Keith Code

Riders crash on both roads and tracks. More often than not it is a single vehicle accident that is explained as "loss of control". That means the rider concocted his very own set of circumstances that led to the crash. From a technical perspective, citing "loss of control" is about as useful as teats on a bull. There is always an inciting cause for the incident and it isn't always obvious. You can't put yourself in the rider's place to know which of the eight Survival Reactions (fear induced panic responses) were at work in a crash. Only the rider can tell you that. But, looking at one component that can be discovered helps. The most obvious component of riding is the space the rider used to negotiate the bend, in common speak it is his line. Accident reconstruction guys can figure this out. While there are many choices in lines both for safety and for speed but not everyone who rides is adept in the fine art of choosing a line and it is an art. Compared to the street, track riding is more forgiving. A track may be 35 to 45 feet wide whereas your ½ slice of a two lane road could be as little as 8 feet. In that case, an error in line judgment on the road is roughly five times more critical than on a race track. Your turn entry position, mid-corner and exit all have roughly 1/5th the margin for error. In other words, your line must be five times more precise, as a one foot error is equivalent to a five foot error on the track. One more point: if you couldn't get your lines under control on a track, it would be hopeless to think you could do it on the road. From a coaching perspective, 5 to 10 foot errors in lines on a track are interesting. While we know how to sort them out, you do wonder how they have survived thus far on the street. A case can be drawn for either the entry, apex or the exit being the key element in cornering. Get your exit right and all is well. Get your mid corner or apex spot on the money and you are golden. It can also be argued that a right choice on turn entry influences the outcome of both the others. All are true to a greater or lesser degree. But which one of them do riders struggle with the most? Their turn entry position and there are a number of pressing reasons for it. Consider a corner's three main divisions: entry, middle and exit. Which of them seems the busiest to you? In my surveying of thousands of riders "entry" wins hands down as the most critical portion of the turn. Having the corner's entry under control generally gives riders a breath of confidence. Getting entries wrong tends to start one off on high alert, possibly mild or more panic and is a definite distraction, mainly because the moment to correct the line passes too quickly. Choices in line are rapidly eliminated; what apex and exit can be achieved past that point is more luck than skill. Control inputs, too, become haphazard and often misguided like an untimely grab of the brake or throttle chops and steering corrections, possibly all three in a really dire circumstance. Are there solutions to perfecting lines? Many will tell you it's all about visual skills like picking reference points and looking ahead; that it can't be done on unfamiliar roads; that you have to be smooth, or, just slow down. This is good "advice" and when I began training riders 34 years ago that's all there was. Now, experience tells me, you may have other problems that good advice won't cure. Oddly enough, over those 34 years I've come up with 34 technical riding skills, drills and correction points and each of them has some bearing on lines. Which one will solve lines for you? Once again, here is my pitch: get out to the track and make your mistakes; get coached; get trained. Whatever speed you go is irrelevant. Once you are running consistent lines, within 1 to 3 feet, you will be doing way more right than X things wrong and your chances of surviving spirited street riding will soar. ©Keith Code, 2011.

Whoops, sorry David, well how did your race go anyhow? Go any quicker? Keith

Heath, WOW, what a brilliant success story, I'm grinning ear to ear from it. Thanks a million Keith

