Finding confidence once youve passed..

Fowlersrs · World Chat Champion Joined: 30 Mar 2012 Karma :

Without pushing it too far..

Anyone got any advice for a recently passed DAS biker, im 26, on a Z750, its a very fast bike and it feels alot more useable and comfortable than the 500 I learnt on, but I find it hard deciding on riding lines and what speed to approach and carry into corners..

is this normal for new bikers, to be braking late before corners because I feel like im carrying too much speed into a corner or not the right line? I sometimes find I turn to tight into a corner and have to re-check my line....

Its also quite intimidating going out with sports bike riders who have alot more experience and disappear into the distance, I guess its paramount to remember that I dont play catch up...

Has anyone got any advice? Laughing

janner_10 · World Chat Champion Joined: 26 Sep 2011 Karma :

Lots of riding and lots of practise. Go at your own speed though, don't fall into the trap of keeping up with faster riders.

Also search for Twist of the Wrist on You Tube - some very informative videos.
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mysterious_rider · World Chat Champion Joined: 11 Sep 2010 Karma :

I think at the end of the day you just gotta take it steady. It was annoying for me at first seeing my friends sod off in front and leave me behind, but it will come to you. Some good advice helped me get better at judging corners, therefore being able to take them faster.

Basically if you're hitting a left corner stay on the RHS of the road, you can see further into the corner and out of the otherside, therefore you stop that jittery shit that happens if you stayed in the left where you are insure how steep it is. Laughing

Little bits like that, drill into your riding. Also they say after 10k miles your subconscious remembers all the little things and it comes naturally. I've done about 6k miles in four months I've owned a proper bike and I'm feeling pretty good on it.

I've still got a hell of a lot to learn, but my aim is to get really good in the twisties. Cool

Teflon-Mike · tl;dr Joined: 01 Jun 2010 Karma :

DAS Newbie... who how common.
Well you took a short cut, & jumped in the deep-end, being brutal, WHAT did you expect?
You've passed the tests to ride a big-bike, but you've done fuck all 'learning' to ride one.

Time on a tiddler is rarely wasted.

They are light, underpowered and unforgiving. Bike bikes have a lot of weight that gives them tremendous stability, which can damp a lot of clumsiness.

Time on a 125 would have given you a far more accute sense of precission, getting the bike balences, and being much neater and tidier picking your lines and holding them.

As well as laid down a foundation of core machine control, on which to build confidence.

Fast-Tracking that, you have got a pre-fab on soft soil; you will NEVER get the same level of confidence.

Advice? Get a tiddler, not necesserily a learner legal, but something smaller and lighter and less forgiving, and learn to rag the arse off it.

THAT is how you lay down the foundation confidence AND get the experience that lets you apreciate what a big bike like a Z750 is actually doing for you.

Twist of the Wrist?

I am sick and tired of hearing that bludy bit of media being promoted!

Keith Cody has some great ideas, but he teached ADVANCED riding, is an exponent of cheap tricks like counter-steering, and is significantly interested only in riding sports-bikes.

It is NOT even a good basis for learning 'advanced' riding!

And it is certainly NOT applicable here, with some-one who has just discovered what I am forever warning about with the perils of Intensive DAS.... hiiting the road, with less than a week of preparation, and finding yourself for the first time, ona very big, bery powerful, very fast bike, and WITHOUT the guiding voice of the instructor in your ear-ole, suddenly trying to remember everything you were tought, in an incredibly short space of time, AND trying to make sense of it!

You just have to RIDE, basically and figure it out. It WILL come... here and now, bike you have probably isn't doing you any favours, something you can 'rag' might.

I DONT even advocate further training at this juncture for simple reason that what you lack is confidence and confidence comes from experience, theory will only take you so far, you have to put it into practice and get that "Ah! SO THAT is what they meant!" proving what you were told, and putting it in its place, and THAT is what you dont get learning in a hurry via intensive DAS courses.

