Old Dog, New Trick
Posted in Neutral on Jun 10th, 2008
I’ve been riding for about 25 years now and I like to think I’m a good rider - skilled, smart, experienced, safe(ish), etc. But there’s a saying about riders like me with years of experience under their belt, that those years don’t necessarily mean you’re a better rider. Are you a rider with 25 years of experience spent learning and improving — or are you a rider with the same one year of experience repeated 25 times? I hope I’m the former. I’d like to think I am. But I learned something new recently.
I’ve always taken it as an immutable fact of motorcycling that you don’t use your rear brake in corners. Ever. Braking in a turn is bad in the first place, but braking with the rear brake in a turn is the worst. You’ll low-side yourself right off the road if you lock up the rear tire, so you’re tempting fate if you even think about touching the rear brake pedal while cornering. I’ve always “known” that if you absolutely, positively have to brake in a turn, then you use the front brake. That’s how I ride, and I’ve taken it so far that I intentionally developed the habit of riding the twisties with my right foot on my highway peg to remove the temptation to brake with the rear brake. If I come into a corner too hot, then I counter-steer like I mean it and grab a handful of front brake if that’s not enough.
That’s been working for me so far, but I recently got into a debate about braking with the rear in corners with Steve of Motorcycle Philosophy and Joker of Harley-Davidson “Mystique”. I was adamant that rear-braking is dead wrong, they were equally adamant that I had my head up my ass. (Well, okay, to be honest, they were adamant that rear-braking is a legitimate technique, but I’m sure they were thinking I had my head up my ass.)
This was our second go-round on this topic, so I started considering the impossible: What if I was wrong? (My wife would never believe I’m capable of such introspection.)
So I started out by Googling about it, confident that I would find dozens of articles by motorcycling authorities that I could cite to prove to these guys that they had it wrong. Because, you know, everybody knows you don’t use your rear brake in a turn.
Only… Not so much.
The more I read, the more I found that my head was in fact planted firmly in my colon and that rear-braking was an accepted — even popular — cornering technique. I asked a couple of my riding buddies about it and they said they used it too. One guy even started raving about it, saying he learned it from a motor cop a few years back and that it changed his riding style.
Well, hmmm…
So I’ve been trying it. And you know what? It works. Really well, actually. And now that I’m using the rear brake, I think I prefer it. The rear helps settle the bike into the turn more, rather than trying to twist the handlebars out of your hands and the wheel out of the turn like the front does. It actually feels safer to me, something I argued adamantly against just a few weeks ago.
So has my 25 years of experience been just the same year over and over again? I don’t think so, but you’d think this little trick should have crept into my consciousness at some point before now. Maybe I’ve been repeating the same two years 12.5 times…
Chuck,
It was a good debate, and we did it in a civil manner, with a good end result. Nobody knows everything and everybody knows nothing. That’s why we all have our own experience and opinions.
As you said, sometimes experience can blind us to the fact that maybe OUR way isn’t always the best way. Being able to pick up things from other people and use them to re-look at how you do stuff is always a good thing. What worked good yesterday doesn’t always work good tomorrow, and so forth.
Very few of us these days seem willing to admit we were wrong about anything. I know a guy who’s so paranoid about it, he keeps as many things as he can secret, for fear he’ll get found out that he may have made a mistake somewhere. Ridiculous!
Great post & thanks for the nod.
Great post! There’s always something new to learn.
Do you also use the front brake in the turns, or just the rear? I tend to use both most of the time, so want to make sure I understand. Thanks for the advice.
Bikerchickz
Up ’til now I’ve relied solely on the front brake during turns, but now I’m using primarily the rear.
I tried not to brake in turns at all, and I’d use only the front brake if I had to brake to make a corner. Now I’m entering corners a little faster than before and dragging lightly on the rear brake to fine-tune the speed mid-turn. I’m not using the front brake at all. It’s a lot more stable with the rear than with the front, I have to say.
In normal braking, like just tooling down the street to a stoplight, I brake with both brakes. At low speed, like in parking lots, rear brake only.
I try to never touch my front brake in a turn. I’ve seen too many people go down, and I myself, dropped a bike in a parking lot, using my front brake while turning. I drag my back brake a little if I’m entering my turn too fast, and I feel very secure doing it. I try to down shift enough that I don’t have to brake at all in turns, but corrections sometimes have to be made. I don’t claim to be an expert at anything, but after trying both techniques, I’m a rear braker in turns, a front braker on straights, and both brakes if some jerk decided it was time I changed my velocity. Which happens more than I care to say!
I think when your riding a motorcycle, you learn something every time you go out. The day I think I know everything, will be the day trouble happens, and I hope I can avoid that. I hope you don’t mind me putting in my two cents. Thanks for sharing this, and just remember, we are all in it for the ride. Ride safe!
Dragging the rear brake also does wonders for stability when riding in gravel
Excellent post!
Trail braking sounds a lot scarier in theory than it is in careful practice in reality. Never stop learning!…or leaning ;)
Take Care!
Where have you been? Enjoyed your blog alot, until you stopped posting. Hope everything is OK.
Bikerchickz