HOW TO: Learn The REAR BRAKE In a WHEELIE | And deal with the FEAR

do you want to take your wheelies to that next level and actually learn how to wheelie at balance point and even take it past balance point and even do so in a knee knocker let me tell you it's all in the rear brake and in this video I'm gonna break it down for you all jokes aside I'm gonna let you know everything I know about the rear brake and how you actually learn it the safest way let's go [Music] do you ever get problems with like your fingers turning white when you ride I don't know if it's the cold or the vibrations through the handlebars that does it but mine can get really bad no it's just that tip anyways I'm here at my private lot in the woods a closed off road with the owner's permission so we can really stretch our wings and ride freely and today we're gonna talk about the rear brake and just a 10 second disclaimer before we even start I hope that you have fresh brake fluid fresh brake pads and a functioning brake disc and the lever is set up at a comfortable position mine is kind of level with the footpeg so you want to learn the rear brake and I know that it's super scary when you start to get even close to balance point your stomach Turns Upside Down and you just panic and even if you're able to hit the brake you hit it like at the wrong time or too hard I want to get you out of the mindset that you're gonna apply the rear brake only when it gets scary and into the mindset of being on it through the whole wheelie so from the second that front wheel lifts off the ground you're gonna be on it and let me just clarify when I say on it I'm not talking about like on it and just counter all that brake pressure with heaps of throttle that will just overheat your brake system and eventually set you up for brake fade and that's when it gets so hot that the pad starts to melt onto the disc and it just gets glazed and you lose all brake powers or the fluids boil which also makes the brakes go out I'm talking about this you see that play that's like from not touching the lever to just activating it that's where I want your foot from the second you clutch up why you may ask it's actually to program your brain that you're gonna steer the height of the wheelie with the rear brake and not so much by the throttle I'm gonna show you how a good practice technique that I used in the beginning was to do a clutch up and obviously I'm not going to hit balance point because I'm a beginner right so I'm going to clutch up to slightly below balance point but I'm gonna stay on a slightly positive throttle and by positive I mean kinda a little bit too much throttle so you're getting that upwards motion right and when I start getting close to balance point I'm going to start applying brake pressure so I'm countering the throttle but just a tie in a bit so you start to feel that control of height through the rear brake I'm going to show you you do it clutch up stay on the throttle and all this you see the bikes movement it's all from different brake pressures so this time listen to the bike and see that my throttle hand is almost completely still that's how I'm controlling the height of the wheelie not by being choppy on the throttle but by using different amounts of brake pressure and just to show you how you actually don't need the rear brake until you're really past balance point I'm gonna do a throttle coaster where you throw the bike past balance point and then you roll off the throttle and only use engine braking to not Loop so no no brake saw about throw culture I didn't touch the rear brake at all and why did I show you that well it's to ensure you that you have so much engine braking in a one-cylinder bike that all that fear you're feeling below balance point or even on balance point is not justified it's only psychological and I know that's not a small thing because the fear kind of like takes over your whole body I remember it so clearly but I'm telling you this so you can have the right mindset going into this that you kind of like take that fear and place it beside your body and now you can focus on how the bike feels and I can give you another two quick tips about how to actually reduce those levels of fear you have initially when you're learning wheelies like this one use proper safety gear I'm having safety shoes so if the bike lands on my shoe it will not squish it I also have a full safety jacket that has safety pads on my elbows shoulders chest and back and as you can see a dirt bike helmet and some goggles and the obvious gloves the second thing you can do is to get a riggity ass bike like this that you're not afraid to drop or if you have a kind of semi nice bike you can put like axle sliders on it and there's all kinds of protection you can put on your bike because honestly if you're trying to learn how to do wheelies and you're already on a nice bike you're just set up for failure man I'm just being honest choose the right tool for the job now let's get back to those wheelies so we are on a balance point and just playing around with different brake pressures to actually figure out the Finesse point of the rear brake and how it really affects your bike and this is called dragging the brake or riding the brake and it will increase the temperature of your brake disc and pads but as long as you're not really doing like a full throttle and then just a full break you will not get that brake fade I think a lot of people that Loop just use that as an excuse I've been riding my break through my whole wheelie progression have never gotten anything close to brake fade so let's pop a wheelie foreign working that rear brake really figuring out exactly how the bike will respond to different brain pressures also try not to yank in the Handler bars when you do the cutshop because this is not a BMX bike your yanking will do nothing to improve your clutch up and everything to Tire your arms look at this when I do nothing with my arms and the bike comes up anyways it looks ridiculous when you don't move your upper body or arms at all when you do a clutch up so I know it's kind of a more natural movement to do something like this I'm just telling you that you really don't have to save that energy in your arms and while we are on that subject of getting Tire in your hands and arms