But you DO get from riding Tiddlers whose limits are far more restrictive and much more readily discovered.
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Alex_B · Brolly Dolly Joined: 15 Jul 2011 Karma :

Teflon, that is the best fekin post you've ever written and it wasn't even that long Laughing

I read a lot here, of yours and everyone else's and I don't always agree but that is really profound Thumbs Up

Trying not to sound patronising here as well Wink

Good one mate!
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HJM · Crazy Courier Joined: 15 Apr 2012 Karma :

tef must have a word document with all the perfect advice anyone could possible need. Razz

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Fowlersrs · World Chat Champion Joined: 30 Mar 2012 Karma :

Werny · Traffic Copper Joined: 02 Feb 2011 Karma :

Stay on the Zed. Ride it slowly, learn how the bike handles and learn what it can do.

Only time spent on it will get you used to it. Jump off it now, back onto a smaller one and all you'll do is get used to the smaller one. The zed will still scare you when you get back on it later.

You will only benefit from riding it, go and do it! A lot Mr. Green

shazza65 · Nitrous Nuisance Joined: 13 Apr 2012 Karma :

If you can, do the BikeSafe day (usually free) with your local police. That will give you some great tips. Or do some more training hours with a motorcycling school.
Failing all of these, because additional training can be pricey, just ride ride ride. Get some tips from local bikers.
You cannot beat experience, but if you want to be safe and learn correctly, I would suggest local lessons and the BikeSafe day.
Practice slow riding a lot. This is invaluable.
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soforene · Nearly there... Joined: 25 Oct 2009 Karma :

Themightyimp · Crazy Courier Joined: 24 May 2011 Karma :

I'm still trying to get my confidence up.I'm ok when I have a mate riding behind me,but I still worry when I have nobody sat behind me.
I have no worries about getting rapidly up to speed on the straights,but for some reason I slow down TOO much for corners.I am getting quicker at corners,but still not fast enough as cars catch me when i'm cornering.
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Englishman · Trackday Trickster Joined: 03 Nov 2011 Karma :

It will all come with practice. Time on a proper bike is rarely wasted.
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Teflon-Mike · tl;dr Joined: 01 Jun 2010 Karma :

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tlartist · Two Stroke Sniffer Joined: 23 Apr 2012 Karma :

Turn head to look into corner, go in a little slower and accelerate through the corner. Helps with stability. Hanging off some on the inside of the corner, and keeping head as level as possible also helps.
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Teflon-Mike · tl;dr Joined: 01 Jun 2010 Karma :

OK, debates evolving; and without going through individual comments & quotes, mainly becouse my Net-Connection is on a major go-slo....

Reason I say that serving some time on tiddlers puts down such a core foundation skillset, is that being light, and usually quite significantly under powered, they lack stability, and they lack speed.

The lack of stability, means that JUST not to wobble when pulling away, you have to aquire quite fine, delicate levels of control, and more acute balence, not just in tight-rope walk gravity balencing, but in balencing clutch, throttle brakes etc.

On the road, without any great 'reserve' of power, you then need to make the most of the little you have to maintyain a road speed. You have to work the gear-box to get at the limited power the bike has, AND you have to get quite 'canny' when and where you make those gear changes, as its all to easy to loose too much speed, down gearing too early, or to loose 'drive' changing up too soon, or to put yourself in a situiation, like a corner where you run out of revs, half way through trying to accelerate out of it, or conversely, 'bog' in too high a gear without any acceleration to help pull you round.

Working with the basics, but in pretty limited quantities, you HAVE to get a good 'feel' for what those comodities are doing for you and how to use them to best effect.

The anaology is that you cant apreciate affluence, if you have never been poor.... If you have always been able to 'get-by', on a 'sufficiency', and never really had to struggle to put a meal together from base ingredients, its hard to know the real worth of a decent meal, no matter how fancy the restuirant its served in.

