It’s an accepted truth: Less weight on a motorcycle is equivalent to more horsepower. This reality is the reason for countless titanium parts on MotoGP bikes and championship-winning racers looking like they’ve skipped more meals than a Victoria’s Secret cover model. But does the “10 pounds equals 1 hp” ideology that race teams live and die by mean that you should be supplanting your Sunday-morning TV time with 50-plus-mile bike rides? The truth is that not all weight is a burden, and if used correctly, the extra pounds you carry could be the secret to quicker laps at the track, plus safer riding on the street.
Transitions and changes in direction are areas where weight plays a role in motorcycle riding. How many crash videos have you seen where a bike spits its rider off, only to stand itself upright and continue down the road? Motorcycles inherently want to go straight; it’s us as riders who throw them off axis, using heavily weighted steering inputs to help accomplish quick changes in direction. Footrests, despite the name, aren’t for you to simply rest your feet on. Thrust your body weight into your bike’s inside peg to help rotate the bike off its axis and get to maximum lean quicker, then weight the outside peg at the exit to help stand the bike up.
A rider’s weight should be centralized as best as possible, just as the bike’s components are. This means that, in a transition especially, you’ll want to keep your head and chest low to the tank as possible, rising very little as you flick the bike from left to right—or vice versa. It’s not so much about how much weight you have but where you place it.
Another opportunity to play with weight distribution is in a braking zone. Modern motorcycles have enough braking power to transfer all of the bike’s weight forward almost instantaneously, yet transferring all of that weight to the front of the bike can overwhelm the front end. Similarly, if you grab the front brake with enough force to lift the rear wheel off the ground, you’ve rendered the rear brake ineffective. For these reasons, get your weight toward the back of the bike by sliding toward the rear of the seat as you drop the anchor. In more aggressive braking situations, you can adjust your weight forward and backward to control a bike’s slide into the corner; the more weight you move to the rear, the larger the rear tire’s contact patch and more stable the bike will be.
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Another opportunity to play with weight distribution is in a braking zone. Modern motorcycles have enough braking power to transfer all of the bike’s weight forward almost instantaneously, yet transferring all of that weight to the front of the bike can overwhelm the front end. Similarly, if you grab the front brake with enough force to lift the rear wheel off the ground, you’ve rendered the rear brake ineffective. For these reasons, get your weight toward the back of the bike by sliding toward the rear of the seat as you drop the anchor. In more aggressive braking situations, you can adjust your weight forward and backward to control a bike’s slide into the corner; the more weight you move to the rear, the larger the rear tire’s contact patch and more stable the bike will be.
Sportriding...
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