RIDER SKILLS: What to Do When the Front Wheel Starts to Wash Out

It's one of the most unnerving feelings you can have as a rider, going along gravel or

dirt, coming into a corner and the front end starts to slide.

And in that instant, you know what's coming next, or at least you think you do.

So you react, you let off the gas, maybe put a foot out or some other quick move to try

and save it.

But is that really the right move, the right thing to do?

I mean, riders go through this all the time, yet it's something you almost never hear discussed

in a clear way.

Well, on this episode of Rider Skills, Clinton Smout from Smart Performance Center joins

me to talk about those split second moments when the bike starts to let go, what may actually

be happening underneath you and why what feels like a save may not be one at all.

I'm Jim Martin.

This is Adventure Rider Radio.

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Today, Clinton and I are talking about those split second moments

where the bike starts to let go and your instincts tell you to react.

It's something that riders experience all the time,

but not something that gets broken down very often.

Now, Clinton, before we dig into this,

I want to tell you where this topic came from.

Yeah.

Years ago, I switched to a more aggressive foot peg from the stock peg.

And I remember the first day I rode it,

there was a few times that I got into that sort of familiar moment

where it feels like the bike is starting to go down.

And my normal reaction would be,

and I think a couple of times it was in sand right off the back

because I got a really heavy sand.

And normally what I would have done

was just sort of slide my foot off the foot peg

because it's a factory peg and there's not much grip there.

That was just my automatic move.

But with a new peg, my foot couldn't slide off.

It was held there like that's for the whole point

of having these more aggressive pegs, right, is to have better grip.

But that split second that it held there before,

while I was trying to think through what was happening,

it was just long enough that the bike recovered.

And the first time it happened, I thought, oh, lucky, you know,

but then the same thing happened a couple more times.

And it was enough that it made me really stop and think

because what I realized was that a lot of times

I thought I was attempting a save by sliding my foot off.

But I really wasn't.

I would just giving up before the bike was actually done.

Yeah.

And in thinking it through, I realized that in a lot of those moments,

I don't think taking my foot off the peg was ever going to save

you of anything anyway.

No.

So does that fit with what you see?

Oh, absolutely.

Because we see it every time we teach a street rider that's doing dirt

because they're more likely to feel that little slip

that we're going to talk about.

And the instinctive reaction is, oh, I'm going to crash.

I should put my foot out.

But when we impress upon them that we really want you to try to keep your feet up,

use that psychological bungee cord that your foot is locked to the foot pegs.

And then as you say that the light bulb comes on where they comprehend it.

You know what?

It just slid a little bit, but it didn't fall down.

So it makes perfect sense.

And you tend to reaction, I think, for people to try to put their foot out.

You think you're saving, but really it's panic.

It's panic driven.

Yes.

That's not a skill I'm using there.

That's panic.

That's me losing confidence in what's going on and bailing.

So what causes the bike to lose traction in the first place?

Well, the big time where it loses traction, I think, especially for us adventure riders,

is when we leave pavement, it's more likely to happen.

And what happens is when we change either like the rotation of the wheel speed,

so we're either using the brakes or we're giving it gas.

That's more rear wheel, but either tire will lose traction when underneath changes.

So maybe it's the terrain.

You've gone from hard gravel to very loose or it's there's a sandy section or mud.

Or if it is on the pavement, now all of a sudden there's water between the contact patch of the

tire and the pavement.

All of those things change traction big time, but it's the rider's input.

So if you start to turn, your bike will lean over and there's a greater likelihood

of the tire losing traction now, which I've got a great analogy that I stole from a fellow

instructor if I can explain that, Jim.

Go ahead.

So Michelle Mercier used to teach a school in Ontario called Fast and it was on a racetrack

paved with 600cc sport bikes with very, very soft tires.

Like they'd be chewed up in four weekends of track training.

And what he did is he would take a tire in the classroom and put it on the table.

His left hand would be on the top of the tire and the contact patch is on the table,

but it's straight up and down.

There's no leaning.

Then he would push down on the tire with his hand that's on top and with a finger,

he would try to push the bottom of the tire left or right.

And all the energy he could put into his finger was very hard to move that tire.

Then he would lean it over at a 45 degree angle, which kind of simulates taking a corner,

not really aggressively like your knee or elbow wouldn't be on the ground,

but it's leaned over at a 45.

It was incredibly easy now to push the tire left and right with one finger.

And that analogy stuck with me and we use it at the school adventure bike training to illustrate.