By the time you have a bike with maybe 50+bhp, you have an 'affluence' of capability. That bike will have the power to comfortably do perhaps 110mph, and ought to have brakes, and suspension that are of a similar standard for that level of performance. And consequently, though it might not be an AWFUL lot of excess, its still 'enough' of an exces to give some useful buffer.

Bikes down there with less than 30bhp, are going to make you work for everything, and its only by MAKING you work you will really start to learn.

Working for performance, being 'hard' to get, makes it valuable, makes it worth trying for, and makes it rewarding and satisfying when you get it.

Cracking a combination of curiousely cambered esses, on a 125, and managing to haul through them at 60 almost wide open, is a real 'buzz'...

And I have an actual combination in my head I've ridden many many times, and I'm far from an inexperienced rider, and was far from being a novice the first time I rode that combination... on a moped, over quarter of a century ago!

First time, tight bend aproaching, I rolled off... I was on a MOPED! I was doing like 35-40mph, max, BUT, cars that had gone past me moments earlier on teh straight, were braking for that first corner, and the gap they had opened was getting smaller.... I rolled off.....

Tipping in to the right, the road rises, and then sweeps back to the left, jinks a little back to the right and drops down a steeper slope.....

Rolling off, I had that LITTLE bit of 'reserve' to accelerate out of teh first bend, and up teh rise, into teh second corner, rolling off a tad for that, then having gravity assist my acceleration as I apexed out of it.....

16 years old, "Oh! FUN!"

Day by day, riding teh same road to college every morning, it wasn't long before I was holding the bike wide-Open through the entire series, and coming down the hill, after, tearing my gaze from the nasty cross roads half way down, to see what I was nudging on the speedo!

"Will I see 50 before the junction? 45, 46, come on, 48 YES, BIT more PLEASE!"

Oh, to be 16 again.... and have Acne, a bad har-cut, a moaning mother and no girlfreind.... Hmmm maybe not!

OK.... 125... 19 years old now.

I actually tried 'short-cutting' 125's, via training. I had been riding since I was nine, and been competing in organised trials, and had cut my teeth on 'big-bangers' off-road. 125's, for the sake of getting the licence, seemed to me, at the time, a waste of time. The 50 had been written off by a SMIDSY, and at 17, my family conspired to get me driving lessons for my birthday and the tests for Christmas.

At the time, if you had a provisional licence with motorcycle entitlement it was only valid for two years, and if you didn't pass tests in those two years, you had to wait 12months before you could re-apply. Not like noe, where you can just re-take CBT. BUT, pass car tests, the provisional entitlement was awarded for the life of the licence.... which in my case was 43 years!

Co-Incidentally, it was also the era of the original, 'Two-Part' test. We didn't have CBT before you could ride, nor did we have the Mod 1 off-road and Mod 2 Practical. We had the Part 1 test and the Part 2 Test, Part 1 being rather like modern Mod 1, but was conducted by a Riding School, rather like CBT, and it did eventually get expanded to become CBT. However, there were NOT very many places you could 'Do' a Part 1. I had choice of about three or four Driving Test Centres near me; I lived in Stratford upon Avon, and withing 15 miles in any Direction, I had stratford-Upon-Avons test centre, Leamington Spa's, Studley & Redditch's, And Sheldon/Solihul, and possibly one or two others!

There was NO-WHERE in Stratford I could do a 'Part 1'. There was somewhere in Coventry, and a mate told me another in Evesham, but these places were NOT well, advertised or easy to find out about! We didn't have the 'net in them days, it was almost entirely word of mouth in the local bike shops, or small ads MAYBE in the back of MCN.

AND, these Riding Schools that gave 'Part 1' were not organised schools, like we have now. In some cases it was simply a mechanic or salesman AT a bike shop, and they would set up the course in the shop car-park, to test you, on a bike you bought from THAT shop!

