Kawasaki Sportsbike Riders Club - Australia - Online Forum

Mate,

Sounds to me that you are an inexperienced riders, and if you want to, you need to step up your game by attending a few advanced rider training days.

Even though im not a big fan of the company that runs it, i highly reccomed that you do a superbike course with the superbikeschool people.

Once you learn how to ride a bike at speed while being in control, the knee down will happen automatically.

I know of plenty of peolple that dont know how to ride properly but get their kneew down just for looks.
Needless to say that they are slowwer and usually not in full control.

Im currently putting around in the medium fast groups at EC and i dont get my knee down everywhere

Also,

What do you ride - how long ?

Are you in Sydney ?

rocco wrote:ok i understand the advice you guys are giving but whats the correct technique for taking corners....on the last snowy ride i was getting overtaken by literally anyone who came up from behind....why?????....well i put it down to i was goingt he posted limit as the roads were moist/wet andi have never been in that part of the country b4.


12 of us in a group and i was the last to arrive. I found it intimidating and embarrassing.......i wasnt riding like a granny...but i wasnt carving up the corners like the rest either.


I am trying to build up confidence on my cornering and most riders if not all that were going on the road were really leaning beyond what my brain was saying is safe............how do i get rid of the chicken in me with regards to cornering?

the snowy ride wasnt enjoyable for me in respect to the twisities in the mountains as it was more a ride of survival for me instead of fun....you know the situations where your thinking" how long is this gunna take to finish...i want off asap"

i find myself slowing down what i would consider too much in readyness for tight corner...where most others seem to arrive and scoot staright out of them with little effort

I'll have a crack at this! Getting your knee down for the first time (for all those OLD farts who have forgotten) is a fecking hoot!! And don't let anyone discourage you from having that as a goal! However, it is perhaps a more prudent and effective method to improve the riding ability and skill prior to attempting the knee down action!! It's kinda like your first root brother! Sure it's fun! But you'll fall out a fair few times, and peak too early! But after a while, when you have the techinique sussed, you can make her explode!

Now, as for the knee down thing! Without actual riding skill, the corner speed and lean angle you will be carrying will mean you will have to hang off it like a greyhound fucking a tennis ball!!! Best bet is learn to lean the thing over first, then work on adding body position and then some serious knee down action!!! This is why most are suggestion some sort of track oriented rider training. It may just point you in the right direction for improvement. Right now if you try it, you'll look like a right twat!!!!!

Usually, once you get there, you'll start grinding knee sliders away just for sport! But after a while the novelty wears off and you only use it for a guide with very little pressure. (Except in some corners...ie-turn 2 (Southern Loop) at the Island! I use it as a third brake entering the turn. On the road, it's only used in emergencies....ie-Corner tightens beyond initial judgement and I chuck my body off the inside to 1.Help it turn and 2.create more turn for the given lean angle. I used it on sunday for that exact reason. Came out of a left into what I thought was an opening right, but it tightened!!! Farking heaps!!!! I chewed a bit of seat foam before deciding I'd better lay the fucker over! Jumped off the inside of it and the knee kissed the tarmac just as a by product. Trust me it wasn't intentional....I had my jeans on!!!! Ouch!

Everybody above is right.....
But I know you want to do it like everyone else!
Fact is though it is very difficult to do on the road and more often than not if you are concentrating more on getting your knee down on the road it will slow your corner speed more than if you were not trying.
The real reason for getting your knee down is more a product of dynamics and physics than for show and it is a learning experience in motorcycle handling. The reason the knee goes down of course is because the rider is hanging off the bike towards the inside of the radius that is being tackled. This keeps the centre of gravity lower and further inside the centre line of the bike allowing it to remain more upright than if the rider was not performing this function. You have to become comfortable with shifting your body weight before entering a corner before hanging your knees in the breeze and searching for the hard surface beneath you. By just doing this you will find you will develop a better cornering technique. Knee down will come with further practice.
If you are really keen on feeling that "schrrrssssssch" through your patella then the best way is to find a particular corner you are confident with and repeat it over and over all the while adjusting and practising your technique. Adjust your body position, entry speed, counter steering input etc over and over and eventualy you will get it.
I used to have one long 120 deg corner on the way to and from work everyday and it certainly made me smile to be able to scoot through there every morning and night with my knee on the deck . Riding up the hills though I found that I often never got close to knee down and that I was much faster without trying.

Mick C wrote:Also remember that no matter how fast you get, there will always be someone faster than you.

Also remember that any time you go on a group ride someone is going to be last there, if that's you, stiff shit, where's the problem? It's more important to arrive in one piece than arrive 5th or 10th or whatever...

On a related note a group of blokes I always ride with are always ahead of me, 2 have done superbike school, possibly the third has too, dunno. I get to the end of the road and there usually just taking their helmets off so not like they're waiting on me for any great length of time..

Slow and wobbly wrote:If you are really keen on feeling that "schrrrssssssch" through your patella then the best way is to find a particular corner you are confident with and repeat it over and over all the while adjusting and practising your technique. Adjust your body position, entry speed, counter steering input etc over and over and eventualy you will get it.

And if you re going to take that advice, make sure you have knee sliders on

oh yeah dont forget the sliders

As somebody who only recently got his knee down for the first time, I know why you want to do it .... you feel damned cool the first time you do it I've never got my knee down on the road, and if I do it's probably time to slow down. I did a superbike school recently and can't speak highly enough of the training they offered.

Rocco, I think the first thing to do is get your head in the right place - it doesn't matter if your first, last or somewhere in between as long as you enjoy your ride. Now you mention about slowing down too much before a corner - I found the best way to overcome this was to position myself on the pegs so that I could use the rear brake to check myself if the corner tightened up a bit, make sure you square the corner off (you'll get better visibility which will make you feel more confident going through the corner), keep your elbows bent (parallel to the road) and then just focus on getting your eyes up and looking well ahead.