there are some things you can do to take that stress off your hands and arms and it's by placing the weight in the seam so when you're in the wheelie try to relax and just Loosely grip onto the handlebars because you want to keep that dexterity in your fingers if you're crapping too much or doing a wheel with completely straight arms it's gonna feel like you're reaching for that clutch and this rolling off movement is going to be unnecessarily hard to do another Pro tip is let the bike come up to you so let the bike pivot around your hip if this is you and this is the bike do not follow the bike with your upper body so let the bike come up to you like this man I wish I had a third person view of this but I'm just letting the bike come up to me and what can help you riding position wise is arching your back and relax your hands and arms and then you can go for a scrape hey now I want to talk a little bit about the bike's balance when you're below balance point you're just gonna have to worry about that up and down motion right so you're working on the rear brake and the throttle and how those two work together but once you hit balance point and go past it something happens you open up the bike to side to side balance and this will be like a whole new world for you it was for me in the beginning it kind of felt like I hit balance point and then the bike just fell in either direction and I was just following it down so the bike was actually riding me and not the other way around this takes some time getting used to but eventually you will be able to relax into the seat try riding with slightly bent arms to stay loose to avoid that static riding position where you cramp up your arms are kind of straight you're leaning back you're just locked into the wheelie and if the bike falls you fall and unfortunately I can't really show you this from the POV but I can try to do it wheelie where I stay kind of lose on the bike I'll try to be like I can look on other side of the bike lean into the bike lean back and do a coat back fire coaster shift down another little Golden Nugget of a tip I can give you is where to keep your eyes to prevent you from freaking out once you hit higher Heights and that's to try to look through the bike or through the wheelie look at the Horizon now and once I pop the wheelie keep your eyes there like this leave it at the Horizon look through the wheelie pass the bike and even more importantly if you're going to do like a drop back like this keep your eyes facing forward oh nice because in the beginning I was following that Handler bars or front fender or whatever and when you're up here every inch will feel like I don't know a whole yard it kind of multiplies in some weird way in correlation to your fear so what I discovered is if I just keep looking at the Horizon through the wheelie it doesn't matter if your handlebars are here or here or up here because you kind of like stay in contact with the world and the Horizon if you get what I'm saying so how do you apply that rear brake in a knee knocker which is kind of like that next logical thing you try out after you've mastered the sit down wheelie to a decent degree so we're in the knee knocker bring it past really fast just sure okay let's talk about knee knockers the first thing you need to think about when it comes to knee knockers is that the same principle that placing the weight in the seat applies so make sure you're not putting any weight onto the right Peg because that will just make the bike go to the right right so it really doesn't matter if you have like this portion of your leg on the seat or you actually have the knee there are tons of variations to the knee knocker but no matter which one you feel most comfortable doing place the weight on that seat a group of seat cover like I have is almost a must if you're going to be doing anything past balance point because I know those stock seat covers can be slippery AF so when I throw back my knee knockers in a drop back it's kind of a tricky thing to stand on that right Peg with your heel and then just use that rear brake with kind of like the front portion of your foot it's kind of hard to explain but but you need to keep the weight on the seat on the knee or leg and then just have contact with the foot Peg with the shoe and then actually still be able to maneuver that break and that was super hard for me to figure out in the beginning because I was either too heavy on the peg or too freaked out by not feeling that I had like a good contact point with the brake so think about that when we do this knee knocker so I really can feel the weight of the seat foreign like the back portion of my foot Weight Wise don't just there you go there's like a weird feeling that I'm only like tapping it with my toes and found my friends sums up my rear brake tutorial I hope I gave you some useful tips in this video because this is just all the knowledge and insights that I have accumulated through my whole wheelie progression lastly I want to thank each and every one of you who commented on my last Vlog it means the world to me to know that you are out there you share this passion with me because you have to realize I don't have anyone to ride with do you see a lot filled with people here hello it's just like oh that voice crack holy cow it just echoed Into the Woods [Laughter] oh okay it's super cool that you're here and if you like this video let me know in the comment section below and even more so if you have any kind of questions about wheelie technique the rear brake erotic position or how to deal with fear when you're learning wheelies hit me up I reply to everything I mean I love stunt riding I love talking about it take it easy and I'll see you in the next one peace

Channel: Rideyard

Views: 28,079

Keywords: stuntriding, honda, wheelies, wheelie, tutorial, wheelie tutorial, how to wheelie a dirtbike, how to wheelie a 450, progression videos, wheelie progression, stunts, bikelife, swedish bikelife, supermoto, supermotard, motard, rideyard, crf450, crf450x, rear brake, how to learn the rear brake, rear brake in wheelie, wheelie with rear brake, wheelies rear brake, brake fade, supermoto wheelies, learning how to rear brake

Id: Dt6SIQe3Glc

Length: 13min 33sec (813 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2023