Would you like to know how much lean angle and speed it takes to completely lose the front or rear-end as a result of a panic chop-off of the throttle when encountering wet pavement or riding through a patch of sand? I did. And I also wanted to know: would a rider receive his just rewards if he conquered his panic survival-reactions and maintained good throttle control in these conditions? One more thing: are crashes under these conditions inevitable and ruled by the laws of traction and physics or are they generated by our survival responses? Last week, during the filming of the “A Twist of the Wrist, Vol. II” DVD, we flooded one section of the skid pad at Willow Springs Raceway and then spread sand on another to get the answers. Common sense tells us that under these conditions traction is reduced and that it is correct to fear them, right? Well, as our test riders’ confidence and speed increased from 20 mph/30 degrees lean through to 45 mph/ 43 degrees lean and chopping the gas, YES, in the wet it did finally lose front traction and crash. With good throttle control the three foot patch of sand produced a non threatening twitch of traction loss. The 30 feet of standing water and wet asphalt? NO sliding at all. If you said, wait a minute!, that’s nearly a 1 g load on the tires, you would be right. Conditions: Hot. Asphalt: I’d rate it good, as far as traction goes, with a few tar-snake repairs. Bike: My Lean/Slide Trainer, Kawasaki ZX-6R. Tires: Well used Dunlop 209 GP front, Qualifier rear. Test pilots: Cobie Fair and Josh Galster, current Rookie of the year points leader in AMA Supersport. Sand: Fine white. Water: Standing water was about _ inch deep and came from a water truck. I love doing Myth Buster stuff like this. Here is the disclaimer: Would I call this a scientific experiment? Not really. We didn’t do it on more polished or greasy or newer or older asphalt nor did we try it with slicks or other tires or cruiser or touring bikes, etc. Does it mean you won’t slide in these conditions? No, but it does mean that there is some additional evidence that overcoming your survival/panic reactions can save your bacon. The tenets of good throttle control aren’t just friendly advice. When we look at basic technical riding skills we see they are indispensable and create a firm foundation of control and can lead to confidence in ourselves and our riding. Are there other technical skills in riding? Oh yes, many. How many? Can’t say right now but I’ll leave you with this to think about. I amused myself a few months back by writing up a comprehensive rider training program for newer riders. Result? 307 coached actions that can be done in a parking lot. You tell me, is there anything to learn about riding? © Keith Code, 2008, all rights reserved.

One other thing that I've seen over and over is riders sacrificing good gearing for the "idea" that they should never overrev the bike. While it is not good to overrev your motor on a routine basis if you have a small section of a track where you are on the rev limiter for a second or two it isn't the end of the world and won't affect your times anything that you could measure. On the other hand if you gear the bike so it is never on the revlimiter and it messes up your drives or adds shifts that are difficult to do, then you've gone backwards and created more problems than you are solving. When the bike is on the limiter for just one second it can seem like an eternity, you have to be really objective about how long it really is on the limiter and if the gearing is good everywhere else, it saves you some gear changes, you can get good drives, you aren't overrevving in mid corner, let it scream a bit. Keith

A philosopher by the name of Immanuel Kant (1726-1804) said that humans have knowledge that precedes and goes beyond their personal experiences. Motorcycle riders prove this to be true because they knew, before ever throwing a leg over a bike, that they’d love it. There is an inclination to try to categorize and define this bond. Shall we call riding an art, a passion, a skill, a compulsion, an instinct, a desire, an ego booster, sheer entertainment or simply a challenge? Celebrating my fiftieth year of riding, I still don’t know which it is and that doesn’t bother me. Why ride? The question has no practical significance, it is a moot point. I knew, from the first moment I considered it, as you probably did too, how it would, could or should feel. Riding fits into an already existing recess in our (riders’) souls, our urge to live, our sense of existence, our core aliveness, our essential being. Deny it at your own risk: enjoy it to your great happiness. Only one point should concern us: losing our sense of discovery. It’s that open, childlike view we must preserve where everything is fresh paint and dewy grass except you have a set of bars and a throttle in your paws and where each corner becomes an adventure and a world unto itself. I abandoned trying to discover “why I ride” long ago. Defining the qualities of a perfect ride; finding that groove where it all flows, where you are there but detached, where all things are obvious and yet simple keeps my passion alive. A good ride has qualities that transcend the moth-goes-to-flame category of experience. Here is a description of some of them that are on my list. I seek the perfect balance of focused but not too focused. Aware of what I am doing but not pushed into it like with my face pressed against a window. Focused more on a result than on the skills or technique I need to get the result. I have to be willing to crash but not have my attention on crashing. Keep my expectations of how well I'd like to, or think I should, be riding on the backburner. I’ve found there is a fine balance between taking small errors in stride and not feeling stuck with them but not ignoring them either; that’s a trick: I open up my mental riding software program which allows me to maintain enough free attention to identify an error and hit “save” so I can later make some decision on what I can do to correct it. Be willing to make changes but always keep in mind that sometimes a very slight change can make a world of difference. That means don’t be too darn greedy for change. Realize the instant that my focus is broken and either put it back together immediately or reduce my pace. On the track, I have to separate what a practice session is from a go-for-it session. Trying not to feel weird about it when someone quicker passes me is still a battle. I have to be willing to go slower to learn something new. Give any technique a fair chance of success and try it enough times to know if I can or cannot do it. I always accept coaching that I trust. I know that self- coaching is quirky; it’s easy to delude myself and miss what is important. Once I notice some little thing I’m doing I try to discover what it is. I keep in mind that riding is a universe unto itself and being a universe it has limitless opportunities to discover its intricacies and one’s own connection to them. With all of that in place, I have a great ride. What’s on your list? Copyright 2008, Keith Code, all rights reserved except those I cheerfully turn over to very special people called riders.

