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Posted by popular demand! (How to get your knee down)

Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 5:31 pm
by petro
During our ride today, I was talking to some of the guys about some videos I found on the net, on how to get your knee down :twisted: in one of the videos there are some girls there to keep you interested, :P so I have been told, well that is enough typing 8) here's the links enjoy :D

http://www.motorcyclenews.com/nav?page= ... _DOWNLOADS

http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?do ... q=kneedown

Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 11:16 pm
by varden
Oh dear.... now lets see him do it at say.....100kph

Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 6:32 am
by FrogZ
Knees pffffttt if you cant get a wing down you aint trying.... :lol: :lol:

Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 8:21 am
by Stereo
frogzx12r wrote:Knees pffffttt if you cant get a wing down you aint trying.... :lol: :lol:
Perhaps its easier when you know how...

During the track day on Sat I was faster than most of the guys in the intermediate group, but could not get my knee down..... It touched the ground a few times, but I couldnt consistently get it down... Toes touched the ground too :( Guys would have their knee down while I was overtaking them on the outside going way faster.... very frustrating....

Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 8:30 am
by NovaCoder
It's not so much 'how low you can go' as your body positioning.

I was doing this track day and failing miserably to get my knee down, so I got one of the instructors to follow me around for a couple of laps. When we were back in the pits he told me that the way I was sitting on the bike, I was going to touch my shoulder down before anything else :oops:

Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 11:07 am
by esie
Knee down....not going to happen....

But I got hugely excited yesterday when I scraped my boot!!! :lol: :lol:
Small fry stuff I know, but an achievement for me. :P

Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 11:17 am
by Stereo
The MCN one is a bit long for the amount of info, but cool anyway.... (lots of segways with music and strippers and stuff).

In hindsight there were a few things I am doing wrong..... Overweighting the left peg (on a left hander), and pushing out my knee too much.... In fact, just generally trying way too hard lol.....

How much did the instruction cost nova? do you remember?

Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 3:45 pm
by NovaCoder
Stereo wrote:How much did the instruction cost nova? do you remember?
That was back in the UK when dinosaurs still walked the earth (eg a few years ago) :D

Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 4:34 pm
by javaman
Love that low-speed knee down uey :shock:

Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 6:53 pm
by HemiDuty
I reckon the quick version, which worked for me and should for most others is:

1. Make sure you put the ball or toes of your inside foot on the peg, NOT the middle of your foot. Slide it back! You want your foot out of the way.

2. Get in the right position, similar to what old mate on the video says. Hang off the thing quite a bit, with your ass and your upper body and head all well off the bike .

3. Go into the corner quick enough to lean the thing over a decent way. No sense in trying to crank it over if you are going so slow that you will run off the inside of the corner. Just nice and fast but not insane (that comes later lol).

4. Once in the corner crack the throttle open, even if it is just a tiny bit. Being off throttle will just make it feel like the front will tuck so get used to having the throttle open a bit.

5. When you have got the above going on and feel good doing it, and your knee is still not down, you need to just drop the show a little further. So after you have cracked the throttle open, just nudge the inside bar a bit. It should not need much if all else is going well. Just make sure your knee is out but not reaching for the ground, and the ground should come up to meet it. And by nudge I mean nudge, you do not have to smack the thing. I do not want to be held responsible for someone coming unstuck, in fact I don't want to be held responsible for anything in life because quite frankly I am irresponsible.... :shock: 8)

As is the custom with these things I guess it needs the disclaimer that the above is merely my opinion and is not to be taken as advice in any way, shape or form, yadda yadda, yadda, yadda. You get the picture.

This should work for most people, I have short legs and ride a big bike so need to have the bike fairly over to get the knee down, so unless you are under 5 and a half feet tall this should see you smiling.

At first you will have so much fun with it you will probably grind your plastic knee sliders to death in a single day (or session if they are soft ones lol), and then you will be over the novelty part of it and just let it drag where it needs to.

These days I only really touch my knee down at the entry of a corner and sometimes on exit, and I also use leather knee sliders. I do miss the cool noise of the plastic ones though. I could simply stop picking my knee up mid corner if I wanted to, but for some reason that is what I seem to do now, particularly in a race. I seem to go faster doing it (but that's just me, individual results may vary as they say lol), and atleast I don't have to fork out money for knee sliders any more hehehe.

Anyway to further boost my already over-inflated ego :lol: , here are a couple of pics to show my body position. I - like pretty much everyone else here except Josh Waters - am an amature and far from perfect, so a pic of an amature rather than a legend like Troy Bayliss etc., is probably more helpful and realistic. Plus I get to feel all grown-up like hehehe :roll: .

Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 8:11 pm
by aardvark
If I can get my knee down on my RD250 race bike with mountain bike sized tyres, you lot can do it on your fancy pants sports bikes!

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 7:52 am
by Stereo
aardvark wrote:If I can get my knee down on my RD250 race bike with mountain bike sized tyres, you lot can do it on your fancy pants sports bikes!
Yeah, but you know how.....

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 12:26 pm
by aardvark
Stereo wrote:Yeah, but you know how.....
OK, here's my tip. Don't try and get your knee down. It'll happen when it's good and ready.

As you learn to corner with confidence, you'll find that you start to move off the bike a bit more, the knee will come out and will soon be scraping the pavement.

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 12:31 pm
by Stereo
Ive gotten closer than this..... I scraped a little tiny bit off the slider.... but I really want to grind it....

I should go out and find a nice piece of country road to practise on....

Possibly buying some sliders might help too

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 12:47 pm
by Nanna10r
I Don't think it'll happen for me unless i have rearsets.

Bloody legs are'nt long enuff I Reckon.