archon

A difference between skiing and riding that may be relevant is that in skiing your ski is the contact patch, and it is directly connected to your leg, which is going to be "inside" the foot with respect to the corner. On a bike, things are different. The contact patches are the tyres, these are what are turning the bike, not your foot and leg. Your foot and leg are going to be above these points. So I think Jef4y was right the first time... trying to "weight" the outside foot is going to create a torque around a pivot point, the pivot point being the contact patches of the tyres, and is going to want to pick the bike up, out of the turn. This is quite distinct from "pointing your toes" in order to lock your knee into the tank... in this case, the amout of force you apply outwards with your toes on the peg is going to be exactly balanced by the amount of fource you apply inwards with your knee on the tank.

It may sound strange, but I feel this is my biggest issue when riding. I'm a tall guy on a VTR1000. The narrow tank of the v-twin does not give you much to lock your knees into, especially with long legs, but I've found that my legs are just too long for most of the inline 4s out there (knees above the cutouts). When I did SBS level two an instructor said that being tall would create a need to sit further back in the seat in order to get the forearms as horizontal as possible behind the controls. This is true. But when I try to do that, I find that any decelleration (by braking or just rolling off the throttle), or even small bumps in the road, are enough to throw me forward again. Because of this, I end up putting much more weight on the bars to hold me back, and I'm sure we all know by now that a relaxed grip on the bars is important (do they teach the "chicken wing" arm flap relaxation technique in the california school? ) I honestly have no solution. Arching my back more helps a bit by bringing my shoulders lower without having to sit quite so far back, but I really need some way to stop the sliding into the tank, if only to keep my privates undamaged!

Aussie poster here, came to read what was new in the SBS having done 2 levels and hoping we have some of the special machines when I do my third I don't have a particular fear of one side or the other, but I am quite aware that my body position is significantly different between lefts and rights. In lefts, I have noticed that my right forearm is usually brushing against the top right "corner" of the tank. In rights, my forearm is usually not brushing the tank, it is a few cm above and outside it. The reason for this, I think, is to do with throttle control. I'm quite tall, and in rights I feel like my right arm is squashed up behind the throttle. This feeling is a barrier to relaxing my right arm, and that keeps me a little more upright. In lefts, my right arm feels unconstrained behind the throttle, and quite comfortable.