6 Essential ADV Riding Techniques That Will Improve Your Offroad Performance

hey riders welcome to another video in our adventure motorcycle training series i'm eric lang with ride adventures i've been riding and guiding motorcycle trips and creating our touring and renting services since 2008. today's video i'm going to talk through six essential riding techniques to better your off-road performance let's get the character so maybe you're new to riding maybe you've been doing this for a while whatever the case we all want to be better riders right so let's talk through some basic riding techniques things you can practice on your own to make sure you're ready for the next big ride and riding further safer and having more fun [Music] so the first technique i want to talk about is applying pressure to the foot pegs and counter balancing and how those two sort of work together you know there's a bunch of reasons you would want to work on those foot pegs and applying pressure it could be from getting over obstacles or handling ruts or just maintaining traction through turns like something i could go on and on forever about but you know motorcycling is a dynamic thing and every scenario is going to be a little different so instead of talking forever about this keep three important points in mind here the first being that the more vertical your tire generally speaking the more traction you're going to have with the ground below you by not leaning by applying pressure say to the outside foot peg of course you're keeping your bike a little more upright you're keeping more of your surface of the bottom of your tire in contact with the ground the second point to keep in mind is that yes we talk about pressure on the pegs and standing allows you to have a low center of gravity keep in mind that at least when i'm riding i'm constantly moving my center of gravity and my weight around and over the bike i'm leaning on the seat i'm pulling with my legs i'm using my torso on my hips and my abdomen and not just worried about how low my pressure is or my weight is on the bike because there's a whole lot going on you're constantly moving you need to apply pressure in different places and the third thing to keep in mind is that you don't need to be fully standing in order to apply pressure to the foot bags you know you can do this from the seated position and even just slightly squatting of course it's most direct and easiest to apply clear pressure from a standing position but you don't need to be standing in order to manipulate those foot pegs and work with them what i want you to do the best way instead of me talking about this forever is for you to go out and practice this yourself start slow on the pavement from the seated position and feel what happens when you put pressure on each foot peg left and right then maybe move to a squatting position get your butt up off the seat a little bit eventually to the stand and eventually go out and do this in the dirt feel what happens when you ride back and forth and you put pressure on both foot pegs and how does that pertain to the the needs of your handlebars to be turned to maybe counteract a miss movement or an imbalance or something like that that counter balancing moving your body weight from left to right and as that works with your handlebars if that's something you practice over and over you're going to be great at counterbalancing and using those foot pegs to get you through more scenarios [Music] so the next technique i want to talk about is floating the front wheel which comes in handy over obstacles and things like deep sand sections or patches or deep gravel from freshly laid construction that might be there the obvious way to float the front end and make it light is by pouring on the throttle of course you can lift up the front end a little bit off-weight it and float a bit over these objects and obstacles and to assist that moving your weight back either by back on the seat or by gripping you know from a standing position or an attack position to be gripping the bike with your legs and sort of leaning back you can bring your weight back essentially that way as well you want to do this to avoid getting your front wheel stuck down into sand you don't want to enter the sand in a decelerating fashion because doing so actually changes your contact point with the ground so there's that thing called rake and trail and if you know how those work by letting your front wheel sink down you're actually changing your contact point with the ground changing the rake and trail of your bike and that's where you can get head shaking you don't want head shake so again by pouring on the throttle and keeping your weight back you're going to avoid that sinking factor with the front wheel keep in mind though if you're going to blast the throttle you got to be able to think about what is past that sand section or what is there a turn coming up or something else that you need to be ready for such as you can't be accelerating forever right but to practice this i want you to go out and find those sections find little obstacles that maybe you would be better floating the front end over it could be just rocks or a log or a little stick or something like that float it briefly and then look for those opportunities for a shaggier thicker sand section where you can maybe blast that throttle and float the front tire a little bit longer over maybe a 20 or a 30 meter sand patch the faster you're going and the more power you're of you're applying actually sort of the front the lighter the front end gets so that blast into the throttle can only be done for so long but get out there and practice it and you'll be a better rider for it another technique i want to talk about is slipping the clutch and the good news is you if you've been riding you already know how to do this right anytime you're starting from a stop and getting going on your bike you're essentially slipping the clutch into full engagement but being able to do this on command and in a few different scenarios can really help you out like what if you're in a slow parking lot situation and at engine idle full first gear with the clutch fully out or engaged what if that's too fast you know sometimes it helps to be able to pull that clutch in a little bit and maybe go what would be like half of first gear also slip in the clutch can essentially give you a burst of power if by chance you chose the wrong gear too high of a gear for a certain situation and now the engine rpms are a little too low where the engine isn't as powerful if you slip and sort of modulate that clutch like that you can raise those engine rpms giving yourself a little more power which can tie back into what we just talked about which is lifting the front end or floating it over certain objects and situations like that being able to add a burst of power like that to slip the clutch with can also help you break traction with the rear tire something we'll talk about in a minute if you need to move that back end around and steer with a little bit and also if you ever