You also mention concern about the tyres sliding out when you lean over. Do you have chicken strips on the tyres or are they worn edge to edge? I assume they're not worn edge to edge, so there in lies sufficient evidence that you can lean over further without running out of tyre.

Other than enrolling in some formal training, my advice would be to just get out there and ride; the more miles you do the more confident you'll be, and speed will come with experience.

dave#3 wrote:
Other than enrolling in some formal training, my advice would be to just get out there and ride; the more miles you do the more confident you'll be, and speed will come with experience.

exactly.
just get out there and ride. and observe what other faster riders are doing, but dont do what they do if its beyond what you can do.

but did anybody here mention tyre pressures? maybe i missed it... are they too low? too high? at factory recommendations? take a few psi out if the tyres are at factory spec pressures.
for example, 36F/42R for a typical 750/1000cc plus sportsbike, drop em down to 33F/38R. so you have a bigger contact patch with the ground. if taking a pillion, just add a couple more psi at the back to firm it up a bit.
how about the suspension? is it in good nick? a bit sad?
and the tyres themselves? obviously it helps if theyre in good nick. squared off tyres will stuff up your cornering.

Not too long ago I went out with a bunch of guys, knees down every corner and I tried to do same......big mistake. They looked fantastically quick and "professional" and I wanted to be the same. Early in, I bit off more than I could chew, ended up on the wrong side of the road and was so very lucky that there was no one coming the other way. Reset the brain, and headed off at my pace, got to where we were going nice and safe. No one cares because they've been the last one to arrive at some stage and know that it takes time and also if you get it wrong by over-extending the consequences can be nasty.

I'm saving for an advanced rider course at a race track so that I can get the right tuition from the right people. I've never heard a bad story (but I'm sure there are a few) about the schools so that's the path I'm going to take and maybe that's the right one for you too.

Postscript: One of the guys I wanted to emulate above,came off in the same corner that I had my problem with a couple of months later. DOA......

I was very much in the 'I want to get my knee down' camp just a couple of years ago, but I refuse to push that hard on the road. I rode every day and picked a route that had some good corners on. I ended up with 3 main ways of getting to work, and chose according to what corner I wanted to play on. They were generally more open corners, like connecting ramps between freeways. I would check my speed on the entry, try and have a quick look at speed mid corner and check again on exit. Doing the same corner 2 or 3 times a week really improves your ability over a year.

After two years of such behaviour and no knee down (I don't pust too hard on the road) I finally did a track day. Session 1 was learning track riding in general, and session two was learning the track. By session three I was starting to push, but no knee down. There were a couple of corners I knew I was close so I started pushing to get it down. This almost made me crash as I tried to lean further than nesessary just to scrape the knee. The front had a minor slide, and I stopped doing that. I concentrated on entry speed and corner line. Eventually my knee scraped, quite lightly. As I wasn't aiming for it it suprised me and I lifted my knee - d'oh.

My second track day was at the same track, and I was scraping bits by lap 4 and pegs before the end of the second session. I was on road tyres (Metzler M1s) and my body position was shocking. I actually scraped a peg before my knee touched down!. The only track day I didn't get my knee down was one where it rained all day.

I still haven't got my knee down on the road!

The idea of kneedown wasnt so much to actually scrape my knee on the ground....just putting myself in the knee position to execute a corner at faster rate.


Doesnt bother me if my knee doesnt ever touch the tarmac......i just wanna get around those corners without having to slow down too much...wanna corner more confidently so next years snowy will be more fun and not uncomfortable


where we live in the riverina its pretty damn straight....no tracks no raceway.....just straight roads........so if anyone interested in 1/4mile drag come on down.........just kidding..must obey the law

when i got to the snowys it was a whole new world for me as far as riding was concerned....the hairpins and steep ups and downs were all keeping me awake and seruiously alert. Then the wet roads just added to the "shit am i gunna lose this here"

thats why i am aksing about kneedown/cornering techniques....need to bruch up on it

rocco wrote:The idea of kneedown wasnt so much to actually scrape my knee on the ground....just putting myself in the knee position to execute a corner at faster rate.


Doesnt bother me if my knee doesnt ever touch the tarmac......i just wanna get around those corners without having to slow down too much...wanna corner more confidently so next years snowy will be more fun and not uncomfortable


where we live in the riverina its pretty damn straight....no tracks no raceway.....just straight roads........so if anyone interested in 1/4mile drag come on down.........just kidding..must obey the law

when i got to the snowys it was a whole new world for me as far as riding was concerned....the hairpins and steep ups and downs were all keeping me awake and seruiously alert. Then the wet roads just added to the "shit am i gunna lose this here"

thats why i am aksing about kneedown/cornering techniques....need to bruch up on it

You need to move

Getting the knee down actually starts well before the corner....
You will never get your knee down if you are still braking going into the corner.... thats the biggest tip I can give you... not that I am knee-down-charlie or anything... (this tip no longer applies once you have practised a lot and get really comfy with the bike).
So slow down before the corner, get on the gass slightly going in and wind it out as you get further through it..... get your bum off the seat, stick that knee out...
Just be carefully because the first time I tried it I ran a lot straighter than I was intending lol...

Although a trackday and training would be the best way to go.... You can also find yourself a nice bit of road that has no traffic and try the same corner over and over to get the hang of it.... Do it somewhere safe and dont exceed the speed limit ofcourse.

There are a couple of knee down "tips" type videos on youtube. they use roundabouts as a training ground. but b very careful.....