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Motor School with Quinn Redeker: Get Off Your Keister
Do your spine a favor by getting out of the saddle when you encounter sharp dips and bumps. Follow along in Motor School and we’ll get you sorted. (Photos by Kevin Wing)
Now just hear me out. The title of this column, “Motor School,” is not to suggest that you don’t have a strong work ethic or that you make silly excuses for failing to knock off even the low-hanging fruit from your gargantuan “must-do” motorcycle list. Sure, it would be fantastic if at some point you could remember whether your bike takes glycol-based DOT 5.1 or the silicone-based DOT 5 so we could get your fluids changed, but overall, you’re pretty damn solid in my book.
No, what I’m talking about here is something most street riders – like yourself – would benefit from if they incorporated it in their riding program. I’m talking about momentarily getting your posterior out of the saddle at various points during your street-riding adventure.
I can almost read your mind right now: “Hey there genius, it’s a streetbike, and we sit down when riding on the street.” Or, “Yes Quinn, we know you fancy yourself a motocross guy; stop trying to show off by introducing off-road techniques into every conversation.” I hear you, but in the time it will take you to drink a crisp, refreshing Fresca, I’m going to make my point. I promise. But please drink slowly.
Think back to a time when you were riding on the road and encountered either a steep little lip that bucked you forward in the saddle, a drop-off that bottomed your bike and compressed your spine, or maybe a pothole or dip in the road that jarred your body around. I’m confident you can recount tales ad nauseum where your bike and body got pounded into the ground, thrown up in the air, or pushed around like a greenhorn fishing for king crab in the Bering Sea. Not great.
No matter your age, riding ability, or type of bike you ride, getting your body up and out of the saddle will provide some massive benefits: 1) You can use your legs as additional suspension, so when the bike gets compressed and bottoms out or experiences an aggressive impact through the wheels, you won’t be sitting on the seat to take the brunt of the impact through your body. 2) If your bike momentarily gets “kicked” from a steep, short incline on the road, you won’t be sitting like a pumpkin waiting to be launched from a catapult. Instead, the space your legs create between your butt and the seat can be used to absorb the shock and upward force the bike experiences as it moves over the obstacle.3) You will have significantly more control of the motorcycle because you will not be getting hit, pushed, compressed, jarred, kicked, or thrown around when faced with roadway imperfections. 4) Lastly, your body will thank you, as you will have far less fatigue and discomfort over the long haul. Let’s face it: All of us have been on street rides where the road looked suspiciously like an asphalt Baja 1000, and our bodies paid the price.
Luckily, there isn’t too much to this technique. However, I’m going to walk you through a few things to think about and practice the next time you ride so you’ll be better able to deal with roadway rumbles you encounter from time to time. First, we need to look at the type of bike you ride. If, for example, you ride an adventure bike, a naked, or a sport-tourer, your footpegs will be (more or less) directly under your body. And because we will be using our legs to press us up and out of the seat, your bike’s ergonomics (the arrangement of the bars, pegs, seat, etc.) are pretty spot on and won’t require any adjustment in foot or body placement prior to executing the technique.
Our goal here is to successfully move our body up and out of the seat 3-5 inches by pressing on the pegs with our feet and using our legs to stand up. What we don’t want to do is use our arm strength to pull on the handlebar and lift us out of the seat, as this will negatively impact our control of the motorcycle by adding unusual and inconsistent forces to the grips, throttle, and levers.
Applying this dirtbike hack to your streetbike riding pays huge dividends.
Let’s give this a try. Find a parking lot that is uncrowded and free of traffic hazards and distractions but that has speed bumps or similar. Now what we are going to do is simply approach a speed bump at around 5-10 mph and get our butt out of the saddle at the precise moment the front wheel impacts the obstacle. The result will be that the motorcycle suspension will absorb some of the impact but will also get kicked upward slightly. It will be this additional “kick” that getting out of the saddle mitigates, as our legs will absorb the remaining impact and keep our body comfortable and in control.
A few notes here: Stay out of the saddle as both tires traverse the obstacle (don’t stand-sit-stand-sit) while squeezing the tank with your thighs to maintain stability and a good connection with your motorcycle. If you feel yourself pulling on the handlebar or otherwise feel that control of the motorcycle suffers, work to stay centered and balanced (no pulling with your arms) during the point at which you push with your legs to get out of the saddle while maintaining a high visual horizon with your head and eyes.
That Fresca is better than you thought, isn’t it?
Okay, next exercise: We need to locate an area that provides a nice dip or “G-out” in the road. You might already have a pesky spot in mind from a regular ride route or you can think of a driveway into a parking lot that has a steep angle, compressing the bike uncomfortably hard when you enter it. Wherever it is and as long as it’s safe to practice on, the same rules apply: Keep your speed around 5-10 mph and lift your butt out of the saddle as your wheels (and thus suspension) impact the obstacle. In this case, the forces you encounter will compress you rather than kick you like the speed bump did. Still, the process of getting out of the saddle is the same, and we still squeeze the tank with our legs and maintain gentle control of the bike with our hands.
Hey, I saw that side-eye just now. Let me guess, you have a touring bike with footboards, a heel-toe shift lever, and a forward-mounted brake pedal? There is no way to get out of the saddle as proposed, you say? Sure there is. We just need to make a few adjustments.
Touring bikes and cruisers often place your legs and feet more forward, so if you were to press with your legs, it would just push you back on the bike rather than up and out of the saddle. So we need to move our feet back. Yes, that means using the balls of our feet to contact the rear portion of the footboards to help get our feet under us. And yes, that might also mean that we think about removing the heel shifter that blocks the left footboard from allowing your foot to rest there. Other than that, it’s the same. In fact, I tested a Harley-Davidson Street Glide for a few weeks when I was a motor officer for Ventura PD, and that damn bike wanted to buck me all over the place when the speeds picked up. But these techniques calmed things down and saved my body in the meantime, so I know it works on your bike.
Now I’ll be happy to go over any of this with you, but first let’s knock back a few more Frescas. I’m thirsty.
Quinn Redeker wears Lee Parks Design gloves exclusively. Find Quinn at Police Motor Training.
See all Motor School with Quinn Redeker articles here.
The post Motor School with Quinn Redeker: Get Off Your Keister appeared first on Rider Magazine.
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