I've hiked through a lot of forests ever since I was a kid and have a method, often criticized, but that has never injured me, of going down difficult terrain. I more or less glide down at a constant speed, putting my feet in places to apply upwards force. It helps a great deal that I have very flexible angles and can bend at near 90 degree angles. I usually get down very quickly and without fuss, whereas the slower more deliberate method tends to produce bigger falls. You tense up more when you're going down like that, and are more likely to produce uncontrolled fall, which is what kills you. If you can control your fall (throw yourself lightly at a patch that will stop you quickly and not injure you) and go a bit limp to disperse energy quickly, you can fall a lot more than most people but get injured less. I learned this technique from skateboarding. The idea is to learn to do a controlled fall whenever you're in danger into a safe area, rather than possibly risk an uncontrolled fall.
I've been called an idiot for doing this but I have never broken a bone nor had significant injury while hiking.
Anyway, my point is, sometimes just letting the movement flow naturally is the correct thing to do, even if it means the speed involved/perceived danger is higher.
Because I don't switch my feet I can keep up faster than I can run and I don't slip because I always have 2 feet on the ground at a time and it's kinda like surfing without the board.
One of these days I want to try the Gloucestershire cheese race.
I gallop like a deer and I can go incredibly fast by basically keeping one foot constantly in front and never switching it and hopping down hills. I don't have to take a full step and I always have two feet or no feet on the ground so it's impossible to slip.
An good analogue would be jet skiing. If you just hold on for dear life and hope for the best, you will get a very sore back. A lot about doing it right is letting the waves do what they have to do, and making subtle corrections to ensure your path is optimal but taking into account the obstacles it’s encountering
What happens to the suspensions when you brake? Front one compresses while the back one extends. That one was easy. Now this:
What happens to the suspensions when you accelerate? Front one extends while the back one... also extends.
Motorcycles are specially designed to have this last behavior.
"What happens to the suspensions when you brake"
Depends on the suspension!!
Earles front suspensions rise on braking, transferring weight to the rear. Its counter intuitive until you realize that the forward momentum of the bike is on an arm that has to rise to allow forward motion of the body relative to the front tire.
I think BMWs paralever could also rise on braking, but could be adjusted not to and all were.
Oh and another surprising thing: on track I never use the rear brake when braking hard. Why? Hard braking lifts the rear wheel, and when you use the rear brake it becomes incredibly easy to lose rear traction!
I sold my S1000XR (first generation) and was all set for a Tuono V4 but i really didn't get on with it. I'm 6'3 so a 2nd gen S1000XR looks likely next. I'd love a shot on the new Triumph TE-1 when it launches though.
>> I've been tracking a mostly-stock R6
I think that's the most popular bike here too, if i had space for 2 bikes, i'd do the same as you and have an R6 for track.
There’s also fun things like the bikes geometry gets longer or shorter under acceleration or braking to help with turning and grip. The physics is quite beautiful (and a lot of fun)
Do you live in the Bay Area? What org do you ride with? I’m with PTT for track days and AFM for racing.
Even on the road it's safer to trail the front brake into corners and keep weight on the front tire. Keeping the front suspension compressed will also make the bike turn better. None of the fast guys ride the way Code describes [3]. You can see Marc brake all the way to the apex with zero throttle.
[1] https://www.amazon.com.au/Sport-Riding-Techniques-Develop-Co... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvrgn5akOm4 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS3DTWq0QV8
Craig, thanks for the comment and recommendations. I think I'll check out Roadcraft.
Part of it is also similar to the reasons you trail brake into corners, in that you're managing the weight distribution over your tires. You don't want to be erratically changing how much weight is on the front tires, otherwise you'll find you suddenly have a lot less front grip.
In most car drivetrain configurations you’d then use a balanced throttle through the turn.
You can use a balanced throttle on a bike too - many people do - but all race bikes and most advanced riders even in non race scenarios will use a slight acceleration not a balanced throttle because where in the car you want to settle the suspension with a heavy loading equally on your two outside wheels (e.g. in an FR layout car) on a bike you want to have around 65% weight on the rear.
There’s a similar effect with the Porsche 911 - it’s an RR layout with 12 inch wide tyres at the rear and a slight acceleration is optimimum for it.
That force is there even if the bike turns at constant speed.
Here's a vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VqXBA-sGHA
His school: https://superbikeschool.com/
Although I think Roadcraft has been "superseded" by IAM with a simplified version called "How to be a better driver", I would use both.
There’s loads of other weird things, because the rear tire is wider than the front, the contact patch is bigger at the rear, so to extract maximum grip you need a rearward weight transfer, so lightly accelerating in a turn is optimal. Even when not pursuing max grip you’d still do this to keep the envelope large around your actual grip requirements.
Although The front wheel has a smaller contact patch, the contact patch at the front is often a different shape- the front wheel is often a larger diameter so it has a longer but narrower contact patch than the rear. That makes for a vehicle that tracks and responds differently over uneven ground at the front vs the back which leads to you needing to let the front move itself, a relaxed grip is needed on the bars over uneven surfaces, otherwise you will transfer so of that motion from the handlebars, through your body to the pegs and the seat. That will lead to a loss of control. Utterly counter intuitive that to retain control over rough ground you want to almost let go of the handlebars.
There’s two great books - for direct machine control, “a twist of the wrist” volume 2 by keith code and for more abstract how to think about machine control - not So much how to steer but why to steer and where to - then roadcraft by the uk police is another great book.