Considering that poor technique can account for differences in lean angle to negotiate a turn, can we really consider this a good example? Can we deduce as an absolute that turn radius is directly proportional to the factors of lean angle and speed? I can think of an aviation example (3-dimensional world) where it is not, but since were not talking 2-dimensional, I’m not so eager to agree. Poor technique has nothing to do with it, the 50 degrees is an example of a lean angle at 2 different speeds! no matter what your lean angle is a 100 mph turn will always be a bigger radius than a 40 mph turn! Can you lean a bike to 50 degrees at 30mph, 60mph, 90mph? of course, but as I say the 50 degrees is just a figure for example it could be 20 degrees if thats easier for you and at that lean angle or any lean angle for that matter the faster the speed the bigger the radius! That is the simplicity of it. Keith

Last time I checked my specialty wasn't physics. I'll leave that up to those who love the subject. Here is what can be observed: a rider at 50 degrees lean angle in a 40 mph turn and a rider at 50 degrees lean in a 100 mph turn. The radius of the 100 mph turn is larger than the radius of the 40 mph turn yet the lean angle is the same. I know why it works like that but you all can find that out as well by looking at books like Tony Foale's "Motorcycle Handling and Chassis Design" to name one. In other words get the real data and not my interpretation of it. From a rider's perspective, you want to get around the turn and stay on a line you like and allow for as few steering/lean angle changes and as good throttle control as you can get and as predictable a line as possible. The reason that fundamental throttle control contains the idea of getting the gas back on as soon as your line is set (and not before) is because the line does widen as throttle is added. Now you are looking at the actual art of cornering: the rider's ability to predict that ever widening arc as throttle is added is what makes his line "predictable". Some riders see and feel this better than others. Some just notice that the line widens and are afraid of it and miss the importance of noticing just how much it widens at different lean angles and speeds and throttle application. Keith

