Improve your Cornering

By Andy Ibbot


We are going to take a good long hard look at the one area of riding that everyone enjoys immensely but everyone would like to do better - cornering.
Over the years it has become clear that all riders of any kind of machine can ride the straights really well. Most of the corners they carve tend to present a problem of some description of other. If you considered your 10 favourite corners how many times do you come out the other side with a big grin on your face and a feeling of euphoria because it has gone just whom you wanted it to? You were in the right place, you where in the right gear, you applied the throttle correctly so you exited faster than you entered, the bike felt stable and traction was good. How many then? 7 out of 10, three, two, one? It seems to run, on average over every kind of bike and rider at 3 to 4 out of 10. That leaves us with over half of the corners we ride with a problem of some description that leaves us unsatisfied with what happened.

So what grabs your attention when you ride a curve? What do you always what to be aware of when the bike is in the corner? There are five things and you only have to have one of these five things wrong and the other four will be effected as a result on it.

Every time you corner you will be thinking about the following things:
  1. Traction. Is there going to be enough grip to allow me to use the throttle as I want or will I have to modify my plan to take account of lose of traction?
  2. Surface. The surface will have a direct effect on traction so you will be looking out for shiny patches of Tarmac, water across the road in fact anything ton the surface that could make traction an issue, like Shell Grip. You are nearly always more positive with the throttle if you tackle a Shell Gripped roundabout aren't you?
  3. Lean. Lean and traction are symbiotically linked. The more lean you have the less traction you have because the contact patch gets smaller the more you lean the bike over. That's why racing tyres are very unstable in a straight line because their profile is designed to give a bigger contact patch when the bike is leant over.
  4. Speed. Ever gone into a corner too fast or too slow? Does this have any effect on traction, or lean angles? Your speed in the corner will be limited to the amount of traction you think that you have. It will also affect your lean and your line through the turn.
  5. Line. Where you are and where you want to be in the corner. If you go off line you tend to roll out of the throttle, which makes the bike sit up and run wide. You then have to adjust your speed, which is limited by the level of traction you have or think you have.
As you can see you only need one of the above five things wrong and the other four will follow. For example:
You notice half way around the corner that the road surface looks a little lacking in grip. So you alter your line to suit which in turn effects your lean angle, which effects your traction, which effects the surface which effects your speed which effects your line. No wonder we only get 3 to 4 corner right out of ten!
This gives you just a small insight to the depth of knowledge we can deliver at the California Superbike Schools and the cornering technology that Keith Code (See Box out) has discovered, developed and refined over that last 20 years.
We will cover, in depth, some of the 16 things you need to get right in a corner for it to leave you brimming with confidence. It seems like a lot when you consider that there is only six-control actions you perform on a motorcycle. Do you know what they are?
So, there are really only two things you need to take full control of using these six actions. Speed and Direction. Just two things. That should be really easy shouldn't it? But when we combine the five attention grabbing attributes to riding then the simple task of speed and direction gets harder to get accurate, after all. We (humans) were designed to travel at 11mph when running so a 100-mile per hour corner has it's own set of problems on that level alone.
Some of these problems will manifest themselves as survival reactions. These are the things we do in a corner that we never intended, they just happen. For example, you are riding in the wet and you accidentally ride over a wet manhole cover and the back end of the bike steps out. We all know that we should keep the throttle positive so that the bike's suspension isn't over loaded at the front. Not a good thing in wet. So what do we do? We slam the throttle closed as fast as we can and we could end up in a heap on the floor as a result.
And what about that time a car pulls out in front of you. You get tunnel vision and target fix on the car. This limits the amount of space you think you have and think you can use so all you can do is ride directly at the one thing you don't want to hit - the car.
When you get tense on the bike because it has done something you don't expect the bike reacts to your input and starts to handle badly. When you grab hold of the handlebars with a death grip the bike can no longer track the line you set for it as you have just stopped the handlebars from resting in the position they want and have actually started the bike turning to the outside, running wide. When this happens and you start running off line you get more tense and the more tense you get the more the bike will run wide and so on until you either relax and take control or crash. Hmm, if you could recognise that you were getting tense in the first place you would have never have run that wide!
All this probably makes perfect sense to you as you read these words and hopefully by the end of the article MSL will give you, you will become a more confident cornering rider as a result because the ONLY way to build confidence for a sustainable period is through knowledge and practise. Time for you to recognise these things and start getting more out of your bike and corners!

