How to hang off the bike

[Trip]

One thing I have noticed with a lot of riders that haven't been to the track and gotten a chance to work with control riders or other experienced twisty riders coming into my area is how bad their body position is when they think they are hanging off the bike. While I am not the king of the best body position and have a lot to work on myself, I thought I would try to give some help to those with little to no help out there. By all means feel free to throw in your own input and correct some of my misinformation.

I have seen a lot is people doing the get half a butt off the seat directly straight off the side of a bike. While this is a good start, it is still not getting enough weight off the bike. What you really need to do is square your shoulders, drop your head to the mirror, and rotate your hips to where your inside leg actually goes foward as you move off the bike and your outside leg is holding you to the bike and your outside armpit is over the tank. It isn't so much coming off directly to the side of the bike as rotating foward with the lines of the tank. Getting your head off center is hard and my main area I have been really working on.

[Rider]

Sticking my inside leg forward is what I need to work on. The rest of it I have and do it consistently. Head out toward the mirror outside armpit centered over the tank, half my ass off the seat, arms relaxed and lower arm and upper arm at at a 90 angle.

[OneSickPsycho]

Rotate around the tank... that was the biggest piece of the puzzle I was missing...

[Trip]

Originally Posted by OneSickPsycho

Rotate around the tank... that was the biggest piece of the puzzle I was missing...

NtS was doing the same thing as you. He was doing much better before his slide though.

[DLIT]

Basically, the tank is a pivot point and you "roll" your legs around it. That's why in my track pics you don't see my knee way flailed out anymore. But for newbs, kick that knee way out until you get use to the feel of dragging and you start getting an idea of where your max lean is. A good indicator of max lean is how much chicken strips you have left on your front tire.

It'll feel uncomfortable at first, hanging your knee way out, but it does start to feel better. A big help to extending it out is your foot positioning. I put the base of my ring finger toe directly over the outside of the peg and put my heel against the guard.

With your upper body, keep your shoulders square and try not to weight your inside arm. Your armpit should be directly over the gas cap. People say to "eat" your mirror, but I don't find it comfortable.

These are all good pointers for the basics. They set you up to feel the right feedback from your bike and put the center of gravity in the right spot.

[Mr Lefty]

so I'm trying to envision this... your basicly pivoting your hips to where you wanna go? I've gotta long way to go but if I can get it down in mind first... I'll have less bad habits to break when the time comes...

[DLIT]

Originally Posted by Ebbs15

so I'm trying to envision this... your basicly pivoting your hips to where you wanna go? I've gotta long way to go but if I can get it down in mind first... I'll have less bad habits to break when the time comes...

Basically, yeah. And doing all this reading/research is the best thing for you. It's the same thig I did and my first track day I took the school and they pretty much taught me everything I already knew.

[Mr Lefty]

yeah... though honestly... I'd rather be riding learning bad techniques... and then fixing them... at least I'd be FUCKING RIDING!

[DLIT]

The biggest hint when I first started getting serious about riding fast was hanging half my ass off to whichever side I was leaning. This was before the track. Then I had to work on my upper half and feet.

[Mr Lefty]

yeah it's gonna be intresting trying to apply all this... I didn't find any decent twisty's in AK till I got back from my last deployment... and they were already snow covered!...

gonna have to hit the on/off ramps in Fargo like crazy