Number one for sure, number four is unlikely. Keith

I love to survey riders. What do they want from riding; how would they like it to feel; how would they like it to look? Want is consistently answered with smoother, faster and increased confidence. Feel runs the gamut through smooth, solid, stable and predictable. Look also ranks smooth above all; followed by fast, which translates into hanging off, knee on the floor. That is the dream. Riders of all classes of bikes, once astride a sportcycle and at a racetrack, feel left out and are often crestfallen until that magic moment finally comes; the krchchshh of getting a knee down. If only the photographer had been in that corner…that lap. In the evolution of our species we’ve gone from knuckle dragging to knee dragging. An alluring picture of what they imagine or wish to look like can hamstring anyone. These are most often gleaned from dramatic magazine or TV shots stored in their library of mental images and riders envision themselves in these poses as an end unto itself in their quest to improve personal riding prowess. Going for the look without some understanding of its utilitarian underpinnings is, in a word, wrong. In the evolution of the art of cornering the look of it has had four complete phases--so far. The neat, tidy knees to tank, stretched out on the bike style of the 19-teens through the ‘60s was handed down, eye to muscle memory, as the path of least resistance; you could even say “the natural style” of riding. Phase two: Mike Hailwood let his inside knee come off the tank in the 1960’s and practically created a stock market panic in the riding style etiquette market, it was a huge departure from tradition. Paul Smart, Barry Sheene and others followed. Then, Jarno Saarinen actually moved his butt off the seat a bit which was emulated by many. The fourth phase is credited to and was pioneered by our own Kenny Roberts Sr’s knee down style hangoff in the 1970’s. Initially this earth-shattering look was quite personal to the rider, each having his own iteration of the new form. Cal Raybourn and Kel Carruthers were halfway guys, still clinging a bit to phase two. Some others had lots of bum off, some with lots of leg and knee off, some rotated around the tank a la Mick Doohan. A few went head and body way down and on the inside of the tank, Randy Mamola style, some hung-off but remained sitting more upright like Kevin Schwantz. The torso positions for our other 500cc world champs of the era; Eddie Lawson, Freddie Spencer and Wayne Rainey were half way between, on the tank but not inside it. Most of the originals also tended to ride forward on the tank and finally, everyone was stationary in their hung-off position once in the corner. The neat part of that era, with all these splinter groups, was that a fan could have instant recognition of the individual’s style and look. Not so today, phase five is upon us. Conceptually, hanging off couldn’t be simpler. Lower the combined Center of Gravity (CG) of the bike/rider combination and you go through the same corner at the same speed, on the same line with less lean angle: all in all, a brilliantly utilitarian racer’s tool with huge residual benefits; chief among them being an accurate, on-board gauge for lean angle and true to most evolutionary progressions, function now rules the new look and style of road racers. Take a look; riders are low and inside of their bikes. More and more we see them perfectly in line with the machine, not twisted or rotated in the saddle. The bum off/body twisted back across the top of the bike positioning, which many phase four riders had been doing, was and still is an interesting piece of self-deception. With their torso mass on the higher side of the bike, it not only neutralizes the mass of the hips being off the bike but actually is a negative, raising the combined bike and rider C G--defeating the technique’s main function and purpose. Other notable changes include not being so stretched out as before but not always with the family jewels on the tank either. The one new variable in phase five riders is coming further off the bike mid-corner to exit. You’ll see it on the bum-cam position next time you watch riders like Val Rossi in Moto GP. That and the fore/aft in the saddle differences appear to be the only options available to our phase five evolution racers. We have five choices now in how we can look and relate to our bikes. If you keep your eye on the style’s function and do some limbering exercises all the benefits of phase five will become apparent as you become comfortable with it. Is it easy? My experience says it is not a natural style at all and riders are hard pressed to assume the new form. If it is your desire to do it I suggest taking your time and step by step, experimenting with each of the stages through which it has evolved. Good luck. ˆ Keith Code, 2007.

