The Evolution of Your Riding

[Ray916MN]

This topic came up on another forum I frequent and I thought it might be a good topic for us.

Over the course of 30+ years of riding, the most important thing I've developed is more sensitivity to how I am riding and a more refined and critical sense of what I'm doing wrong while riding.

One of the early revelations was to be able to diagnose after the fact and then before the fact when I had miss read a turn and took a crap line which caused the turn to be more difficult than it needed to be. Over the years, focusing on this has made me better and better at reading a turn and determining an appropriate line and speed for the turn.

A move to a midwest area where corners are often gravel strewn caused me to focus on developing my steering precision.  I spend allot of time riding a tire track line to be prepared for gravel in turns and use my ability to remain a constant distance from the center line as an indicator of how sharp I am on any given day or at a given time.

I've become particularly critical of how light my grip on the bars is and how I apply pressure to the bars. After seeing the movie Faster and watching Valentino Rossi flip Biaggi the bird with his knee on the ground after passing Biaggi, it was clear to me, that my grip was a good indicator of my comfort or lack of comfort while riding, and that I needed to focus more on using my core, lower body and balance to provide a neutral platform for upper body steering inputs. In short I needed to stop hanging on the bars.

Getting my grip to be light on the bars has improved the feedback I get from the bars and made me much more sensitive to how throttle use impacts cornering and improves stability. As I've become better at using the throttle to enhance my steering control. I've also become more sensitive to when I'm doing it wrong.

All the preceding combined have made riding much less physically demanding for me and made me much more sensitive to how much riding reserve I have when riding. It has also made me less focused on speed as an indicator of performance, and more on how well I'm executing. When I'm executing well, speed is easy. When I'm not, it is a struggle.

[Elk]

Great post, Ray.

I just finished a weekend of first time riding a motorcycle on a track (HE on Saturday, ZARS Sunday).  My goal was to improve my street riding.  I got exactly what I wanted.

I worked on loosening my grip, exactly as you describe.  The carousel is particularly good for this.  I made a point of entering the corner and putting my left arm by my side and just pushing on the right grip with my palm.  It's amazing how you can lock on to the bike without your hands when you think about it.

It was also a great opportunity to take corners with the worse line possible and practice dealing with it.  My thinking is that this is the same as dealing with gravel, potholes, etc.

I found I need to work on braking.  I'm smooth, but I need to learn where the threshold is.  I am certain I can brake much harder.

Great experience. 

(By the way, the other riders were the nicest bunch ever!)

[Elk]

I'm sure one of the top schools is the way to go.  I have been tempted for years.