How To Ride Off Road with BMW Off Road Skills - Motorcycle Live 2020

hello and welcome to the bmw gs experience brought to you by offroad skills it's november we should all be in a massive shed called the nec doing this show for you guys day in day out at motorcycle live we can't do that this year so we've done social distance in the best way we know how off-road skills we've come to this wonderful 4 000 acre playground that we know as home and off-road skills is waters arena perfect perfect place for riding adventure bikes and improving your skills now we've got coming up a nice little demonstration of some of the stuff we teach on our courses we start from level one for absolute off-road novices and you can work all the way through to level three where we'll have you power sliding and skid into your heart's content now with me today to help do this presentation is one of our instructors neil hawker he's a dakar motorcycle racer the caliber of the riders on the school is always very high for the instructors neil come down and join us hello and uh yeah welcome to what was arena we've got an amazing area here in in south wales and we are pretty lucky this is the best place for any adventure riding in the uk it's absolutely everything you need here with ups downs ruts oh there's a bit of everything and we can teach you all how to ride these amazing adventure bikes off-road all right chris neil uh shouldn't you be going to the deck huh um so in a few weeks time few weeks time well we're going to pinch you for a little bit first we're going to run through what we do on the schools what we've got for you today rather than our customary uh 10 meter square arena in the nec we've got a 4 000 acre arena to show you today we're going to run through some of the lessons we do at off-road skills now we like to start from the absolute basics get those dialed and work through every aspect of off-road motorcycling to get you as much confidence and skill as you'll need out there in the wild lesson one neil picking up the bike yeah it's we've got to start somewhere and it's not a very nice sight seeing these lovely new bikes on the ground but yeah you've got to pick them up sometimes when you fall off so this is the first thing we teach at off-road skills we want to do it the easiest way there's thousands of videos on youtube how to do it this than the other but we just do it the easiest way the least energy we can use picking up the bike means we can expend more energy riding them the first thing is turn the bike off there's always that moment when you're riding with friends and they fall off the bike or you fall off the bike and you don't want them to see so you run back to the bike try and pick it up and it's in gear right and you go flying down the road and have to pick it up again so turn it off big red button or the ignition so you're now hopefully in this state here and it's not too bad it's not up on up on its end or anything like that it's a horrible sight so get up on two wheels engines off now we can go into lifting the bike up straight away we want to make it easy for ourselves by putting on a lock the steering the handlebars to that lock that gives us a solid platform to lift with once we're in this position i'm not going to go into manual handling get comfortable the furthest point of the handlebar the most leverage get your hands at the bottom of the grip i cut my hands over each other you want to look up use your strong legs not that back as you look up and lift just walk forward and the bike should come up nicely so looking up even up hiller i didn't make it easy for myself neil you made that look like an absolute piece of cake there and again cake always need cake and we have a two person lift that we use on the schools but we're keeping our distance at the moment so we're not going to use that now neil you look totally comfortable with that but you're holding it in one hand fingertips can you talk us through our next lesson which is about the balance of the bike yeah we see it so many times where people say adventure bikes are too heavy and too tall and this than the other so we do exercises where it's all about the confidence of bike handling and we see it when you have to walk around the bike even people are so close they're scared to get away from it they move in they bump in ever since the indicators the horn yeah every time you move around the bike you're battling your balance of yourself and the bike by taking that step away and trusting the bike it meets it makes a massive difference to your bike confidence and being able to just move around the bike so we do a lesson about the balance of the bike down here it's heavy over there it's heavy but actually up on two wheels and again you get a notice notice a theme going on with the bars to a lock once the bars to a lock and the bike's upright they're weightless you can hold it by fingertips you don't even have to hold it at all they are super well balanced but you see i'm away from the bike the bike's in gear so we're forgetting about neutral it can't roll away i've got no brakes on the bars are to a lock i'm taking that step away and from there you can just walk around it normally you can look around look at the scenery have a fiddle around with a suspension at the back really get confidence handling the bike now as neil mentioned there that is something that we can all work on and it's real good to come and spend some time do it on our bikes if you're nervous about doing it on your own all the schools are on our fleet of