The sum total of what can be done with a motorcycle is changing speed and changing direction. That is all of what can be done, right or wrong, in any riding situation. However, changing speed and direction breaks down into well over a dozen key skills and they are supported by at least a dozen different perceptions. Every one of the basic riding skills relies on our ability to accurately sense the riding environment and the bike. This is our very intimate connection to the riding world. Our senses and perceptions provide the vital raw data input that permits us to interface, adroitly or clumsily, with the bike’s controls. Taste, touch, sound, sight and smell are the named five senses. Taste and smell have little to do with riding. Touch gives us sensitivity to the controls; sound can be of some help but minor compared to sight, which we rely on heavily. But that’s a very sketchy picture of riding. Factually, riding motorcycles is one of the all time most difficult, multi-task activities known to man and not everyone is wired-up right for those tasks. Taken one at a time these tasks or skills are simple; riders easily grasp the basic ideas like: throttle control, choosing lines, braking, reference points, steering and so on. Each has its own set of dos and don’ts, rights and wrongs that can be observed and coached. It’s the imponderables of riding: how far can I lean; when will I lose traction; how fast is too fast, that puzzle us. There is more here than meets the usual five senses. Here are a dozen more we rely on to ride well. We all have a Sense of Motion which breaks down into: Perception of Speeding Up, Perception of Slowing Down and a Sense of Cornering Forces. Our Sense of Speed allows us to compare one velocity to another, it is its own category. We sense and monitor Lean Angle. The ability to Perceive Location in Space is huge and has two parts: where am I now and where am I going. Then there is our Perception of Traction; our Sense of Timing for Control Inputs; the relative Stability or Instability of the bike; these are all perceptions we have: none of these escapes us as we ride; none of them are trivial and all of them are both independent and interdependent. Is this just a theory? Perhaps but all of these “senses” are recallable. Take a moment and think of a friendly corner you’ve ridden. Notice how many of the above perceptions come into play when you review that corner. Whether a touring rider or racer, we use them all and we use them virtually every time a corner presents itself to us. Are we multi-tasking yet? Taken one at a time these perceptions are manageable. Combine them--as we do--when strafing a turn and they can overwhelm us because these “senses” often seem very fleeting or fragile, extremely hard to quantify and decidedly elusive. Rider education is an interesting proposition. It isn’t difficult to critique technique; a particular skill is being done well or not. But wait, there’s more! Beyond the coaching and drilling you are training the rider to use their senses in an orderly fashion; to apportion their available awareness; to connect their perceptions to the right control actions at the right time and in the right amount. We are all guilty of errors in this department. Take the completely illogical action of looking at your hand controls as you prepare the clutch and throttle to engage a gear as an example. All new riders begin that way and 95%+ of us continue to do so forevermore! Habit? Sure. Good or bad? If you roll out this misappropriation of your senses to other riding situations, the answer is bad. Yes, you should be surveying the space ahead not the bar controls. Try too hard to get your entry speed and you miss the line. Attention fixed on line and you can forget your throttle control. Too absorbed by lean angle and you worry about traction. Fumble a downshift; braking becomes choppy and turn entry speed is blown. Look into the apex too early and we turn in too early; stalling the throttle and prompting mid-corner steering corrections. And the list goes on and on. Solution? There is no pat answer except to rewire yourself and become aware of what you are aware of while you are riding. By first isolating these perceptions and then knowingly combining them you will be successful in the re-wiring process. Practice can make perfect… sense(s). ˆKeith Code, 2008.

Does approaching the turn point with constant throttle work? Why or why not? It has been suggested that you have advocated increasing idle speed, which has the effect of producing the same result (entry stability), with the added benefit of less work for the right hand. Do you advocate this and under what circumstances? J, When you say constant throttle it is a question of degree of throttle opening. If you had the gas on a quarter turn, you'd experience a good deal of difficulty turning the bike, in that case it would be too stable. When we talk about turning up the idle, it is like the very first tiny crack open of the throttle, enough to bring it up to 3,000 or so. That doesn't really have a huge effect on entry stability, the bike is after all slowing down and weight is still transferred forward, just a little less than usual. The other key point is that it makes the transition from off the gas to back on the gas a little easier and buys you a moment of time to feel the speed of the bike. That "moment" can scrub off a lot of speed at a normal idle speed. With it set higher the speed still goes down but not quite as fast. It is another way to trick yourself into improving your turn entry speed. Another advantage of using the technique is that there will be slightly less slack in the chain so getting back to the gas is a little bit easier, a little bit smoother transition. Keith

What is a quick unflick? Why would a rider's ability to turn the bike quick enough limit or improve their feel for how much speed they could carry into a corner? What are the factors that determine how quickly you get the bike turned? There are several of them, let's see what kind of list we can make: 1. I'll start off...The limit of lean angle for the bike you are riding. That means where you will hit hard parts. Your turns Keith

Rolling on at turn-in is not the same as Maintenance Throttle. I will check my reference material. http://forums.superbikeschool.com/index.php?showtopic=540 12. Coordinating the exact roll on to stabilize the bike at the brake off/quick flick point. When you drop a bike into a turn quickly there is an optimum opening of the throttle, which maintains good stability through that transition. The focus on this is to see if you can grab the right amount of throttle right away to get that instant stability. -Keith Code Comments? That quote is a sequence, "brake off/quick flick point", that means that both actions are completed Which means the bike is at the lean angle the rider feels will get it through the corner, steering is completed at that point. The words are in relation to the moment the rider gets back to the gas after the flick in. Does he crack it open 2mm, 3mm, 4mm or 10mm, etc. That all has to do with how fast he is going and how much the suspension compressed as he flicked it into the turn. A really quick flick may require that initial throttle opening to be a bit larger than if he had only moderately flicked it into the turn. Done perfectly, you get a seamless entry and transition from the flick to the gas. Keith

