COLUMN: Riding Better: How to use your body to make the motorcycle lose weight

You're reading this because you want to ride better, right? But what if I told you that there's a simple trick that will improve every single motorcycle you ride within seconds. It's free. Of course, you'll have to put some amount of effort into it, but that's all it requires. Interested?

Think about how a motorcycle feels when you're riding it down a straight road under gentle acceleration. Now think about how it feels when you're on a twisty road that requires you to brake, turn and accelerate constantly. The first situation doesn't sound like a lot of fun, does it? But do you normally worry about the motorcycle and what it's about to do when you're going down the straight? The answer for most of us is no. Most of us have a lot more fun on a twisty road for sure. But we also have to worry more because the motorcycle is constantly changing direction and speed and we are supposed to control this process to the best of our abilities.

The reason is quite simple. Your motorcycle is in a more stable, more predictable state on the straight so it doesn't worry you. But on the twisty road, it's constantly in a state of fluctuating stability -- the suspension is moving around under the forces of acceleration, braking and turning -- and that's why you can't really relax.

It would be easier to ride motorcycles faster and more confidently if we could figure out how to make them more stable more of the time.

There are a lot of ways to do this but the simplest one is to start with your body. Most of us weigh something like 50 per cent of the motorcycle's weight, so we do have a lot of influence on its stability.

Division of labour
What I would like you to try on your next trip is to think of your body as divided into two halves by your belt. You have to separate the functions of controlling the motorcycle and holding on to the motorcycle. Use your brain, shoulders, arms, and hands only to control the motorcycle. So you don't hold the bars tightly and put weight on them. You hold them just firmly enough so that a bump doesn't knock your hands off the controls. This does mean that some of your body's weight will have to be dealt with by your core instead of your hands. It's not as easy as it sounds but I promise you it's highly rewarding.

The lower body's job now is to hang on to the motorcycle. This means that everything from the balls of your feet, the ankles, calf muscles, the insides of your knees and thighs are now busy trying to lock into the motorcyclist firmly as possible. Your body is for all practical purposes an extension of your motorcycle's hardware. I am not asking you to squeeze the life out of your motorcycle. All these muscles are positively engaged so that you have an active grip on the motorcycle.

This is so crucial that if you look at race bikes, the first thing that you notice is that all of them have grip pads on their fuel tanks. They are there to make it easier for racers to hold on to the motorcycle.

Practice
And that, literally, is all there is to it. This is not something that you will adapt to immediately. It will take you time and practice. But I would suggest that you try to do this for as little as five minutes of every single ride. The difference in feel will be obvious immediately. The motorcycle will instantly feel significantly lighter, more responsive, less nervous in the corners and on the brakes... I can't think of anything that gets worse when you do this! As your body adapts to this new way of using your muscles, you will be able to enjoy your "performance upgrade" for longer and longer durations. This is the primary reason why racers all work very hard to strengthen their core muscles.

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Why is this so effective?
When you're not holding onto your motorcycle correctly, there are little movements in your body constantly as the looseness and inertia fling your body around. These are all sources of instability and contributors to your lack of confidence. Sitting correctly, not holding on to the handlebars too tightly, and using the lower body to lock on to the motorcycle eliminates most of these, and your sense of control over the motorcycle increases.

Now that you're not loading up the handlebar with your weight, you are also able to give more finely tuned steering inputs and that is why the motorcycle also feels lighter and responsive. The last bit is actually pretty easy to understand: take a pen, hold it as tight as you can and see what happens to your handwriting.

Like most motorcycle skills, these are not natural to human beings which means riders -- you and me -- have to go out and spend time practising before they become our new normal. Best of luck!