That's why when you're leaned over, the bike will very easily lose traction.

Right, but we try and counter that with counter balancing and that's the whole point of it,

isn't it?

Yes, but people coming from the street into adventure bike riding off-road,

it's a little bit of a shock the first few times it happens.

Well, I guess because on the street it's sort of masked, there's so much traction on asphalt

that you don't really notice it, but boy, you get into any sort of dirt or leaves or mud in

particular, anything like that, all of a sudden everything is amplified.

Absolutely.

And what we see is that wide-eyed panic when it happens and our brain instinctively,

if you kind of think of you're walking down the sidewalk and you trip,

most people without thought put their hands out in front of them and it prevents their face and

forehead hitting the sidewalk.

And the same thing with motorcyclists, when that initial second reaction,

oh my god, I'm losing traction, I think I'm going to fall.

A lot of people will take one foot off the peg on the direction of the side the bike's falling.

And what we've tried to inspire people to do,

resist trying to put your foot down and that really changes what happens because that half

second shock of when we're about to lose traction, maybe the front wheel just slides six inches

and then it regains traction, you've saved it.

And but if you've put your foot down, that's usually combined with chopping the throttle off

because when we're scared on a motorcycle, it makes sense that we should slow down

and maybe put our foot down. That's a rational reaction from a beginner rider that's off-road.

But if you can hang on, keep your feet up, keep the gas on, you can probably ride it out.

The traction may well come back and you saved it and that's a great feeling.

So an example would be like, for instance, if you were riding in the dirt, let's talk about a turn.

So you're making a left hand turn and your front wheel hits a bit of a root.

Now, there's a good chance the front wheel is going to slide on that root.

There's some variables here that will make a difference on what happens.

But if it's a short root, then it will only slide a bit and it will get traction again,

very likely, and you'll be off and rolling again. If it's a long root, maybe you're going down.

But either way, dabbing your foot is probably not the right thing to do.

I'm thinking particularly with adventure bikes, is it?

Yeah, I agree for a couple of reasons. One, that body reaction of foot down

usually is hooked up to your right wrist, as we were just talking about.

So now you've lost momentum, you're going to help it crash.

So if you can keep your feet up, keep the power going to the back wheel,

and you got two fingers over the clutch, maybe you could slip the clutch in a little.

As you say, it slides off the root, hits the dirt, and you keep going.

The alternative is it's a crash. And what's dangerous if we put our foot down

just before it crashes and then the bike does fall, now your leg is underneath that bike.

And most of our adventure bikes aren't 125s, are they? They're pretty big and pretty heavy.

So that's when you really need a good, strong adventure boot, motocross boot,

and some support around your ankle. And that may help prevent an injury.

But the best way to prevent it is try to keep your feet up.

So with the loss of traction thing, I think especially in the front end, that's where it

tends to be the most unnerving for most of us is when that front end starts to go out.

The example I used about the route, the bike may slide a little and as you're saying,

may recover, which happens, I find a fair bit. Do you find it as well?

Yes, but boy, it takes some practice so that you'll have the confidence and belief in that

there's a good possibility of it recovering. If you don't practice it, and then we could discuss

some ways that we get people to practice. And I think it's if something happens that we weren't

planning, i.e. the front end slides out, if you've got no practiced habits to fall back on,

I think our brain will look for what's habitual. That's what we do. And if you don't have any good

habits, you may well just freeze. You just go, ah, and then the ground is coming up towards you

very quickly. Because all this happens within a second, second and a half. And what's funny is

the more you ride off-road and put yourselves into the situations where there's going to be

traction loss, the more you do it and recover, sometimes you don't even notice that you've

done it. But someone following behind you would say, holy smokes, I saw the back of your bike

slide right out. You just kept going. And I'll think back, really? I don't even remember that

happening. Because you get used to it. I think that's it. You get used to the feeling and you

can ride through it. So just before we leave this section that we're talking about here,

I just want to sort of go over some of the examples of places where it happens. Give

some examples of times that you would have this happen, particularly with, I guess, with the front

wheel. Yeah. Well, front wheel loss of traction, as I was saying, is usually loose terrain. So mud

sand could be a little looser gravel than where the tire tracks have pounded the gravel into almost

pavement. And it's either in braking or turning that the front wheel traction is now challenged

rather than just riding quietly down the road or trail. So with braking,

the modern adventure bikes, BMW, for instance, KTM, you can't take the ABS off of the front wheel.