get stuck on a hill let's say a hill incline well instead of being able to let out the clutch at your normal pace slipping it for longer and riding that clutch and letting it actually burn a little bit more is necessary oftentimes getting started on a hill climb because now you've got more gravity working against you to practice this it's easy to get out in the situations i just described find yourself in a parking lot situation where you need to go sort of half of first year at idle where you can just slip the clutch a little bit and keep the engine running but be going slower than full first gear put yourself in a hill climb situation where you're stopped say halfway up the hill and now you need to learn how to ride and slip that clutch out instead of going the normal one or two seconds to full engagement maybe make it five or six seconds of course nobody wants to ride and burn their clutch you know you don't want to you don't want to burn it out unnecessarily fast but ultimately that's what it's there for it's meant to be heated up and used and eventually changed out but slipping that clutch and learning how to work with it can get you through a lot of different situations the next technique i want to talk about is steering with the rear wheel that's right you don't only have to steer your bike with the handlebars and the front wheel or by leaning or anything like that you can actually move and redirect your bike by moving the rear wheel so this could come in handy for getting up and out of ruts or around little obstacles like rocks and things like that but it can be done by just applying a sudden burst of power could be just throttle it could be by slipping the clutch like we just talked about knowing how to move your back end like that will come in handy from time to time it's actually quite easy to do once you've started practicing it's a lot of fun to get started practicing this i want you to find simple flat gravel or some light sand or something like this you could do it on pavement i wouldn't advise that it's better to start in a place that's actually kind of slippery and able to slip like this so you need to be actually turning at the moment that you want to slip the rear wheel right if you're just going straight you suddenly apply power the back end might move a little bit but it's better to have an actual direction an arc of movement to turn with to actually then throw the back end out a little bit you can start this by just doing a circle round and around and around and every few feet once you sort of regain control burp the clutch or burp the throttle a little bit maybe lighten up your back end a little bit maybe put pressure on the inside foot peg of that turn to again sort of scooch that rear tire out a little bit you can just do this over and over and find different scenarios where a small little scooch out or a little slip here and there can lead to a bigger one next time you keep doing this and you keep adding up these little movements moving the bike with the rear wheel you'll find a lot of fun and use in making yourself a better rider [Music] another technique to keep working on is looking where you go which sounds incredibly obvious but not everybody's doing it so there's all sorts of reasons to be scanning ahead and closer to you and seeing what kind of terrain and obstacles or turns or whatever you need to be ready for but it also just makes sense psychologically to think about what your target is and where you are going keeping that in mind avoid target fixation if you've heard the term we've talked about in other videos you have to be careful with not looking at the rock or the obstacle in front of you but in fact just looking to the side of it looking at where you want to go so whether it's avoiding obstacles or checking out what is ahead of you around a hairpin turner around the corner or something like that actually turning your head and motioning towards where you're going to go it brings your shoulders into it it brings your mind into it brings your body and eventually your bike into the direction that you want to go to get started practicing this i just want you to find those turns find those opportunities find those rocks that might be in the middle of the trail and look at where you want to go don't look at where you don't want to go [Music] last technique i want to talk about is an incredibly important one and that's emergency braking or emergency stopping doing whatever you have to do to stop your bike and yourself as fast as possible [Applause] the same truth sort of applies between both on and off pavement situations that your front brake is your most powerful brake in terms of stopping you and your bike the rear brake can't be neglected either because using that rear brake can help keep your rear end of your bike from wanting to overtake the front as the front is slowing down so you want to keep your bike obviously straight learning how to apply proper or the right amount of pressure to both brakes simultaneously is going to be your fastest way to stop the motorcycle abs and systems like that can help you of course but keep in mind that in off pavement scenarios a lot of bikes will actually take longer to stop in the dirt or the gravel or the sand with the abs on that's right abs can actually prolong your stopping distance so i want to make sure you practice both stopping fast with abs on on and off pavement practice stopping fast with abs off on and off pavement try all these scenarios out and feel out for yourself what is the best way to get you and your bike stopped given the terrain given the scenario what makes you stop the facets it's going to allow you to see more of this world and ride on further and safer so [Music] again just a list of riding techniques that are not only fun to work on in practice but they're kind of easier to get better at with time and they're going to help you continue and grow as a rider there's something i forgot to mention is there a technique that you know about that you think we should have mentioned or is there any of these that you'd like us to go into further detail on in future videos be sure to let us know in the comments below and also of course like and subscribe to the channel come on tell us that you want us to keep doing these things hit the notifications button so that you're seeing future videos and thanks for watching everyone right on we'll see you out there the next technique [Music] you

Channel: RIDE Adventures

Views: 37,449

Rating: 4.9851208 out of 5

Keywords: adv riding, adv riding techniques, adv riding tips, offroad, motorcycling offroad, adv rider, motorcycle, motorcycle training, adv motorcycle training, motorcycle lessons, offroad motorcycle riding, adv, ride adv, ride adventures, eric lange, Adventure motorcycle tips, adventure motorcycle riding, adv life, adv motorcycle, adv motorcycling, offroad performance, adv moto, dual sport, adventure motorcycle training, dual sport off road riding tips, dual sport beginner tips

Id: KmCPtVARyS0

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 01 2021