bikes so you don't have to worry about dropping your bike come and use ours and we'll teach you how to be that confident and that in control moving around the bike now the next little lesson we're going to talk about it might seem a little bit patronizing we're going to teach you how to get on and off a motorcycle anyone here not able to do that so getting on and off the bike again this is a big difference between road riding and off-road riding let's have a show of hands virtually on the internet there anyone ever gone to get on their bike in a car park swung their leg over and couldn't find the floor the other side you've done it i've watched you do it okay it was on your bike and for the benefit of the people behind the camera there's three of the off-road skills staff team who've got their hand up behind us here so getting on and off the bike in off-road situations and in awkward situations we've got a couple of little techniques that really help make that safer less effort and less risk of toppling over in front of your mates neil talk us through it we sure can chris well straight away if i try and put this center side stand into the ground it might just dig in or sink down also if we use that side stand we're relying on a little pin and it does throw the weight of the bike the wrong way when we try and swing on so by taking that side stand away we've already talked about that neutral it's non-existent we're in gear the bike's not going to roll everything anywhere again that confidence of handling the bike we've got that we'll we'll learn that for sure and then by just lowering the bike into you that means the bike's lower and it's going to be easy to get on put our chest towards the tank swing that leg over straight to the foot peg see my weight has not changed the bike's not changed so that eliminates that trying to find a foot especially if there's nothing here it could be a drop or some slippery rocks so straight away i'm balanced i'm in gear i've got a comfortable position on the bike i can just put the clutch in and right away now i promise we do actually get to do some riding on the school but again it's all about getting these important details fine-tuned at the beginning and they carry on through the rest of the course so the next thing we're going to look at is walking with the bike now have a little show of hands on the internet there as anyone ever park their bike somewhere come back to an hour later and it's boxed in by four or five scooters or someone's put their car in the bike bay and you can't get out it's a really annoying situation and times like that on-road and times again off-road when you've got to get out of somewhere tricky it's always better just to get off the bike walk it a few yards and you can get back on and carry on without an incident neil i'm going to come in now talk us through the walking with the bike so yeah walking with a bike it doesn't sound very interesting does it chris but yeah like you say there's there's plenty of reasons why we do it um one of them is like a river crossing if you're doing a river crossing and it's a raging river or even something you have to cross again do it with a few people and we can go along that to talk about that on our adventure travel training course but anyway i digress i'm walking with a bike so it's the first introduction of the clutch as well which is really important now this is the best safety switch we've got when we're walking with the bike we're using the clutch to slow us down or speed us up we're not worrying about the throttle whatsoever so the throttle's pretty much off well it is off because that's a different lesson that's running with a bike and we're not there yet so walking with a bike i'm gonna it's in first gear again forget about neutral start the bike out two fingers on the clutch we're gonna start to introduce that getting a real good feeling for the clutch see me there i'm just rocking it back and forward using that clutch so we're getting really good with that i'm going to stand away from the bike give myself a little bit of room to walk for some reason we get people walking with a bike and they start walking like a crab we're going to walk as normal we're going to look where we're going just using that clutch and we're going to look around we're going to walk it's going to be very elegant and it's a really good way of getting used to the clutch and being able to walk the bike when we need to getting out of dodgy situations like chris said or being boxed in or just like a river crossing how far do i have to walk chris miles kneel we haven't got to stay in the arena now 4 000 acres worth of walking to be done right before we can get to riding these bikes around the woods we've got to cover off the most important part of off-road motorcycle riding it's not spraying people with mud it's not splashing through puddles it is in fact the riding position the thing you'll notice when you see people riding off-road well they're stood up getting a good standing position on a bike makes everything that comes afterwards much much easier so neil talk us through the fundamentals of the standing position on an adventure bike so yeah straight away it's about being comfortable on the bike it's not a stress position it's just like we stand up as normal up on two feet nice and comfortable you should be able to yeah control the bike without actually having your hands on the handlebars by being in the correct stand in that position and we go through it individually to tailor your needs so everybody's