I didn't HAVE a 125, and didn't really WANT one.... ten years learning spannering to keep competition bike fettled, meaning I was constantly asked to come have a look at whatever carnage my mates had done to thier GP100 or whatever!

But there was ONE larger more proffessional school in the midlands, Star-Rider, in Small-Heath, birmingham, who I knew off, becouse they shared a site with Vale Onslow's Trials Park, a youth offender scheme, where I took my trials bike for 'practice'. And THEY had bikes to hire.

So I booked a course. WHICH went great guns. I turned up to do the full course in two days, told I would have my Part 1 test either on Saturday afternoon, or Sunday morning, and then do some road training and be sent on my way to book a test, for which I could rent a school bike...

As was I had my Part 1 cert in my hand by 12noon on Saturday, and spent the rest of teh week-end, out on the road. Sunday, having almost one to one tuition, tearing around the back-lanes of North Warks with a coppa on a BMW R80, egging me on to go faster, and checking my brake lamps, becouse he thought it had blown..... of which I shall return!

Anyway... that was the plan, but it was rather foiled when Star-Rider went BUST! nd Iw as left without a hire-bike for tests. And after a couple of tries on borrowed bikes, I gave up... not through lack of dedication, 'other things' in my life were deemed more important.... like finding some-where to LIVE! I was an A-Level student with a part time job, and my mother, decided to move sixty miles away to Stafford with her boy-freind and let the lease on the house expire...... "WELL you COULD come with me?" she said.... so worse, to all extents and purposes I was 'volunterily' home-less!

Then, as now, bikes were expensive to buy, cars cheap. And I bought an old Morris Minor Pick-Up for £250, which I was able to insure for £90! THAT I think is big difference! My Montesa trials bike on the back....for eleven months I lived in this 30 year old banger, on mates floors or at variouse relatives, until I went to Uni! By which time the old Moggy was DEAD..... AND with Student loan I got a Kawasaki 125. NOT so much as to get my licence on, but becouse it was about the only thing I could afford to run on Student grant.

But tests were booked.... and every time I got an apointment, bludy bike got nicked! It was the early days of the modern 'Persuit' test, with an examiner following you, rather than standing on a windy street corner, and they didn't have enough examiners, and test waits could be as much as four or five months! I bought the bike in May 1990, and passed my 'test' in February 1992... twenty years ago, this year!

But 18 months of NOT getting test apointments, or having to cancell them... I was FORCED into that Tiddler-Aprenticeship I now so strongly reccomend.

By the end of it, I have to admit, I was more than a little frustrated suffering the limitations of a lightweight, and I was wise enough to realise that if I stayed on one any longer I WOULD have seriousely hurt myself, becouse my confidence had grown SO much, I WAS ragging the arse off that little bike, like you would NOT believe, and it was actually something of a relief, when it was finally nicked NOT to be returned... or at least returned an anything resembling a motorbike!

But back to this combination of Esses, and Summer of 1990, I was still homeless, but staying the summer with relatives, back in Stratford, and had a work-placement near my old college, so was back to that 'old' commuter run, now on the 125... AND.... same story.

Down the Alveston Straight, this time NOT being over taken by cars, reaching the gate-house corner, and rolling off... EEK! brake, tip in, go round about 35, accelerate out, and then, learning its a good idea to roll OFF as you crest a ridge.....

HANG ON! I did that first bit faster on my MOPED..... and so the learning process starts again..... and BY the end of the summer, I was taking that combination at the speed limit, 60, without brakes.... two summers later, full licence in my pocket, same bike, I was taking it at the same speed TWO UP.

It is ALL doen to practice and experience. BUT, on a bike that makes you WORK for it.

Ridden same road on my VF1000 and my CB750, and I know I OUGHT to be able to 'cruise through' that combination, at 60 per on either bike, with barely a wif of throttle adjustment and tipping the bugger in.....

