You passed the beginner course and bought an 850 lb motorcycle?

hey motorman here if you just wanted on this channel by accident well i've been on youtube since 2006 i'm a motor officer motor officer instructor and i'm the maker of the ride like a pro video and the book by the same name and today we're going to talk about you know you went through the beginner's course maybe it was writer's edge or msf whatever it may be and you got your motorcycle license and it doesn't say anything on that license about what size motorcycle you should buy so you should be ready for the biggest baddest bike you could find right but we're gonna find out stay tuned we're gonna focus on just this one rider you see with the white shirt on the electric light and as you can see here he's going way too slow of course the motorcycle tips over as soon as he attempts to make a turn this rider told me he's had this bike for about a year he's ridden 10 000 miles on it now he went through the writer's edge course where they give you the basics and after they finish the course they tell you you need to keep practicing they don't tell you to get the biggest heaviest bike you could find but that's sort of what this writer did and i'm betting at least by what i can see here he's never practiced anything that he learned in that basic course because he can't ride in the friction zone he's got the clutch fully engaged and that means he's going too fast for his skill level he misses the pivot point with that gentleman standing with the white shirt on and pointing to the pivot point he misses that completely turns his head after he passes through the u-turn area and that u-turn is about 30 feet wide here i'm riding him through the exercise and i'm explaining to him exactly what i'm doing as i go along so that he would get the feel of what the motorcycle should be doing sometimes that works i i often give it a try sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't but i'm willing to try anything let's watch him again again he's got his clutch just about fully engaged so he's actually going a little bit too fast and again does not turn his head and he's going too fast to make that u-turn now had he turned his head quickly he could have made that even at the speed he was going the bike could have made it but his skill level won't allow him to do it here he tries it and at the very end pulls in the clutch no power to the rear wheel the motorcycle tips over got to keep power going to that rear wheel at this point we've been working on this exercise for about 45 minutes to an hour and as you can see he's dipping the bike fairly well but because he has the clutch all the way out and doesn't turn his head he goes out of the exercise again if that was out on the street and he was trying to make a curve he had to run right off the road everything we do here is about avoiding obstacles and using technique the three of them head and eyes friction zone little pressure on the rear brake these are all the things you need for low speed maneuvering of just about any motorcycle but especially heavyweight motorcycles in the beginner course they're using small motorcycles where even if your technique if you're just using tiny bitter technique you can get through it and actually get your license but as you can see that's not going to help him when he moves up to a 900-pound motorcycle again he looks straight and he goes straight got to turn your head fast and far you should know that age is not a factor in this incident this writer is early 50s i'd say in good physical condition has no problem picking up the bike he just has a problem turning his head and eyes and putting the techniques together especially using that friction zone once that clutch is fully engaged the slightest movement of the throttle causes the bike to leap straight ahead and since he's got the clutch fully engaged almost all the time he's constantly having the same problem not being able to turn the motorcycle or have the motorcycle react to what he actually wants to do if you give the motorcycle the proper commands it will respond but if you have that clutch out all the way and you don't turn your head and you have virtually no pressure on the rear brake your turns are gigantic as you see here this exercise the offset cone weave is a series of quick left to right turns and right to left if you don't turn your head and eyes quickly you'll never make it through as we see here he's actually skipping some of the gates the area between the two cones there is we call it a gate because you pass through it since he doesn't turn his head knives and look back to the left he couldn't make that gate he actually skips it and skips the last gate as well he's looking straight the motorcycle goes straight again we could see here he makes it into the first gate now he tries to make the second gate but he looks straight well your hands follow your eyes you look straight you go straight his turns are huge if this is a winding mountain road he would have run off the road no matter what i told him he would not turn his head nice and this is fairly common he gives up after the third gate and decides to give it another try but that is a problem when you can't turn your head knives since the hands follow the eyes the motorcycle will not react you look straight the bike will go straight every time now you can't see this from the drone view but i took a smaller green cone and put it eight feet outside the big orange cone that gives him a lot more time to turn this head nice and to turn the handlebars he makes it through that first gate but then he gets to the outside cone that's okay so far instead of turning his head quickly to the left he hesitates looks straight motorcycle goes straight can't get inside that gate let's see if he gets back yes he makes it inside the small green cone you can't see it here on the video but then he doesn't turn his head fast enough to get inside the next gate so again his turns are way too big the idea of this exercise is to feel the bike transition quickly from extreme left to extreme right but if you don't turn your head knives you won't get that feeling we've now moved on to the intersection and we'll see how he does through here this rider has got a real good handle on the techniques he's using his head and eyes the friction zone little pressure on the rear brake and as you can see it works perfectly same thing with this rider much better handle on the friction zone head and eyes not perfect goes a little wide there but he does have a good handle and he's able to stay within the cones but again here comes our favorite rider doesn't turn his head fast enough and he goes outside the cones goes over the imaginary double yellow line look straight go straight right out of the exercise here i'm having one of my instructors lead him through the intersection and all he has to do is look at the instructor the entire time because wherever the instructor is that's where he needs to be a split second later i'm having her make wide turns as well but it helped a little bit but not as much as i hoped it would the good thing about this rider there's no quit in this guy he dropped his bike a few times picked it up and kept on going if he just practices on his own and comes back maybe for a one-on-one lesson with my sportster i think he'll get it till next time

Channel: Ride Like a Pro Jerry Palladino

Views: 2,483,822

Keywords: ride like a pro, beginner riders, uturns, how to, how to make a uturn, slow speed skills, crashes, harleys, honda, indian, victory, sportbikes, lady riders

Id: vNJOkCcgIRo

Length: 8min 17sec (497 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 03 2021