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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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| 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.
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| 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.