different size feet heights everything like that so yeah it's getting about getting in the right standing position that is so important from your legs from your your knees your hips losing a bit of height maybe yeah your head looking around you need to be able to see obstacles also to react to obstacles if you um the quicker we react to them yeah the the better we can ride because we're prepared for what's coming up your hand position your elbows we go through everything to get you in the right standing up position perfect neil enough stationary staff get on that bike when you start riding around this arena start riding around i want you to talk about the control of this bike and actually steering it through the footpegs so from here we're going to go right in now we've got thousands of acres of welsh forestry and all sorts of uh terrain to cover so we get you straight away confident of start by standing up and going through the standing up position we start using our knees and moving around the bike a suspension and getting good with our vision using our head so yeah once we get confident with the standing position then we make it a little bit harder for yourself by making a slalom by using footpeg pressure combination of vision the standing version really getting some tight turns on these bikes and you'll be amazed how tight they can turn in the body position with the correct vision once we progress and get confident then the instructor will make it a little bit harder what we got now chris so neil the next lesson we're going to move on to is building on the slalom but starting to turn these bikes in a tighter space this lesson not very inventive with the name it's called circle in a square i'm going to have a square of cones and i want you to do a nice full dot tight turn neil and talk to us how you use your body weight to let you do that type term so straight away all my weight is now off of the inside peg i start to lean the bike in now because i'm lent in all my body weight needs to be on the outside of the bike and you can really tip the bike over with a little bit of vision just moving around you'll be surprised how tight you can turn and then once you get dizzy you can go the other way you can go round and round showing off in a car park with your mates turning as tight as you can the more weight you can put on that outside peg the tighter you can turn how about that lovely meal so the next thing we're going to move on to is braking now braking exercises is something we spend a fair bit of time on at the beginning stage of the schools because we want you to get confidence and feel on the brakes and be able to use them effectively off-road so the first part of this lesson we turn the abs off so you can get a feel for the tires sliding and what the grip is like off-road second part we're going to use the abs because it is phenomenal the off-road abs on these bikes really really works properly off-road neil i want you to do a couple of laps now i want to do some back break skids front brake exercise and then correct braking to a stop fire into it yeah okay so the abs is off we're going to get in a straight line a little runway made up by the instructors abs off first gear nice and steady we're going to go along here feeling for that back break the fletch comes in fabric comes on and you're skid all the way until you stop because the back brakes on you're going to put that left foot down and we're just going to stop nicely it gets us that feeling of how the bike reacts under a skid and also it tells us the back brake on its own it's not that good so from here we're going to get confident with that front brake we're not going to use the clutch the clutch is out the front brake just comes on very slowly and i'm using one finger there and you can start to feel the front brake scrabble in the gravel skip along you're getting really confident the more pressure i put on that front brake the more it skids along but that inner abs will kick in and you'll let go of that front brake so there's a drop of certain doom that way we're going to come along the track we're really going to tell and tell you how good this aps system is because i mean i'm not a roadblock rider i've not really got to grips with abs on the road because i've never had to use it so much now these bikes have totally surprised me how good they are for the abs [Laughter] chris's bike was my gauge to put the brakes on i come to a very controlled stop so after we've mastered the art of breaking we get to explore in our site we've got 4 000 acres of beautiful trails from easy stuff to impossible stuff and everything in between now as we go around the site putting into practice all the stuff we've learned in the early part of the course we're going to start finding up hills and downhills and getting ourselves into a few little pickles which once again we're going to show you the tools and techniques for getting out of trouble number one of those hill recovery neil time for you to get stuck so talk us through the hill recovery exercise and how we get out of sticky situations like this so straight away i've stored it learning how to stall it is really really important firstly it holds you i'm not on the brakes no front no rear no heel start assist nothing it's holding me it might go back if you give it a try on something as steep as this it's pretty slippery but it does hold you quite nicely then we're gonna get off the bike again a bit of the bike confidence being able to step away from it so from here we're going to want to get