BUT, on the bigger bikes, with more mass to manage, but a bigger, more flexible reserve of power; INSTINCTIVELY I will as often BRAKE, tip and accelerate... Im NO SQUID, by a very large measure, but it IS an instinctive thing to do, Brake Turn Accelerate. Its just the way we are wired.

Thing is, bikes WILL go round corners with a LESS work, if you apply technique, and exploit the way they turn, and said it elsewhere this week... BIKES STEER BY LEANING.... slow down, you reduce centrifugal forces, therfore you reduce the cornering force you have to hold you up against 'lean'....

And this is what Tiddlers are very good at teaching you. You cant generate cornering forces from acceleration on them, becouse they dont have bog all 'acceleration', so you have to do it by holding a tighter line, and leaning the bike hard over....

Oh, hold on, every-one is obsessed with 'Knee Down' and 'Hanging off' holding the bike MORE upright.....

Yeah..... that dont help!

LOOKS dramatic, BUT, very IDEA you have to hold the bike upright, becouse the cornering limits are that fine, DOESN'T HELP....

And learning on a big bike where you HAVENT had a tiddler heeled right over, the pegs scraping, while you try and keep tucked in, to stop yourself being a human parachute and wasting speed against wind resistance, you dont get that.... HANG ON! I have had this little bike thats no where NEAR as stable, or 'Planted' on teh road, on SKINNY bludy little tyres, round there, decked out! FFS, I OUGHT to be able to get this bludy great thing round there at LEAST leaned more than 30 degrees! Kind of comparative revelation!

So, back to the Bobby on the Beemer with a Brake lamp fettish, back in the Spring of 1987.....

Day one and his partner in crime, litterally, a fellow BMW Bobby, looked at my 'class' of I think eight students, with Acne and borrowed leather jackets, and gave us 'The Talk'... a significant part of which was to FORGET FAST......

This was the first five minutes of my first ever motorcycle lesson, and its a pearl of wisdom, I still repeat to this day and have handed down to countles 'Newbs' when it was MY turn to give that pep talk.... (It was that same Bobby, who suggested, back in 1991, when I found out he was working for a different school, and asked him for a couple of lessons before one of my cancelled tests, he actually suggested I think about instructing... but that's a way off!)

We DONT RUSH... Rushing is a FAST way to get hurt on a bike.....

Talk went on about how they rode old, ex police, BMW R80's and gave advanced courses, and would up the pace in the early part to the point that GSX or Ducatti mounted braggards couldn't keep up.... JUST to prove the point, it ent what you got, its what you do with it that counts, and warning thet the Bike Coppas didn't care how fast a bike you had, if you ran, they'd chase you down.

Anyway, Saturday, on Road Training, we went out, and it was a melee... we had a South African Speed Freak, who thought that his S.A licence was valid in this country and had been cought speeding on a GSXR750 and had to get a licence in ahurry, so they could put points on it, a lad who truned up on a Spacey Scooter who could NOT turn right... and I DONT mean negotiate a right turn at a junction... lad could NOT turn the handlebars or lean to the right! HOW he got to the school on what was his own bike, boggled the brain... and then we had a cheeky brummy on an RXS100, who saw the red mist, and went tearing off toweards redditch after some random bike that over took us all! Sunday, I was out on my own with this Beemer Bobby, and after an hour or so of round the houses, decided we ought to go do some 'lanes' and have a bit of fun.

Some where around Knowle he pulled me over, and wanted to check my brake light, which he explained, was becouse he thoiught it was only working 'intermittantly'..... and was surprised when he tested it and it was fine.... to the point he took lense off and waggled the bulb and tried again....

"You USING, your brakes?" He asked, perplexed
"When I need to...." I replied confused....

