[zortness]

Well, here's my contribution to the topic...

Leaning off the bike is a function of velocity and momentum. You're trying to move the center of gravity of the bike/rider combination so that you can keep the bike more upright and carry more speed (the moment of velocity change of the bike). The more upright the bike is in a corner, the more tire is touching the ground and the faster you can go without losing grip. The following information dump includes the things I go over in my head every time I ride my bike.


- Hold all of your weight with your legs. In any given corner, I'm holding on completely with my outside leg. Your arms need to be as loose as possible to get as much feedback from the front wheel as possible. If that thing starts to move around, you want to know, but you'll never feel it if you're tensing up your arms. This is hugely important (and extremely difficult to do) while under intense braking and trail braking up to the apex, which is when you need the most front end feedback from your front tire.

- Your lower body does not have to move very far. Some people exaggerate the movement to try and compensate for poor upper body position and it completely throws the balance of the bike off. Pridmore says rotate around the tank (imagine you had a string going from your suit to your gas cap) only about 3 - 4 inches. This can change depending on the turn and ground clearance, but that's a good baseline. I find this puts about half of my ass off the seat, sometimes more. It also keeps your inside knee tucked in closer to your fairings, so you get a more accurate feel of how far the bike is actually leaned over.

- The real weight distribution when leaned over comes from moving your upper body. Look through the corner with your head and your shoulders (which, as an added bonus, makes the track seem much larger and slower). Get your head down low when exiting and get the bike upright as soon as possible.

- Always keep the balls of your feet on your pegs (unless you're shifting of course). Dig into the pegs with the balls of your feet and dig your heels into the heel guards. Pridmore mentions that he has to replace heel guards often because he continually bends them. This gives you a better feel for what the rear tire is doing, which is important when exiting the corner.

- Get the bike pointed in the correct direction and get it stood up as quickly as possible when exiting a corner. This is the point where your head should be the lowest and you should really be exaggerating hanging off of the bike. Push the bike away from you to get it stood up. I'm not exactly sure where my weight goes at this point, but it feels natural to me. I'm probably pushing on my outside leg (ie: the peg) to lift the bike up, maybe a little movement with the arms as well.

- Less is more. Don't move around on the bike when you don't have to. If there are two right hand corners in a row, even with a straight in between, don't move your lower body all the way back onto the bike, keep it off to the side. The more you move your body, the more the bike's geometry changes.

- Set up early for corners. A fast corner entry does not mean waiting until the last possible second to move your body, hit the brakes, and downshift. Your body position should be set up first. Your downshifts should be quick and smooth and over with before you start your turn-in. Extending your braking zones and using lighter braking can improve your corner speed because your bike will feel more stable. Smooth is fast. As you get smoother and quicker, these actions will start to blend together, but the smoothness will remain. If you watch the fast guys at your local track (I mean the really fast guys, like AMA level), they will often initiate their turning procedures long before you would think.

- Keeping with the smoothness theme, practice letting the clutch out smoothly as you downshift. If you watch Rossi, his clutch is not fully engaged until he hits the apex of a corner. If you're smooth enough on the clutch, there is no reason to blip the throttle on your bike while downshifting. Use the clutch to modulate the RPM's of your bike while engine braking.

- This may seem like common sense, but most people are not patient enough while exiting the corners. If you get on the gas too soon, you can't get to full throttle as quickly because it will push you wide. Patience is the key here. A wider turn-in also helps for most corners where the drive out is important.

- You should only be near full lean in a corner for a short instant, right when you hit your line's apex (not necessarily the physical apex of the corner). Before you hit that point, ideally you want to be trail braking very very slightly and leaning in. As soon as you hit that point, you want to be pushing the bike up and rolling on the throttle. This is the "ideal situation" and will probably never be reached by mere mortals like ourselves, but it gives us something to reach for.

- Know what type of corner you're going through. There are fast corners, entry corners, exit corners, and slow corners. Slow corners are just that... slow. Patience will pay off big time if you just get through the slow corners and set up for the important ones. Turn 3 at LVMS is a slow corner. Fast corners are where you make up the most time, like turn 2, 3, and 4, at Miller or turn 5 at LVMS, these are usually "sweepers". Entry corners have a quick entry, but the exit does not matter, so your entry line can be very tight, these are good corners to pass on the brakes. Turn 3 at SMMR is a good example of an entry corner. Exit corners are the most important, where you exit the corner onto a very quick section of track and drive is extremely important. Turn 4 at LVMS comes to mind, which is a slow, late apex, right hander onto the back straight. Turn 10 at SMMR is another example of an exit corner.

- Pick the important corners and sacrifice the unimportant ones. If you look at SMMR, turn 8 by itself looks like a fast sweeper, but if you look at the track map, you can see that 9 and 10 are very tight afterward. Looking at the series of turns, you can figure out that 10 is an exit corner, and probably the most important one. So to get the most out of this section, you use turn 8 as an entry corner, sacrificing the exit to get a very wide entry into 9. Turn 9 is completely sacrificed to square off turn 10 and get the best drive out of 10.


Hopefully that helps. The corner information might not seem relevant to how to lean off the bike... but each type of corner requires different body movements. Everything is connected in some way on the bike. You guys should be able to look at the track maps for those examples and get an idea of what I'm talking about regarding each corner.

[added]
If you sit on your bike and get in an aggressive riding position, take your hands off of the bars. Those muscles in your back and your stomach that you feel tensing up... those are the ones you use for your upper body. Now, hold that position and lift your ass about 1/4th an inch off the seat. Your legs will probably start hurting right away. Go ride your bicycle and work out those muscles. I stretch before and after every session on the bike, it helps tremendously with fatigue.