Thursday, October 27, 2011

Left Foot Back. Right Foot Forward Technique

As far as I know, this technique is developed by "Yours s Truly"....today.

Some seasoned riders may have already noticed that when placing your feet more forward, you are much more stable when coming to a stop. Your body's inertia is going forward and your feet help hold you back balancing out the weight of the bike and rider diving into a stop. However placing your feet here in the front doesn't enable you to easily stand upright in preparation for a bump or running over some sort of obstacle. For that you need to keep your feet back.

So my technique?

Rather than switching back and forth moving both feet forward when coming to a stop and both feet back when there's an obstacle, place the left foot back and right foot forward. This provides a stable stance that allows you as the rider to be well prepared for either scenario w/o having to change stances.

It's great to be prepared at all times. After all, you never know when you need to stop abruptly. You don't want to be thinking about foot placement during these maneuvers. By using my technique, both feet are planted and ready for these two situations - both of which can come up without much/any warning.

So why left foot forward and right foot back and not the other way around? The left leg typically is the one that comes down and rests on the ground during a stop. Having the left leg being the one in the back allows for a longer reach to step down. This allows us to keep our right foot planted in the forward position during and immediately after stops w/o having to move it.

Have fun. Good luck and ride safe.

Advanced Motorcycle Training Course

After a long waiting list, my name finally came up and I was invited to join the Bay Area Motorcycle Training course. I had already taken the first Basic Rider Course for getting my M1 license. It was time for the more advanced course offered at motorcycleschool.com. There you go guys - your free plug in a blog that no one reads.

So how about a quick review of the course?

The class is maxed out at 12 riders so that everyone gets the attention they need and we can run as many drills as efficiently as possible. We stand in a group as two coaches talk about the drill. Then one of the runs the drill on his bike as an example. We line up in one or two groups (depending on the drill) and go through it.

After each person goes who needs extra coaching, the coach would stop them at the end of the drill to give pointers. Everyone else is in line. This repeats.

Once the drill is completed and everyone's had a chance to run through it a few times, we meet back up in a group off our bikes for a "discussion."

This is where I wish there was more instruction. A lot of this section was just the coaches reading from a book and asking useless questions like, "What did you learn?" I had hoped the coaches would tell us what we're supposed to learn and give tips then and there. Instead, we were teaching eachother.

For $125 for a 5 hour class of safety instruction, I guess it wasn't so bad. I missed the first Recumbent Convention for this class and I suppose it was worth it. Better to be safer on the road then not.

The above would repeat for 5 hours with 10-15 minute breaks every 1.5 hours.


TYPES OF DRILLS:

1. Ostacles:
We ran a circle on the track. One long stretch was an offset cone weave. The other long stretch was a more extreme offset cone weave. Once completing a few laps, we were asked to do the laps w/one throttle hand. Left hand remains in the lap or anywhere away from the handlebar. Pretty scary! The next few laps were over obstacles. In this case it was a 2x4 laying in the middle of the track. In this portion of the drill, we learned to put weight on our feet and stand more upright. Get our butts off the seat so that when we land after the bump, we don't get knocked off. That's happened occasionally and it hurt my jewels. Now I know it's alright to get up off the seat. That's the accepted safety technique.

2. Emergency Swerve:
We'd go straight and hit 15-18mph before the coach would direct us to either swerve left or swerve right. We don't know which direction we're supposed to go until pretty much the last second. If we don't turn in time, we end up in the "truck" zone where cones lined up in a box shape representing an imaginary truck. We practice counter-balancing for this drill - keeping the center of gravity where it is and just push to turn out of the way of the obstacle and quickly turn back into the the original direction of motion.

In addition to the swerve, the coach sometimes surprised us with the stop command. We were to stop wherever we happen to be while running through the drill. This occurred only while going straight.

3. Tight Turns
Cones were lined up at the corner of the track and the drill was to make the turn w/o hitting the cones.

4. Clutch Control
Go as slow as we can and control the bike using just the clutch. I obviously couldn't run this portion, so I just road as slow as I could and practiced balancing.

5. Turning:
I learned that I really need to accelerate through the turn - not brake through the turn. This means I need to slow to a pre-turning speed as I'm going straight approaching the turn. It's at the beginning at the turn that I should be accelerating until its completion. This allows me to judge and decide how fast to make the turn. I get much better control than coming to a turn at speed and hoping I'm braking enough to complete it safely.

The coach thought I was pumping the brake on this drill. So I guess the safety brake light flashing module works! I always knew it functioned but it's good that it can be seen and is obvious to onlookers.

6. U-turns:
There were 3 boxes - a box inside of a box inside of a box. All three boxes share the same single corner. The drill was to gradually make tighter and tighter U-turns. I did this with a breeze. The scooter (as I was the only one) is a lot easier to maneuver than those big touring bikes and race warriors.

7. S-Curve
The S-curve was pretty short. It was probably about 30' at the most. Considering the bike is probably 4'-0 long, that's not a lot of travel before the S-curve track ends. This literally was a drill. Super short.

8. Stopping During a Turn
Sometimes this may happen, so this drill helps us prepare for it in a safe enclosed environment while coaches watch us and provide feedback (limited). Some students got more feedback than others. I suppose some needed it more than others. I don't know, but I wish I got more feedback. I can't imagine I'm so good that they didn't need to talk to me most of the time.

We were to pretend to make a turn and stop in the middle of it. Rather than stopping while the bike is in the turned leaning position, we moved the bike upright abruptly and applied the brakes while in this upright position. This was tough to do in a hurry since we're expecting and are deciding when to stop during this so-called "emergency" turn stop. I got the hang of it and acted it out after the first few runs. You can be successful at this drill if you're good at lying to yourself.

9. I don't remember all the rest of the drills, but the last one was a "Peanut run." It was running a short lap in a peanut formation. One long stretch followed by a turn. The second stretch included a curve forming a peanut shape. The class ended with this drill.

All in all, the course was good. Would I recommend it? Yeah, I suppose. Not super excited about it. But given that it's the only safety riding course I could find in SF, I took it w/o regret.