He gave me one of those apraising looks, then deciding I wasn't being cheeky or bullshitting him, went on to explain a 'litle game' he and his Beemer-Buddy played..... and wanted us to try, and that was to

PRETEND THE BRAKES DONT WORK

Idea is to try and ride a challenging bit of twisty country road, and pretend you have NO brakes. You have to ride it ALL purely on the throttle with engine braking, and it MEANS, being neat and precice in your riding.

You HAVE to get the bike lined up for a corner, and you have to arrive at the corner at PRECICELY the speed you want to go round it.... if your brake lamp comes on, YOU LOOSE.... and following rider goes past, and you play the game until his brake lamp comes on.

ONLY place brake liamp is allowed is at a junction. Everywhere else, NO BRAKES.

And the idea is to up the pace, so that you are tackling the corners PURELY on LINE and LEAN.

And it is a VERY good excersise to lift the bar and develop a 'smooth' progressive riding style and learn to carry more speed through corners, with much less agressive braking and acceleration.

Hard braking and Hard acceleration are strong and de-stabilising forces, and USING more braking than you need, to over-slow for a corner is actually MORE likely to make you crash than leaning the bike over, and hurding it round.

Its often an eye-opener HOW far a bike can lean, and how far it can lean at reletively slow speeds, and NOT flip out from under you or start to drift. In all probability a your bike CAN lean nuch further than you can!

Meanwhile, hard braking and hard turning and hard acceleration ALL heaviliy load the tyres, and its magnified by the amoint of weight shift these attitude changing forces create.

Tyre had certain 'grip'. It can transmit only a certain amount of Newtons between the road and the wheel, beyond that it WILL slide.

Tyre doesn't really CARE whether the newtons of load its reacting are cornering forces, braking forces, steering forces or acceleration forces... it just cares how much it can take. And the more you load it with ONE commodity, less its going to have to react another....

You KNOW that if you grab a big fist full of front brake.... well, unless you have the reflexes of a cat... you CRASH. You KNOW that the BIGGEST forces you can generate on a motorbike are on the front brake...

So what would you RATHER to dith the tyres grip? Use it to slow you down to a snails pace to potter round a corner like a granny bolt upright.... OR lean the fucker over and ride it like a MOTORBIKE?

Chunk of text taken from post on Counter-Steering, the point of which is basically BIKES STEER BY LEANING.

crackfinder · Crazy Courier Joined: 05 Jul 2009 Karma :

Teflon-Mike · tl;dr Joined: 01 Jun 2010 Karma :

Efes123 · World Chat Champion Joined: 08 Sep 2011 Karma :

Teflon-Mike · tl;dr Joined: 01 Jun 2010 Karma :

Ribenapigeon · Super Spammer Joined: 20 Feb 2012 Karma :

I think that Fowlersrs should be given some credit for admitting to having a problem with his 750. There is a lot of ego around biking and I wonder how many recently qualified riders have the same experience but just keep quiet about it not wanting to appear soft.

I for one am going to just settle on 33hp bikes after just doing the standard test. I recently had a good think about my choices for biking in the future and had to admit to myself my desire for a KTM 690 owes as much to posing on it as to riding on it. The practicality of my WR125X for work needs (i work for a charity with clients all over town) would not really be bested by any of the bigger bikes available. When I pass the test a sportier bike for weekend rides is literally only going to get ridden at the weekend so it makes sense to have a less challenging bike like a Ninja 250 for a couple of years of weekends.

One other thing, I does`nt really help to label 125s as "tiddlers" or describe bigger bikes as "proper" bikes. I have a Yamaha WR125X and as far as I can tell its a proper bike and certainly in terms of size its close to a lot of more powerful bikes. Would anyone say an old bike form the 50`s with a much bigger engine capacity but hardly capable of half the HP of a modern 125, was not a "proper" bike?

Oh and lastly. Its worth remembering what Chuck Yeager (ace fighter pilot and first man to break the sound barrier) said, " I would rather fly against a less experienced pilot in a higher performing fighter plane than a more experienced pilot in an inferior plane to my own". I think the same applies to bikes.