Did you mean 'marital' arts or 'martial' arts ? (I assume you meant 'martial'). Uh, ya, MARTIAL but I suppose you'd have to say that Marital activity is an ART as well. Keith

samuidave, It is a common misperception and misunderstanding, most riders will tell you that the bike comes up (more towards vertical) as throttle is applied but, NO, they don't, with some exceptions. The V MAX, which has a shaft and strange handling has a tendency to rise on throttle, there may be other bikes but I've never been on a sport bike that actually came up on throttle. Similarly, the pressure on the bars to hold a line is another false perception and contributes to poor handling. There are many reasons why riders have this perception but all of them are other errors that they are making while riding and the pressure on the bar through the turn is a "solution" to them. This is stuff we go over in Level 1 and is all over the A Twist of the Wrist, Vol II book. What's up, did you guys forget??? Keith

The most telling aspect of the rear steering or maintaining the bikes attitude to the road surface is during a leaned-over tank slapper. The bike continues on its merry way with no lean angle changes that are perceptible. It is easy to notice that the bike maintains its line over bumpy pavement despite the fact the front end is rotating side to side. Then we have the turn exit wheelie, where the bike, without any changes in throttle, will maintain its lean angle. In the end, the only practical reason for looking at this aspect of riding is to discover how the rider can assist or spoil the bike's inherent stability and how too much misplaced rider input affects its line. Keith Also, the lean angle vs speed issue is pretty obvious when you see 45 degrees of lean in a 50 mph corner or the same lean in a 125mph corner where the riding radius of the turn is far greater. That is the empirical observation. The Physics behind it I'll leave up to you gents. KC

All Riders Have ADDD Attention Disorientation and Distribution Disorder Yes, I just made that up but, really, there has been a lot of buzz for years about so-called ADD and ADHD. You’ll hear, “At school, my son or daughter can’t focus and has a hard time learning lessons. Their attention wanders. They become nervous and impulsive.” Well, I have a school and my students (usually the parents) have the same problems with something they really are interested in, improving their cornering skills. Both have run into a learning barrier. Watching a student hack through a corner with speed, lean angle, steering and throttle errors could easily be described as un-focused hyperactivity”. They don’t want it to be like that or feel like that. As a coach, I have to look for the reason or both I, and my students, fail to improve the riding. What you experience or what I see in these situations is poor communication. The rider knows what he wants to say to his bike but doesn’t have a clear communication to it. This looks like bad cell reception; riders appear to be shouting commands at the bike that it can’t understand. The control inputs, our communications with the bike, step on one another. WHA (turn) AAAT-T- (look up road) T-T-T (back on the gas) D-D-D-DID (going wide) YOU S-S-S- (ah oh, too late) SAY?…If you can hear me, I’ll call you later! If you think of a barrier as something that stops communication it will take you back to a very, very basic point on riding. You only have so much attention to spend on anything at any given moment in time. AD, Attention Disorientation is a far better definition for the kid or the rider. Once we start to multi-task by adding different forces like braking, accelerating and steering and approaching their limits, or what we perceive to be their limits, we start bumping into confidence problems, we become distracted, we see a little hysteria building and it snowballs. When that happens to me, and it can, do I have an ADHD attack? Riders run out of attention to spend on receiving data from the riding environment, something sucks it up. They lose touch and can’t process the information and accurately direct the bike. This is the barrier: being able to maintain communication, which is an exchange of information, which should then result in clear, distinct and well timed control inputs. It isn’t an attention deficit in general it is a very specific attention disorientation. The rider doesn’t understand what the game is—what to focus on. The kid got lost in school and the teacher wasn’t bright enough to catch it and fix him or her. They are sent to the school Psych for drugs. I don’t have stock in the drug companies so I have to fix the rider’s problem. In motorcycling, take hard braking as an example. Worrying about the front contact patch and when it will begin to fail takes an enormous amount of attention and swings it away from your goal: getting the turn entry speed right. That isn’t an overall attention deficit, just misplaced attention and riders tend to generalize that but in the end it results in a lack of confidence while braking. Without the important data like how fast you are decelerating and calculating an accurate solution that respond to it and then coordinating that with the appropriate control inputs, along with good timing and at the correct intensity; it all becomes guess work which leads straight to uncertainty, the opposite of confidence. The result is that we blow our turn entry speed; usually slower in than we should have gone or wish we could go. The action of braking can become a bit dim and vague and riders fear it and want control over it at the same time. Similarly, when kids can’t control the words on the page of their schoolbooks they fear them and reject them and become distracted just like the rest of us. Just as drugs which tranquilize children will never be the correct solution to study problems, this braking scenario won’t resolve until we discover what technical step or piece of experience was missed in his or hers understanding of the braking sequence. Something was missed or misunderstood. This can often be simple. The rider thinks they should downshift before using the brake. Silly idea. Get rid of what you want the least at the entry to a turn (excess speed) with the control that is very craftily designed for that purpose, the brakes, and downshift a little later. OK, it may go another step. The rider doesn’t know how to smoothly change their gears. Fine. We fix that. AD, Attention Disorientation, affects riders at all levels including professionals. We’ve handled more pro riders than anyone else in the world, trust me on this one, they have the same problems. Once I realized we’re peeling an onion in layers and that everyone isn’t suffering from some generalized disability I developed four different approaches, four coaching styles, to help the rider through their precise deficiency. No drugs. Understanding the words that are spoken in a conversation or in a book is vital to interest. Understanding the desired result from your control inputs is vital. This is how you know if the bike is or is not cooperating with you. Both points are communication with something, a book, a bike, cooking, golf; it makes no difference what it is. Good coaching, not drugs, is the answer. I hope we get a chance to get your riding attention oriented and focused this season. Take a look at our schedule and sign up now, I’d love to see your big grin at the end of the day! http://www.superbikeschool.com/schedule/ Keith Code PS: On the ADD and ADHD thing, take a look at this: http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/Drugfree.htm © Keith Code, 2008, all rights reserved,

