How to ride an adv bike offroad (video transcript)

one of the most important things we need to do on a bike as heavy as this and with as little a suspension is we need to learn to ride in that standing position. so we call that the attack position so we want to be on the balls of our feet and we want to have our knees behind our toes and we want to have our Bum at the back of the bike. and our head over the front of the handle bars. when there's so little suspension on a bike like this we really need to use our natural hinge points as added suspension so that means our ankles and our knees - if we're locking our legs or we're bending our knees too much we're not going to use our hinge points correctly so when we're riding an adventure bike they are very powerful so this has 500 cc's if we're riding a Tenerre, that has 700 CC's and if we're riding a KTM that has 790 cc's. so if we grab a load of acceleration we're going to be ripped off the back of the bike. if we're falling off the back of the bike we could end up whiskey throttling and then falling off or Wheeling so what we need to do to prevent this - we do this on a normal dirt bike but it's even more important that we do it on adventure dirt bike - is as we're about to accelerate we drive our head and our chest forwards over the front of the bike when we do this it stops our arms getting tired and it stops us falling off the bike.

so when we take these Adventure bikes Offroad and we're going over bumps, rocks, obstacles the bike is going to be shaking side to side so what we need to do to prevent falling off or losing control of the bike is we need to grip with the inside of our legs. you’ve probably heard grip with your knees but really we're gripping all the way from our feet all the way up our legs and controlling the bike with our lower and stronger leg muscles. a lot of people make the mistake of trying to hold on with their hands and their arms, but you're not going to hold on to a 200 kg machine over bumps with just your arms. you really need to bring in your legs. one thing I would say when we ride with Adventure bikes and we squeeze with our legs - this huge exhaust pipe actually gets in the way and it prevents us from gripping with our feet so it makes that even more harder, but that just means it's even more important that we're gripping with what part of our legs that we can have contact with. as I said earlier with a bike with such little suspension travel it is very important to make sure your weight is spread out throughout the whole bike - if too much weight is forwards then the front suspension isn't going to be able to handle all the bumps and holes that you're hitting and if there's too much weight over the rear then again your suspension isn't going to be able to handle that so that's why we want to aim to have our bum at the back, our head over the front, and allow that weight to be distributed and then both the front and the rear suspension will work in unison.

final bit of advice when learning to ride an adventure bike off-road is if you've never ridden a dirt bike bike get yourself one and practice on that first. it's best to learn the technique on a smaller more controllable bike. it's very difficult to learn on an adventure bike because it's so heavy and when you crash it you break the bike or you break your leg. if you have a small light bike to practice on you can learn the technique Master the craft and then move on to the Powerful Beast that is the cb500.