Adventure Bike Trail Riding

I love to do some off-road trail riding with my adventure bike in the weekend, but that can also be frustrating – especially when you encounter other riders who clearly not have much experience riding off-road. Here are some tips to help those riders to flow through it…

First I would start to say relax. Try to start at a pace that allows you to be relatively relaxed. If you go into single-trail and try to ride fast instantly, you’ll struggle to keep up and start making mistakes. This turns into riding tight and then using more energy and so on. Slow your speed down a little and let it come to you; you will be more relaxed and then things will get easier.

Second thing is look ahead. Keep your vision up and try to look to the next turn as early as possible. When it gets real tight and is switching back on itself a lot, the more you can try to look ahead the easier it will be. Any chance you get, try to scan through the trees and get an idea of where the trail heads over the next three or four turns – that will also make a big difference. Try not to look just corner to corner because that’s exactly how you’ll tend to ride and it will become very stop-start.

Keep your motorcycle in the correct gear. Do what you possible can to hold second or third gear – it tends to help you smooth things out when the power delivery isn’t too aggressive. When you ride in a low gear you tend to accelerate harder and brake harder in between corners; not only does that sap your energy, it’s usually not fast, either. You want to flow through the single-trail and a good gear selection will help that a lot.

Go easy on the brakes. Try to manage your speed so you don’t need to brake super-aggressively into every corner. If you do that you’ll very quickly find yourself riding turn to turn and stopping and starting all the time. Be easy off the throttle slightly easier and also picking it up earlier, you’ll find you start to flow and make the single-trail one long line rather than short bursts between turns.

Stand if you can. There are definitely times when you want to sit but, if you can stand the majority of the time, it’s beneficial. You’re much more agile on the motorcycle when standing; you can deal with so many more scenarios, too., If you come off a turn and there’s a big hole or a log, you can deal with it instantly. You can manoeuvre the motorcycle through trees and change direction back and forth much more quickly and efficiently standing up. Once you get comfortable standing, it’s really no harder physically than sitting – and in some cases it’s actually more efficient.