7 tips to help become a better, faster and safer rider

Maintain your machine

It sounds so basic but, if you want to be a faster yet safer rider the first and foremost essential step is to make sure your motorbike is in excellent condition. If your bike is on a poorly maintained side then there is no way you’re going to be a safe rider.

Don’t be so harsh on the bars/No harshness with the bars

Your handlebars work at your command. If you’ve ever flown a kite, you can relate the importance the string of a kite holds, so do the handlebars. Holding a handlebar tight can result in losing fine motor control.  It is quite probable that you start feeling stiffness in your arms and shoulders. It even makes it difficult for you to turn your head and look clearly through the turns.

Legs play a very major role/ In between the legs

Riding a motorbike is similar to riding a horse and in both situations your legs play a crucial role. Let’s understand this further. When you squeeze your knees and legs against the tank, it frees up your upper body, relaxes it and thus you are able to control the machine efficiently. So, have those pair taken well care of, in between them you hold the reason to rejoice.

Don’t make going fast the goal/ Is your goal going fast?

Essentially you should understand speed is a by-product of the entire experience. The need to keep up or the need to be first is actually a recipe for accidents and we are sure that’s not cooking up here. When you start going at a speed faster than you are comfortable at you start making more and more mistakes and it results in exponentially worse riding. Twisting the throttle is easy, anybody can do that but that doesn’t make you fast. Don’t make going fast as your goal neither should you ride beyond your ability. It is crucial to not let good riding technique go by the wayside out of the desire to keep up with that guy in the front rather ride with a slower rider, who rides within his limits. Go a little planned, work on your skills step-by-step and make the journey fun.

A quick tip to entry, apex & exit

The entrance is the beginning of the turn, its where we tip in. The apex is the point where we’re closer to the inside of the turn, and the exit is the point where the motorcycle is straight up again. As you enter every turn enter with a plan. Identify your tip in point to be pretty far to the outside of the turn so that you have a lot of room and then stay wide and wait for the apex and once you find it between 2/3 or sometimes even ¾ of the way through the turn, look for the exit.

Learn to stay seated

You must have witnessed many riders hanging up on the seat and riding. Well this style of riding can be witnessed in the days when there were steel frame machines and bias ply tires. However, with the frame technology and improvement in electronics, this hanging out of seat technique becomes ineffective and increases potential risk while riding.

It’s important to understand that with hanging from seat, a rider gets disconnected from machine and chances of falling off the motorcycle is high. The Pros that hang off their seat, do so to reduce lean angle so that they can have more traction. You need to be patient to reach that level.

Slow hands make fast riders/ Look off the distance

Would you agree if we say slow hands make fast riders? The only way to have slow hands is to have a lot of visual lead. Looking down at the ground increases our anxiety and your sense of speed turns high. But when we look off in the distance your sense of speed is lower your anxiety is lower, and you have a lot more time to deal with things as they come towards you.

The further ahead you look easier it is for you to have nice slow hand and slow inputs, and slow inputs are less likely to upset the chassis or the grip of the tire.