Tell me what you guys think *pic heavy*

[Temeraire]

Alright, I asked a friend to come out and take pictures while I was practicing on the MSF course.
I'm going pretty slow but that knee was scraping... Now I gotta work on everything else so hit me up, what am I doing wrong????
...I have a feeling what little confidence I had is about to be shredded...

 

[Cookie]

Body positioning has everything to do with the speed you are carrying into the corner. You may be doing all that you can for your skills.

The only thing that comes to me is that if you might have had more speed, you may have been able to have had your body and head more to the inside of the center of the tank. But that may be the speed and balance part that I cannot gauge because of this being just a two dimensional picture.

I would say immediately that you are doing 8/10ths more than most that never lean their Busa at all! So,,, kudos to you!

 

[Cookie]

This is a bit extreme, Temeraire, but maybe what I am saying will click with this pic of Jorge Lorenzo.

Again,,, I think you are doing great!

 

[Busa1166]

Video next time... Nice pics ........ I hope you took the kids out of the park first

Looks like Fiat man is trying to kiss that mirror very nicely if he had any

 

[Hayabusa4life]

That looks like lots of fun, I want to try that, good job.

 

[IG.]

Yep. pretty good! But, like Cookie said...

Your upper body has a lot of weight, and the more you move that weight away from the bike and to the inside, the less lean angle you need all other things being the same - like speed and radius. This also means that if you move more of your upper body to the inside, you could go faster with the same lean angle.

Ideally, you would move your head so it is facing the mirror, while your outside arm rests on the tank - this also helps to maintain a relaxed body position. Also, what many overlook, stay low while doing it.

 

[Cookie]

Good support, Igor!

 

[Temeraire]

Yeah the few times I scraped the pegs I noticed my chest touching the inner side of the tank, so I need to do that to maintain a good lean angle at higher speeds. Hopefully I'll be able to try it out with a bit more speed in Ohio, won't be on Zero on the track but it'll still be a good learning experience anyway.

 

[kromdom]

Firstly, you are leaning your bike way more than I can ever do so. This is a video that helped me "understand" the proper mechanics/technique of draggin it. Best of luck and ride safe

- MCN: How to get your knee down[/url]

 

[shaunbags]

I looked at a couple pics of myself at the track the other day and realized I wasn't off the bike as much as I thought I was so I'm going to try work on that next track day, body position and throttle control and all good things will follow suit you where down a fair bit lower than me too keep it shiny side up

 

[moloko]

Just as a critique / constructive critisism.

Your body shouldn't be twisted like that, you're leading your lean in with your butt instead of your shoulders and head.

You want to get your body weight as off center of the bike as much as you can so the bike wants to pivot around you.

Head down towards the mirror, once your head / shoulders get down towards that mirror the rest of your body will fall in line scooting your butt half off the seat.

The knee out on the inside further throws more weight towards the inside corner increasing rotational mass for the bike to pivot around and the puck provides a good gauge for your lean angle.

The leg on the outside of the corner will be holding you on the bike and used to help you pull yourself back to center out of the corner keeping a loose grip on the handle bars. If you're doing it right, your legs will be sore sore sore the next day after some nice hard riding.

That loose grip is very important because you don't want to input any accidental steering control sliding around on the seat, and the gyro forces of the front wheel will give you input as to exactly what the bike 'wants' to do. You can react by giving it very purposeful 'countersteering' instructions to carry you along your intended path.

With your body in the twisted position (head / shoulders center, butt hanging off) like that it's having nearly no effect creating a rotational mass for the bike to pivot around and is in a sense dragging your knee just for the sake of dragging your knee.

Not tryin to bust yer balls or anything. Just tryin to be helpful. Hope I was.

That MCN vid, along with all the other MCN vids are great learning tools. That other pic posted is spot on what it should look like.

 

[Temeraire]

Okay, so my upper body position is crap and I'm using my lower body too much. Okay that's a good starting point.

 

[DRFLGD]

You're doing great! Now drop that inside shoulder and "look" into that mirror! You'll be amazed how fluid that feels!

 

[03busaman]

Firstly, you are leaning your bike way more than I can ever do so. This is a video that helped me "understand" the proper mechanics/technique of draggin it. Best of luck and ride safe

- MCN: How to get your knee down[/url]

Nuts they are doing that in public rotary filled with traffick

 

[kitchener rider]

can't offer any help here, But am very envious... nice job

 

[IG.]

Here is another challenge to be aware of. Let's say you adjusted your body position per advice given. However, what you may not realize, but what you need to pay attention at is that as you increase the lean angle and the road gets closer to your eyes, it gets a bit scarier, and to avoid that uncomforable feeling, you unconciously start moving your upper body back over the tank, while at the same time in order to preserve the speed/radius you would lean the bike more - possibly exceeding the lean angle and scraping hard parts. Later on you might be sratching your head trying to figure out what happened.

What is important here is to realize that dragging a knee is of much less importance than carrying as much of your weight to the insde of the bike. So, when that scary feeling kicks in, resist the urge to move your body back over the tank. It is hard to overcome this feeling and trust that nothing will hapen. Therefore, it is a very gradual process.

Essentially, you need to very gradually and over time lean a tiny bit more while at the same time preserving your upper body position. In extreme case, you should imagine your entire inner side - knee, elbow, shoulder being next to the road, while at the same time pushing the bike away from you.

If you get a chance to watch a footage from Rossi's gyroscopic camera (it stays upright regardless of the bike's lean angle), you will see exactly that.

So, it is very important to not sacrifice the correct upper body position to the urge of dragging the knee no matter what.

And if you do it right, you notice that for the same speed and radius, your rear tire will develop chicken strips. In this case, it would be a good thing.

 

[EarlyBird]

Wow! All great help and advise! I cant add much here.... Just take your time and work slowly to getting better at being leaned over and work on your body position. Small sudden movements at that lean angle make a big difference to how the bike reacts etc. I do drag a knee or too in my time when I am at the track, but find out that as I ride better at the track I am using less of my knee. This is because Like suggested... Get low to one side of the tank and look where your mirrors are at.... Looking to the side of the wind screen... I tend to hang off low and to the inside of my fuel tank and try not to hang to far off the bike if there are a lot of fast corners. The more you hang off the bike the more effort and energy you use going from side to side. But when in a long sweeping corner the more you hang of the bike... the more the bike doesnt need to be leaned over. And keeps you closer to getting up right and getting on the gas sooner! There are a lot of small things that go with positioning and the road that you ride will help determine how much you hang off the bike.