California Superbike School - Level 3
Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2008 8:01 pm
In less than ideal weather conditions I did the 3rd level of the California Superbike School on Friday. Here's a bit of a review for those considering doing it. The format is the same as levels 1 and 2; 5 on-track sessions with classroom sessions between each session and a single drill to practice in each on-track session. The drills/skills are as follows:
Prior Knowledge/Assumed Skills
- Lock on position - this is where you create a triangle between your toes on the peg, your knee jammed into the tank and your arse pressed against the ductail. This is how you hang on to the bike (not using your arms as some may believe!!!)
- Knee out - stick it out as close to perpendicular to the bike as possible, don't twist your torso, keep your weight low and forward and your arms bent.
1. Hook Turn
This is pretty much the school of Tinnie with a twist. Lock on and stick your knee out, lean forward then, when you need to tighten up your line simply breathe out and lean forward a little further. Doing so reduces the centre of gravity of your bike and shortens the wheelbase (nominally) by adding load to the front suspension, essentially making the bike take a tighter line without you adding any additional steering input. This is useful where you feel you're running wide and want to get back on line without turning the bike again.
2. Pivot-steering or power-steering
We discussed Newton's third law - every action has an equal and opposite reaction - and looked at how this applied to riding a motorcycle. In brief the idea was to weight the outside peg as you applied a steering input so that rather than making the input from just your arm that you made the input across your body. This gives extra power and control to the steering action and is very helpful when making a quick turn into a fast corner.
3. Knee to knee
This drill focuses on keeping one knee in contact with the tank to maintain the lock-on position during changes of direction. As you start to slide across the bike bring what was the inside knee up into the lock-on position before you drop the inside knee out. Worked well and felt natural.
4. Hip flip
This drill focused on the actual muscle action for achieving the knee-to-knee . It's done using the abductor muscle on the inside of the thigh of the locked-on leg. Ensure you don't life your arse off the seat and move quickly and smooth;y from one side to the other.
5. Attack Angles
This drill just focused on the different lines taken through a corner when the turn-in point is approached on different angles. At turn 4 we tried approaching the turn-point from parallel to the edge of the track, angled slightly to the left (away from the corner) and slightly to the right (into the corner). The resulting line through turn 4 was as you'd expect, but interestingly the line through turn 5 was also noticeably impacted too. No great revelations here, but an interesting drill nonetheless.
In summary I feel the level 3 superbike school provides reasonable value for money (although I'd say it's on a decreasing scale from levels 1 to 2 to 3). It's pretty tough doing these drills in the wet, and I was disappointed that the on-track coaches were unable to keep up with me because they were out on Dungflop Qualifiers in the wet while I was on Pirelli full wets (which I might add give heaps of traction in the wet!) Given the number of wet days these guys do I'd have expected them to have tyres and/or bikes set up for the conditions.
Prior Knowledge/Assumed Skills
- Lock on position - this is where you create a triangle between your toes on the peg, your knee jammed into the tank and your arse pressed against the ductail. This is how you hang on to the bike (not using your arms as some may believe!!!)
- Knee out - stick it out as close to perpendicular to the bike as possible, don't twist your torso, keep your weight low and forward and your arms bent.
1. Hook Turn
This is pretty much the school of Tinnie with a twist. Lock on and stick your knee out, lean forward then, when you need to tighten up your line simply breathe out and lean forward a little further. Doing so reduces the centre of gravity of your bike and shortens the wheelbase (nominally) by adding load to the front suspension, essentially making the bike take a tighter line without you adding any additional steering input. This is useful where you feel you're running wide and want to get back on line without turning the bike again.
2. Pivot-steering or power-steering
We discussed Newton's third law - every action has an equal and opposite reaction - and looked at how this applied to riding a motorcycle. In brief the idea was to weight the outside peg as you applied a steering input so that rather than making the input from just your arm that you made the input across your body. This gives extra power and control to the steering action and is very helpful when making a quick turn into a fast corner.
3. Knee to knee
This drill focuses on keeping one knee in contact with the tank to maintain the lock-on position during changes of direction. As you start to slide across the bike bring what was the inside knee up into the lock-on position before you drop the inside knee out. Worked well and felt natural.
4. Hip flip
This drill focused on the actual muscle action for achieving the knee-to-knee . It's done using the abductor muscle on the inside of the thigh of the locked-on leg. Ensure you don't life your arse off the seat and move quickly and smooth;y from one side to the other.
5. Attack Angles
This drill just focused on the different lines taken through a corner when the turn-in point is approached on different angles. At turn 4 we tried approaching the turn-point from parallel to the edge of the track, angled slightly to the left (away from the corner) and slightly to the right (into the corner). The resulting line through turn 4 was as you'd expect, but interestingly the line through turn 5 was also noticeably impacted too. No great revelations here, but an interesting drill nonetheless.
In summary I feel the level 3 superbike school provides reasonable value for money (although I'd say it's on a decreasing scale from levels 1 to 2 to 3). It's pretty tough doing these drills in the wet, and I was disappointed that the on-track coaches were unable to keep up with me because they were out on Dungflop Qualifiers in the wet while I was on Pirelli full wets (which I might add give heaps of traction in the wet!) Given the number of wet days these guys do I'd have expected them to have tyres and/or bikes set up for the conditions.