California Superbike School - THE LEVELS

The Four Levels of Cornering
Everyone starts at LEVEL ONE. This teaches you the five foundation skills, the basics of good cornering, the basics of the art. They aren't beginner skills, they aren't advanced, they aren't complicated, they aren't fancy, and they aren't particularly easy or difficult. They just work. A Level takes a whole day to complete. Each level has five drills contained in it. Each drill is an exact technique to remedy an exact problem.

Level One
The first level of understanding builds your foundation blocks, the key and beginning to working your way to cornering heaven. Everyone starts here and as we have found over the years many students, even those who have completed the Upper Levels come back to us to re-do Level One on a regular basis.

Upper Levels (Levels 2, 3 and 4)
If you have already completed one of our training levels you are already know that this stepped format works. You will also be aware of our highly professional attitude, organisation and extremely able staff.

Upper Levels
The upper Levels, Two, Three and Four, are each an adventure in discovering solutions to very specific riding limits and barriers. As we move through the levels, the last drill of the day gives riders a taste of what's to come.
For example, you will remember the fifth and last technical drill in Level I was a very specific visual technique. Once mastered, it unlocked a critical data gathering sequence that directly connected you to the turn, allowing you to build consistency and accuracy into your cornering. (We hope you have been practicing it!)

As in Level One, each of the upper level drills has a specific, satisfying and technical end result.

Level Four.
The latest level from Keith, your own personal plan of action. Level four is a programme of training based on the first three levels you would have completed. You will be asked to fill in a questionnaire before you attend the school so we can devise a plan for your day.
On the day we will work through your personal plan helping you to improve further. You will also get to ride the Slide Machine (weather permitting).
Because of the structure of the schools and the stepped nature of the techniques every student must complete one level before moving on to the next. Each level will take a day to finish switching between classroom, track and off-track drills. The days start at 7am and finish at 5pm.

OFF TRACK DRILLS.
And just because you are not in the classroom or on the track don't think for a minute you can rest up. We also have a series of off-track drills for you to complete. Each circuit will have a separate area, complete with a fully qualified instructor, to work with you on a one to one and group basis.

KEITH CODE

Through the California Superbike Schools and the Twist of the Wrist series of books and video Keith Code has raised the profile of Motorcycle training across the World in the past 20 years.
In the past two decades he has singled handily raised the need for cornering technique and most importantly IMPROVED the quality of riding through out the WORLD.

His commitment to making everyone a better rider has been through his books and videos, which are the World's best, selling riding technique books by a huge margin. They have been translated into several different languages to cover the globe.

Not satisfied with this he is currently working on Twist 3, an interactive CD, a new video, a talking book version of Twist of the Wrist as well as inventing new and useful training aids such as the Slide Machine, No body steer bike, Brake rig, brake and downshift rig and Video bike.

He has invented the CODE Race a Competition Experience to help racers as well as helping several World Champions to the top of their class.
And he still gives classroom lectures in all of his 70 US schools as well as travelling to the UK and Australia to do the same.
He is continuously improving the instructor training methods and has the only structured instructor program in the World.

As a world class coach Keith has appeared on several TV shows across the World and is in constant demand from the European branch, Australian branch. Everywhere he goes he is asked to appear in magazines, do book signings and appear on TV. He is the most famous motorcycle coach in the world.

The Slide Machine(TM)

The Slide Machine(TM) was invented by Keith Code in 1997. The machine serves two purposes.
1) To allow us to set your body position correctly on a moving bike. It's used in Level Two of the California Superbike School(TM)
2) To allow us to show you how to control a slide from the rear with a greatly reduced risk of high siding. (Level 4 only).
The Slide MachineTM rigging is fitted to a Yamaha R6. Its articulated outrigger arms allow the bike to be leaned to very steep angles and are dampened to prevent high sides. The worst of all cornering type crashes a high side is where the bike slides, catches, stands up rapidly and ejects the rider off the "high side". Exactly why rider's high side, on the track or road, is known understood and can be prevented in most cases. That is the focus of our drills and training on this unique machine.

The No BS Bike

The No Body Steering bike was invented by Keith Code in 2001 and is designed to prove to riders that the only way you can get a bike to turn is using the handlebars. No amount of pressure on the foot peg, no amount of hanging off and no amount of upper body motion will get a bike to turn. Admittedly you can get a slight change of direction with these techniques and the Schools teaches some of thee in Level Three but to get the bike to turn and by that we mean lean over far enough to successfully get through a 30mph 90 degree bend.
The upper handlebars do nothing. That are mounted to the fairing bracket and the throttle is there just to allow you to maintain speed, a crucial aspect if you what to have a stable bike in a straight line.
It normally takes around three seconds for a rider to realise the truth of counter steering and that body steering doesn't work.