Cornering/Leaning

Hi All
I'm after a bit of advice ... when I take a corner i'm pretty certain that i'm not really leaning, i think i 'push' the bike over but keep myself fairly upright. i'm not interested in getting my knee down, but do want to be at one with my bike .... what can i do improve and build my confidence ???
cheers, ian.

Originally Posted by iane

Hi All
I'm after a bit of advice ... when I take a corner i'm pretty certain that i'm not really leaning, i think i 'push' the bike over but keep myself fairly upright. i'm not interested in getting my knee down, but do want to be at one with my bike .... what can i do improve and build my confidence ???
cheers, ian.

Start riding offroad/MX ... you would be a natural as that is exactly how you ride an off road bike

As for the road, you know the problem, only you can override it! (if you pardon the pun ).

[fizzwheel]

Biggest and best thing to change is where you look.

Dont look at the road straight in front of your front tyre, pick up your head and look up the road. Look where you want the bike to go and it will follow. It'll build up your confidence and knowing what the road has in store for you, will mean you go faster and ride smoother.

Remember if the corner is tighening up the vanishing point will be coming towards you and you wont be able to see so much of the corner or the road ahead, if the vanishing point starts to go away from you the corner is opening up and you can wind on the throttle and accelerate out of the corner.

Once you start to get more confident you'll go faster and you'll find yourself leaning over further.

hahaha ... nice one Blue its a shame i don't want a dirty bike

Cheers Fizz ... i'll give that a go ....

A few things I do:

Shift my weight to the inside and drop the inside elbow towards the floor

Sit back from the tank to give me more room

grip the tank with my knees and relax my grip form my hands on the handlebars

Look where I want to go

Hold a steady throttle

Cornering confidence takes a little time, specialy if you are new. I'm no knee-down searcher either, but its still nice to get a corner just right, and not 50-pence my way round

Matt

Originally Posted by fizzwheel

Dont look at the road straight in front of your front tyre, pick up your head and look up the road. Look where you want the bike to go and it will follow. It'll build up your confidence and knowing what the road has in store for you, will mean you go faster and ride smoother.

Remember if the corner is tighening up the vanishing point will be coming towards you and you wont be able to see so much of the corner or the road ahead, if the vanishing point starts to go away from you the corner is opening up and you can wind on the throttle and accelerate out of the corner.

+ 1. It will come with confidence, but if you are sat up right then you may need to relax a bit more. How are you sitting, is your body remaining as upright as possible whilst the bike is leant over or are you sitting straight and in line with the bike?

I tend to do the later, but this suits my style, as I ride with a heavy front end and carry corner speed. Similar to this...

Hell I'm in no position to preach to people, I'm in pretty much the same boat as you.

One of the biggest changes I've found - is actually shown in the pic above. Make sure that your arms are as parallel as possible to the bars - in other words, you shouldn't push DOWN on the bars, you should push onto the bars. It's actually very difficult to get your arms straight on to the bars as it depends on the ergos of the bike, but the more parallel you can be you'll find that the bike is much more flickable. That, with dropping your inside shoulder, will really help.

Here you go...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0v4greHKuI

or this one cos its on a SV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8itnyhwUBI&NR=1

Ride more. No sub for miles m8