For me, personally, I'll have my hands full just with the basics for the next season. So, yes, I'll be working on using the front brake alone. To be fair, I've found the R1 to be very stable even at 150 MPH indicated. What surprised me is how ragged the lead guys in the Superstock 1000 Cup racers were. Further, it seemed like it was mostly the R1 guys. Has anybody on the forum watched any of last year's races? Did you see what I'm talking about or am I delusional? I for one didn't see the Superstock but if you watch the World Superbike guys you'll see less and less wagging around these days going into corners...with the exception of Biaggi at Phillip Island this weekend but he lofted the rear wheel and set it down crooked at 160 mph. wow. Brakes and tires and chassis being better these days for cornering doesn't mean the engineers didn't have compromises to make. The short wheelbases and steep steering head angles are two things that contribute to the under-braking stability. Couple that with better tires that will take more trailbraking loads and a little bit of rider input into the bars and you can have a very wild looking ride coming into the corners. Very little rear brake is being used in most racing so that isn't the reason and in many cases you can clearly see that no rear brake is being used. Rossi says he'll use it if he gets in too hot but not otherwise is what I have heard. Now, with that all buttoned up let's look at what the rear would do for a more positive feel once into a turn. Using the back brake tends to bring the back of the bike down a bit so we'd see in increase in fork angle at the very least which would tell the rider the bike was more stable in the turn. The tradeoff is that the bike won't turn quite as tight a radius. There is always a compromise in most extraordinary riding techniques and it boils down to how the rider feels the bike. Keith

super60, Since you have Stomp on the bike use it like you mean it. The inside of your leg by the knees will rub down to raw leather from using them. Keith

