Rear Brake Usage during Braking

Practice, practice, practice. Make sure you are practicing the RIGHT skills the right way. Practicing improper skills is not worth the time invested.

With that said, ABS when possible sure helps.

Knowing how to ride ANY bike you get on, with or without electronic/mechanical aids, puts you ahead of the curve. Such as if your front brake stops working, you better know how to maximize that rear brake and modulate it, esp. if you are on a non-ABS equipped bike. Unusual, yes. But if it happens, you are screwed if you haven't practiced.

So I say again....

Practice, practice, practice. Make sure you are practicing the RIGHT skills the right way. Practicing improper skills is not worth the time invested.

Barry

Only if you don't make it one.

+2

Psheh. Rossi is a total poser squid, just look at his helmet. Anyone can do what he does.

If he doesn't need to use his rear brake with a narrowly focused race bike on slicks and many world championships in his pocket, no one else needs to either.

Where's the bad advice I gave? First I said

That's not advice, that's just fact. I was not advising the OP or his girlfriend to practice stoppies, and I doubt he would have read it that way.

Then I said

which I think is the same thing you said, except you called it "threshold braking" and added the qualifier that it should be done on every ride.

So basically, fuck you, stu.

Not if you practice.

+10000 squared.

That's not good advise or a fact..Imagine how much of a shorter distance you could stop if you used both brakes. Tell ya what, you go try a quick stop using both brakes and then using your stoppie technique and get back to us.

Using that line of thinking you could also say that Tying a rope to your bike attached to a cinder block and tossing it off the bike at speed, the cinder block will give you 100% stopping power...
Or using your feet to stop with will give you 100% stopping power...but you'll go thru a lot of boots using that technique...
Or just letting gravity slow you to a stop...gravity supplied 100% stopping power...
Or letting engine braking bring you to a stop...the engine supplied 100% of stopping power

Using both brakes is still 100% but will stop you faster...

Yeah, I know...fuck you, bwalsh.

You're trying to get your girlfriend to copy your bad habits. You should be encouraging her to use both brakes and learn to use them properly.

Given your rather muddy understanding of the matter, and because you have a personal relationship with your girlfriend, I would further suggest that YOU don't take on the role of teacher at all.

What makes you think these guys aren't using their rear brakes?

That's why "70/30" is bullshit. On a bike that can do a stoppie, it can be 100/0. IF you are throwing enough front brake to pull a stoppie, and IF the available traction allows it. Beginners are not going to (intentionally) be pulling stoppies in normal street riding. And if your beginner pal finds themselves needing to slow down while turning, do you really want them to grab a bigger and bigger handful of front because they were told how dangerous it was to use the rear because they might lock it?

Uhh, how about "the front brake has most of the stopping power". And if you need to go further "as you decelerate, the weight of the bike shifts to the front, giving it more grip". You do not need to assign a false fixed percentage to it.

Learn to ride the bike and use all the controls, don't be afraid to use one as major as the rear brake out of fear of not being able to use it properly.

I am not saying all racers don't use their rear brakes, but most dont.

In that picture rossi is clealy not using the rear brake........

No not really. 99.99% of the time you hardly need to stop "as fast as possible" on the street. Unless you ride like a stunta squid. Do you also need to stop your car 'as fast as possible' at every stop?

Yes, they can use the front brake when turning. That is what trail braking is, you just have to use more handlebar force to turn.

Your GF isn't riding MotoGP.

And why can't they use the rear too?

This whole topic is so she has the right habits when emergency braking, which is stopping as fast as possible. You can do whatever brake combo you want when coming to a normal stop, but if you are always using the rear brake, in a panic braking stop they are used to pressing the rear brake and then they could press it to much and lock it.

If your doing a stoppie, your not using 100% of your braking power

your just distributing 100% of the power that you are applying to the front

your shortest stopping distances are attained by using both front and rear and shifting and keeping your bodyweight as rearward as possible. ratio front to rear is dependent on your weight distribution on your bike

The major fail on this thread is the confusion between "you don't need to use the rear brake to stop" and "you shouldn't use the rear brake to stop".

It is just ridiculous to avoid using the rear at all, because of fear you might someday misuse it in a completely different situation.

He is not applying the rear brake with his right foot at the time that photo was taken. So what! Many GP bikes also have a left thumb control for the rear brake. There are very few top riders who don't use the rear brake - I've never seen an top rider on a bike without all that extra unsprung weight of a caliper and disk on the rear - and you KNOW they'd get rid of any extraneous parts if they weren't necessary.

Bullshit yourself. ANY tool works better if you know how to use it, and can hurt you if you don't. I didn't explain how to use it, because that wasn't the question or the topic. And of course you have zero idea what I am or am not familiar with, which makes your statement itself hypocritical. I've been riding daily for 25 years; haven't even had a car for regular transportation since 1988, and have over 300K street miles on bikes. That is more experience than average, and gives me some idea of what I'm talking about. You?

Ideally, for maximum braking, you hit the rear a fraction of a second before the front, to start the weight transfer and gain traction on the front immediately; you then squeeze the front strongly but smoothly up to the limit of adhesion for the surface you are on, while gradually letting off on the rear as the weight transfers off of it. If you are on a sportbike and a surface that is good enough, you will end in a near stoppie with no rear brake applied. On most bikes on most surfaces, you will not fully transfer the weight off the rear, and thus will still have a bit of rear brake applied all the way through.

Happy now?

They also are on racebikes with really sticky tires and topnotch brakes, and on good surfaces, where they can lift the rear at will. That's different from real life in the real world. And using engine braking instead of the rear brake is valid (unless you have a slipper clutch), although not terribly wise, as brake pads are cheaper than clutches.

+1! This.

Not necessarily. Many of the GPbikes now have rear brakes that are operated by a thumb lever (started by Doohan when he was racing with his leg too screwed up to press a brake lever). He seemed to feel that the rear brake was important enough to have them engineer a way for him to use one. Likewise with the modern riders who use that so that they can use both brakes and still wave their legs around if they want to.

That's a more advanced and more difficult skill to master than using the rear brake.

If that's really the whole topic, then everyone who is advising the learning and practice of how to use the rear brake is right, and you are simply factually wrong. The right habits when emergency braking, to stop as fast as possible, is using both brakes.

PhilB

I'm reading the book Sport Riding Technniques. there is lots of good information on braking and brake usage. Use both brakes. He specifically talks in the book about racers using their rear brake.

The book would be a good thing for the OP to get and to share with his girlfriend. They could read it and practice the skills together.

Chad