around that off the hill safely so we're going to come around ourselves so we're going to always stay the higher side of the bike we're going to lean the bike into you so if the worst does happen it just goes into the the higher side and then go all the way down that way we're going to turn the bars and now we're just coming back on the clutch very very smoothly nice and smooth once it's going we can then control our speed just with that clutch a few footsteps to get yourself following the bike it might slip down a little because you're going over rocks or in rain gullies but as we come back smooth on that clutch get to the point where you're near enough level on the here where you can't go back any further there might be a ditch or you just can't go back from here we're going to use the front wheel to move us around and get out of whatever's the problem is so here the clutch comes out the front brake comes on i'm going to lean the bike into me i'm going to go left to right with that front brake on full lock left to right and you've moved the bike and meter nearly a meter without too much effort at all then we can get back on the bike remembering to go straight to that foot peg because there might we're on a hill so there might not be anything to put the foot on from here we can just ride out and have another go at the hill and what neil's talking about there it you know obviously the aim is to get to the top of the hill but it's really important to know what to do if you do get stuck and by knowing how to deal with that situation you're normally much more confident in attacking the hill that's hill recovery dealt with we've got ourselves off the hill we want to be looking to make it to the top of the hill so what we're going to talk about now is an exercise called momentum and it's about using the grip using the ground where you've got it to drive and then using that momentum to carry you up and over an obstacle the same problem comes at the top though because if we hit the top of this bank in fourth gear we're not going to make the turn at the top so we need to carry that momentum to the top be back in control at the top so we can make the turn and carry on up the road neil give us a little demo nice drive along the flat and then that momentum carries you up the bank the beauty with this exercise is as he comes back down now it works on all sides of the bank so neil let's let's up the ante a little bit okay what about this one that one yeah what about this one what if i make you stop there okay so from there we've got a couple of bike lengths to get as much drive in as we can carry our momentum to the top of that bank neil over to you [Applause] beautiful job as neil comes back down now we're going to talk about what we've done we've looked at level one so far and that really is the absolute grounding in off-road skills it's about getting all those basic skills right perfecting all that bike control and then you can move on to doing bigger and better stuff on levels two foundation level two and level three by the time we're at level three we're starting to look at things like ruts preloading jumping ditches and brake slides and power slides neil it's your time to play level three is a lot of fun and when you've got that skill and control on the bike it's incredible what you can make one of these things do so i'm going to shut up for a minute and leave you in the capable hands of mr neil hawker to show what a gs 1250 really can okay we've got a perfect rut here straight away it's about the vision we want to be looking up the track up the trail as far as you can vision's nice and high foot peg pressure we want to be loose on the bike still because the bike might move around if you're gripping it tight when the bike moves you move so we've got lots of little areas here at walters arena to really play on ruts so it's vision standing position and a little bit of drive so once you get onto level two and level three we then amp it up one of the cool things we do is pre-load now pre-loading is using the bike the suspension your body to get over an obstacle safely without just smashing into it here we've got a little ditch preload just get over the obstacle once you get a little bit more confidence you can really start playing be a little rock a little bounce over it you can then just use it anywhere on the trail it was a little rock you know how to bounce up it over it hop over things and really start enjoying these bikes for what they're designed for and jumping around playing around on the bike firstly we've got our kid and turn once you've mastered the skid turn you can then really start playing some skid turn to power slide so as neil finishes up there thanks very much for watching guys sorry we couldn't be with you in the nec show in birmingham however we will be here in 2021 beautiful 4 000 acre site get yourself booked in i promise it will be the best two days motorcycle and you've ever had learn to ride off road and the whole world is your playground we've got the sight book for another hour now so i'm off to go and enjoy the trails we'll see you in 2021 [Music] come on neil let's go have some fun [Music] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Off Road Skills

Views: 310,215

Rating: 4.9412713 out of 5

Keywords: Off Road Skills, Motorcycle Live, Motorcycle Skills, BMW Off road Skills, Simon Pavey, bmw motorrad, motorcycle live 2020, off road motorcycle instructions

Id: nM4y8J-5ZCA

Length: 23min 35sec (1415 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020