Drew, Stuman is of course right, tire warmers are the bomb these days but they are also a chore and quite often you need to also buy a generator to run them in far off paddock situations. I'm old school (before tire warmers) so I'm willing to get the tires up to temp, even on colder days. One thing you must realize is this: the tires heat based on the demand you put on them. If you toddle around slowly and then decide to go for it, they won't be up to that temp. The warming process is a ramp, start slow and then work into higher corner speeds and more aggressive drives. After a lap or so on a cold day pay attention to pouring on the gas as you get get the bike up about half way, hard acceleration heats them up fast and it is safer when you are leaned over a bit less. You can start doing this almost immediately unless the tires are really cold or they are new. You play the lean against the gas in an intelligent fashion and it works out. Another thing to look for is how many rights and how many lefts there are. Warming the tire real well on the right does not put heat into the left side of the tire. Give both sides some time and attention, don't forget this. Keith

michaelt54, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. It's none of the drills, skills and techniques we teach at the school--it's desire that fuels what you are looking for. There is no school better for that than going racing. I'd love to be able to tell you that it is something that I could provide for you but I can't do that, no one can. When I decided to write Twist II I knew that the only way for me to get the data I was interested in was to go back out and race for a couple of seasons in competition that was tough. My idea was to put myself into a challenging environment that would make me reach down and find that desire so I could do the research I needed. It worked. I was being my own student, which is a challenge on its own because it is so difficult to be objective about your own riding. If I had a coach through that time it would have shortcut my improvement tremendously but I had the research in mind and that meant I had to do it on my own. Track days are only 1/3 of the way to racing. Racing provides a very set format with a defined number of laps for you to do your thing. It has a way of installing the desire as a freebie, a by-product. I might be talking myself out of a student but I think once you find that nitch of desire within yourself the training will make even more sense. Keith

Hey Mike, Everyone learns at their own rate. Each of us has his own personal barriers to break through to get to the point where they really feel like they are riding the bike and using its potential. The only thing I can say about our program is that it works for all skill levels of riders. We take the time to go through each of the foundation skills that are needed for improvement to happen. When we brag about the champions we have trained it isn't about the fact they are racers its just to show that even when someone is already fast or smooth or can control a motorcycle, the foundation skills still apply. Pro racers do our school Levels in the same order you will do them. Keith

jrock7896 said: So why did Keith see that in turn one @ willow that the faster rider was on the gas and not the brakes.... Im not exactly sure, but perhaps it has to due wit the turn having a nice bank to it. This would turn some of the centripetal force into down force due to the banking and perhaps this has something to do with it since we know that additional down force would cause friction and friction allows for more centripetal force. Obviously the formula for downforce vs. losing traction vs. braking force, vs. centripetal force would not be proportional, but I think it is a formula that each rider is working out at the very top level of moto gp and AMA each time they enter a turn. Damn their good!!!!! ------------------------------ jrock, just for your information and calculations, banking doesn't create "down-force". A car's wings are a totally different force. In Banking, gravity is simply pulling you down the "hill" created by the banking offsetting a proportional amount of cetripetal force and allowing for more speed as a result. The forces all balance. It feels like you hit a wall when you run into banking but what you are really experiencing is the gravity pulling on you and the bike at a different angle than it does on a flat corner. Conversely, on an off camber corner, gravity is pulling you down the "hill" but to the outside of the turn. The calculation of gas versus brakes is simple, all things being equal, the guy who gets back into the gas the earliest has more turn exit speed and covers the distance to the next turn in less time than the other guy who waited longer. In corners where you have a choice, like turn #1 at Willow, different riders have different tolerances for how quick they can flick their bike based on how much they trust the front tire. Some riders are more adapted to feeling out the front with the brake than on getting a huge sudden load on the front from flicking the bike into the turn. They like to ease into it. Both can get max grip from the tire, just a different approach for different sensitivities to front traction. Something that has to be kept in mind when you add up the plus and minus columns of trailbraking is this: Unless it is from too much lean angle, riders don't lose the front on the gas, only on the brakes. Another thing that must be kept in proportion on this discussion is: Pointing to trailbraking as THE reason why fast guys can go fast is like saying that if you know how to use a saw really well, you can build a house. Can you build the house without the saw? No. Does the ability to expertly use a saw guarantee the house is well planned and well built? No. There are many other tools and skills that must be known to build it. Same with riding. Keith