road position. Read up on it, practice it for a few days until it becomes more natural, then move onto the next thing. There are only 4 things which are important - apart from looking where you want to go, they are road position, gear, speed and acceleration. If you practice those one at a time and get them right, you'll find your natural speed and cornering ability will improve dramatically. It won't be difficult to corner, it will just flow and you'll really enjoy it.
I am also a new rider. With cornering, I like to consciously counter steer. So if I'm going into a rightward bend, I will be consciously pushing the right hand bar and pulling on the left side bar. People seem to differ on their approach to counter steering, but for my brain, doing it in a conscious way feels the most controlled and satisfying.
Might be stating the obvious, and my skills are st too, but, approaching that rightward corner (generally speaking) :
- ease off the speed in the approach,
- drift over towards the left a little to increase visibility,
- set your attention around the bend,
- consciously employ counter steering to induce your lean,
- accelerate through the bend.
One thing I've learnt, although it's difficult to put into effect without practice and confidence, is that if you've gone in too quickly, it is better to hold your nerve and keep leaning. Releasing throttle if necessary but maintaining your lean. Grabbing the brake and going up right is the last thing you want to do in that situation, although your intstint may take you there.
Jusy keep riding. 5000 miles isn't actually that much. There is the time factor too. After 10,000 hours you'll kick ass.
Might be stating the obvious, and my skills are s
t too, but, approaching that rightward corner (generally speaking) :- ease off the speed in the approach,
- drift over towards the left a little to increase visibility,
- set your attention around the bend,
- consciously employ counter steering to induce your lean,
- accelerate through the bend.
One thing I've learnt, although it's difficult to put into effect without practice and confidence, is that if you've gone in too quickly, it is better to hold your nerve and keep leaning. Releasing throttle if necessary but maintaining your lean. Grabbing the brake and going up right is the last thing you want to do in that situation, although your intstint may take you there.
Jusy keep riding. 5000 miles isn't actually that much. There is the time factor too. After 10,000 hours you'll kick ass.
I did the BikeSafe course a couple of years ago on my Hornet and thoroughly enjoyed it.
I've got a bigger bike now and I have booked another BikeSafe day for July: I'm relatively new to biking and only do about 2500 miles a year but I found after perhaps two years my cornering confidence improved markedly and I started to really like roundabouts......
But after three years my corner lines are still not as good as they should be - I know all the theory but putting it into practice consistently still eludes me and I'd like to do the IAM course if I can find the time.
I've got a bigger bike now and I have booked another BikeSafe day for July: I'm relatively new to biking and only do about 2500 miles a year but I found after perhaps two years my cornering confidence improved markedly and I started to really like roundabouts......
But after three years my corner lines are still not as good as they should be - I know all the theory but putting it into practice consistently still eludes me and I'd like to do the IAM course if I can find the time.
Must admit I'm a bit dubious about some IAM bike groups approach to cornering. When I did some observed runs with my local group the observers went as close as they could to suggesting I slowed down less for bends, fine perhaps I'm overcautious. Though another associate reported the same thing and said that when he asked 'But what if there's an obstacle just out of sight?' the observers reply was 'but what if there isn't?'.
But each monthly started with 'announcements' that included a list of members that had accidents in the previous month, often including some quite serious injuries. These were more often than not single vehicle cornering accidents but there didn't seem to be any attempt to look for a pattern or even acknowledge that avoiding such incidents was the purpose of the group.
OK it was a very large group, but I when I was briefly involved (stopped because my bike blew up) with Essex IAM in the 90s, there was just one occasion when a member had an accident. Not her fault, T boned by someone pulling out of a driveway, but it was clear from the way it was spoken about that for a member to crash was highly unusual.
But each monthly started with 'announcements' that included a list of members that had accidents in the previous month, often including some quite serious injuries. These were more often than not single vehicle cornering accidents but there didn't seem to be any attempt to look for a pattern or even acknowledge that avoiding such incidents was the purpose of the group.
OK it was a very large group, but I when I was briefly involved (stopped because my bike blew up) with Essex IAM in the 90s, there was just one occasion when a member had an accident. Not her fault, T boned by someone pulling out of a driveway, but it was clear from the way it was spoken about that for a member to crash was highly unusual.
I found my local IAM a waste of time with the observers being more interested in themselves than the associates. I had zero feedback (verbal or written) so have not bothered with any other rides. I found the BikeSafe course to be very enjoyable and valuable and will probably do another one of those instead.
sooty61 said:
I found my local IAM a waste of time with the observers being more interested in themselves than the associates. I had zero feedback (verbal or written) so have not bothered with any other rides. I found the BikeSafe course to be very enjoyable and valuable and will probably do another one of those instead.
As with any club style organisation, its all down to the people. I found IAM stuffy and regimented in the 90s. For the last 8 years been in RoSPA, the local instructors are down to earth bikers, people who I could go for a ride out and coffee with regardless of the training. Both organisations are charities, but IAM appears to be a lot more expensive.The local RoSPA guys are ex Police and do the local Bikesafe courses too. The local IAM group I have seen out in formation in their matching dayglo outfits with 80% of them on BMW GS
Im sure not all IAM group areas are like this, you just have to do your due diligence first before you choose any to join
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