Beginners Guide of Riding Part 2

 By: Pranit    20:18  No comments

After going through first part in which we’ve seen what should be footsteps like wearing Hell-mate getting build confidence slowly rather than getting over excited, we’re here again with beginner’s guide of riding motorcycle's next part.

Body posture

Taking motorcycle out in traffic for first few days might be not so good experience for you in fact you may be in slight depress manner holding your handlebar with too much pressure.

Riding in stressful manner is not good way to start with motorbikes, if you ask any expert “How to ride motorbike?” they will tell you to stay stress free as much as possible to you and I can tell you with pretty much assurance that there is no written Motorcycle Manuals or Motorcycle Guide that comes with your motorcycle tells you about this. So holding your motorcycle between your hands tightly don’t make riding any better, actually this may render bike for bad handling during direction changes due to bad steering response.

riding position difference in bikes

Bad steering also occurs due to grips, either our hands may be proving smaller for size of grips or may be slippery grips, so you may want to check if your handle bars grips are in perfect condition after all you’re controlling whole bike with those.

You may like to familiarize with brake and clutch levers of your bike cause some levers may need firm operation while others may work with light push so it’s not really big problem just get to know effort level required for your levers.

Body strategy

You should understand what feels you best on your motorcycle, it doesn’t matter if you’re riding street bike or sport bike. All you have to do is find sweet spot on motorcycle and by that mean grab your bike with thighs, ankles and knees but not with handlebars why? let me explain you.

When you grab your bike with your lower part of body below waist such as knees and thighs you stay firmly on your sitting position just like seatbelt works in cars, plus keeping your lower part of body attached to machines body makes you feel your motorcycle, it also helps you in changing lane transitions.

Keep your heels attached to motorcycle’s foot pegs all the time firmly, they help to get better grip from bike as well as bike’s flick ability gets tremendously improves, foot pegs also helpful to understand various vibrations passing from bikes motor, the experienced riders understand most of engine related fault just by understanding pattern of vibration from motor therefor every new budding rider should make habit to understand relation between legs and foot pegs.

Remember never put toes to downward side try to keep as close as possible to shift lever and brake lever or else there are highly chances to get foot scrapping injuries while approaching at corner.  

Now what about above waist body strategy?  You hold handle bars of your motorcycle with your hands via grips to pull accelerator and apply braking and clutch levers as well as other operations such as beeping horn, switching turn signals or headlights, So what you have to do is hold your handle bars firmly at the same time keep your upper body section much lighter than your lower body section why? because keeping your upper body section too much firm will effect on handling factor of your motor bike, in short you’ll find difficulty in changing sudden direction change on motor bike that’s why you have to keep your upper body section firm enough so not to lose grips from handlebars at same time keeping much lose than lower body section.

Keeping your hands lose have another advantage, in some situations you may find surprise of sudden pothole on road and even your suspensions may not able to cope with condition at that instance yours lose hands will work like suspensions, the flexibility in your hands will able to absorb much of pothole impact, interestingly that’s not expected to be happen during too much firm upper body position and you may be victimize to unexpected crash.

Vision of Eagle

Newer motorcycle riders are usually little afraid to riding on main road and this hesitance is not bad at all. Because this hesitance gives them feeling to ride safely. But what newer riders most common mistake is to look at one and only fixed point at just few feet ahead of bike, therefor they get panic if sudden situations like big dump truck approaches towards them from 20 meters away. Looking at fix point while riding bike is deadly mistake.

If you ask any expert motorcycle rider they will agree upon motorcycle follows where rider looks philosophy, eventually you’ll figure out this fact after riding your motorcycle for few thousand kilometers.

Utilize your peripheral vision to get broad perspective of environment such as bumps, patch sections, unequal surface and even reckless driven vehicle, you’ll never know what new surprise the road might present for you.

Get broad vision of road ahead of you

 Keeping your vision ahead builds up confidence and helps your brain to compute defensive mode action such as slowing down or stopping completely before road catastrophe occurrence, your body will accommodate for different situations with difference stance, try to understand every new parameter of bike at every ride session such as how to lean at corner, shifting gears and braking applications which directly translates to giving training to your inner rider instincts.

Try to look as further as possible and keep your brain constantly feed visual clues, staying update with visual information helps to perform with predetermined profile or body’s stance, such as you’ll feel more confident while going through twisty corner which you have seen from 70 meters behind from actual approach. Suddenly you’ll feel that roads are getting less strange places and familiar pattern will start to occur in further situations.

Make habit to look inside rear view mirror, they’re there for specific reason, make train yourself to look inside mirror at least 3 times a minute and more if you’re in heavy traffic. Looking inside mirror is one of the key element while riding in busy traffic

Rear view mirror's have sole purpose to show whats behind

Inside city or on multiple lane interstate highway, checking out rear view is mandatory, even if you don’t plan to change direction or lane transition it’s just gives you good level of confidence what’s happening behind you, so you don’t get freak out when suddenly high speed car overtakes you by very close margin.

Or even could save you from getting rear ending from other vehicle.

Constantly staying visually update from mirror is not that much hard, you don’t have to turn your head too much, simple quick view is enough and then you can concentrate again on road ahead, All Mirrors are adjustable so all you have to do is adjust them according to your preferences.

Yes, it’s true for some people that rear view mirrors shows their shoulder often most of time but it’s shows how well they're alert about their rear section. You can get aftermarket rear view mirrors if stock one doesn’t working for you.

It's better to get full stop to enjoy nature around you

So the bottom line is: till the moment you don’t get too much confidence, it’s best to look on broad view of road ahead of you as well as behind via mirror, you may be riding in beautiful twisty section of Kasara or passing by scenic beauty of some other road don’t get lost in senses stay focus to your instincts, you may even wants to get full stop rather than looking at roadside beauty while riding and getting distracted.
If you haven't read this article's previous part you can read here.
 and don't forget to read future articles.