Hard Braking for Off Road

Bret is my first ADV coach back in 2014. I often watch Bret’s Youtube videos because there is always so much good information. Here are my take aways from his ‘A Lesson in braking off-road on your motorcycle’ video.

Hard Braking for Off Road – Emergency Stopping

 This is the number one skill riders need to get really good at.  Without proper technique and lots of practice, in the event a rider needs to get stopped quickly, the likely hood of not stopping as quickly as need or the potential of going down is very high.  This is due to not being in the proper body position and/or over application of the brakes.  Depending on the speed, the forces of impact can be very significant and the possibility of getting hurt is quite high.  Learning this skill will also build your confidence more quickly than any other skill.

Body position

Top to bottom – starts with vision, riders need to be looking to the horizon.  If looking down, the inner ear that helps with our balance is knocked off balance.  We rely on our inner ear for balance and when we look down it will let us know we’re off balance, but often, it’s late information.  We need that information sooner.

Eyes to the horizon, butt back, arms bracing

 Upper body – arms should be relaxed, with a slight bend and elbows slightly up and away from your rib cage. Weight goes back as you shouldn’t have a lot of weight on the bars, this allows the bars to self-correct.  When we have too much pressure on the bars, they can’t self-correct and you’re more likely to wash out and/or you simply use a lot of energy because you’ll be fighting the bike.

Two fingers on both the clutch and the brake – this allows the other two fingers to be wrapped around the bars giving you more grip and control of the bars.  This is important because if we get a sudden deflection from hitting a rock or rut or whatever, we’re still attached to the bars.  The hands come off the bars more easily when you’re using all four fingers on the controls like many street riders do. 

Just before you apply the brakes, get your lower body back to neutralize the forward thrust coming from the forward weight shift.  Above, but behind the bars.  There might be limitations to how far you can get back due to limited range of motion of the ankle due to injury, type of boot, etc.  If your quads are burning, you’re probably too far back.  You don’t want to get so far back that you can’t reach the rear brake.  Biggest thing is getting weight back towards the rear tire and off the bars.

Come to a COMPLETE STOP!  What you practice is what you will do in the event of an emergency.  Once stopped, body comes up to the power position and one foot goes to the ground while remaining in a standing position, meaning, your butt does not go to the seat.  This allows you to stay in a stable and balanced position with the bike and sets you up to be able to take off from a stable and balanced position.   In the big picture, this helps to conserve energy, helps us with making better decisions and reduces injuries throughout the ride.

Complete stop to a standing position

For optimal braking off road, standing is best.  Being seated doesn’t allow you to affectively get stopped as well.  The reasons being, seated doesn’t allow you to influence your traction, whereas, standing does because you can shift your weight back and over the rear axle.  The advantage of getting back is one, if on higher tractions surface, it keeps you and the bike from pitching forward possibility even taking the rear wheel off the ground.  Another advantage is adding more weight to the rear wheel which gives more traction and takes some weight off the front tire, which could overwhelm the front and cause it to slide out.  Standing while braking also allows for us to influence the slide especially with off camber situations.    

Application of clutch and brakes

Disengage the power to your rear wheel by squeezing the clutch, you don’t need the motor anymore.

The front brake is the most critical, but challenging part to hard braking and getting stopped.  Just like on the street, you want to get to the brakes quickly and firmly continue to increase the pressure to the front brake.  Covering your brakes increases your reaction time.  Because the traction changes often, the difference from the street and off-street application is we have to be able to modulate the amount of pressure being applied to the front brake.  That doesn’t mean we release the front brake, but instead, we release a bit of pressure being used as we feel the front tire starting to slide.  Once traction is regained, we get back into squeezing more brake.  The reason we don’t want to completely release the front brake when the tire starts to lose traction is because we don’t want the front suspension to rebound/extend and then when you get back on the brake, you won’t have as much traction as you did when you originally started losing traction.  (Simulated Practice = 2 finger squeeze, where we squeeze 2 fingers of the left hand with 2 fingers from the right hand and we decrease the pressure without releasing the 2 fingers on the left hand.  There should be very little movement of the right-hand fingers, but a significant change in the pressure felt on the left 2 fingers)

Rear brake helps with stability– down shifting isn’t as important as getting stopped.  If you can get back to first, great, but let’s focus our attention on getting stopped.  Sliding the rear tire doesn’t get you stopped as quickly as having rolling friction.  So, you want to work on allowing the rear tire to continue rolling while also trying to stop.  If you feel the rear tire sliding, release the rear brake just enough to allow the tire to roll again.  It’s a fine line.  Roll-skid-roll-skid is probably what is going to happen most of the time depending on the terrain and traction you have available.

If you are using ABS (antilock braking system) for either the front and/or the rear and the ABS engages, stay with the ABS/brakes.  ABS is modulating the brakes for you like the roll-skid-roll-skid talked about earlier.

Brake and clutch set up

Most off-street bikes need to have their front brake and clutch levers rotated down from factory set point so that your wrists are fairly flat when standing and while seated.  It’s recommended to get a shorter lever, which will allow for more room if the bike drops so that the lever won’t break as easily if the bar end gives way.  It also allows for more squeeze of the brake without impending your other fingers. 

Rear brake lever should be fairly level with the foot peg which will allow you to get in the proper body position for braking and still be able to reach the lever.  Most off-street bikes will need this modification as the rear brake is almost always below the foot peg, which makes it impossible to reach when you are getting your weight back for proper braking.

Much of this information was taken from YouTube channel – Bret Tkacs A lesson in braking offroad on your motorcycle

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