It's only rear wheel. But if you have a non-ABS bike or a few of my older BMWs, and I'm not trying

to impress people, Jim, because I have more than one. If I sold all of them, I couldn't buy a brand

new BMW. They're not worth a lot of money. But I love them. They're really old, some of them.

You can take the ABS off of the front wheel. So they're good ones to practice

braking loss, which we'll talk about later with braking. But front wheel loss of traction is

usually caused where people over break for the traction that's available, and the front tire

locks up and washes out. Now, it could be in a straight line, but it's more likely they've

still got a little bit too much brake on while they're starting their turn. And that's what wipes it

out or loses the traction. Other than braking, it could be just steering in itself. You haven't

put the brakes on, but you've changed throttle position. So you've chopped the throttle off

during a turn. So it wasn't on smoothly. That weight transfer forward does put more weight

on the front tire's contact patch. But if it's very soft terrain, slippery terrain,

that could cause it sliding out. So braking and deceleration are often the reasons why we lose the

front end. Also, though, it can be just change in traction in the surface, right? I mean, you're

if you're riding on dirt and you're making a turn, you may have your counterbalance set up

properly for that turn, you may have your power delivery fine for that turn, you're braking,

everything may be fine. But if the traction suddenly changes in the front, or if you were to

hit a ridge or a berm or a dip, that anything to change the traction on that front wheel to

reduce the traction, then that front wheel can slide. Yes. The last time I fell front end is,

it was a beautiful fall day, but trails generally cause erosion in the amount of soil that's

underneath our bikes. So if that trail's been out there for years and years and years,

whether the trails used by feet, hoofs, or tires, there could be exposed roots.

Now in the fall in our part of Canada, the leaves cover up the roots. So we always tell people,

you can still ride, but you don't know where those roots are. And in the tight zigzaggy trails

around trees, just as you start your turn, there's wet leaves on top of a root that you can't see.

Can be very exciting. And that's when I fell. Right. That must have been many, many years ago,

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socks.com. So, so much any sort of change in traction can can certainly do it. Let's talk about

what what riders do when that happens. So when there is some sort of loss of traction, when the

bike feels like it's, it's going to go down when it starts to slide for a moment. Let's talk about

some of the things that riders do when it happens. Yeah. Well, I think in your helmet,

you're going to hear a little scream and you realize, oh, that's me. And then that's followed by,

holy crap, I'm going to crash. So they chop the throttle and put their foot out. And if you're

traveling at any kind of speed, if you make contact with the ground, your boot and gravity

are going to put down onto the ground. And now you're doing the stretch or you're dragging your

boot along. So that will help the bike fall over because you've changed your balance on the bike

because one leg is dangling off to the side. That's 50, 60 pounds. That could make, if it is a front

wheel, that could make the front wheel lean over more, more susceptible to sliding out. So that's

a very common reaction. Chop the throttle off and put my foot down because I think it's going to fall

because maybe that's happened before. The interesting thing is, is when you say that is

when you think about making a corner, when we set up a corner, you counterweight according to your

speed, you're using some centrifugal force unless you're going dead, dead slow. You're using some

centrifugal or fighting some centrifugal force there. But when you let off the throttle or you

step on the brake, you're killing your speed. So you can imagine if we want to have a visual,

just imagine turning around in a circle and just cutting the throttle. What's going to happen?

If the bike's leaned over, it's going to fall over. So in essence, what we do there,

when we think we're doing something to save it, like that, that panic, that feeling in your stomach,

oh, the bike's going to go down here, I'm going to let off the throttle. Well, now the bike is

definitely going to go down. Yeah. And we've said this before, the more you practice something,

the more it becomes habit. So you could get really good at falling off. If that's what you do,

every time you feel like you're going to lose traction, you chop the throttle, put your foot

down, you could get really good at that. And that's a hard habit to break. You're saying that,

like, you know, you started making a joke of it as well, but it's so true. Yeah. And it doesn't

have to be a corner. It could be an obstacle that someone's going over. How many times do you

see someone try and go over an obstacle or through an obstacle setup and stop at the worst possible

time? Yes. Then they get hung up on the log or rocks or whatever it is. One thing that really

helped me kind of get to the level I'm at, which is, you know, I used to be the fastest guy in

my street gym than my son started riding, but I'm not a fantastic rider. I'm okay. But what

really helped me was when I started riding trials because observed trials, the whole concept is

if you put your toe down, that illustrates a lack of control and balance. And that's a demerit.

There'll be somebody holding their fist up in the air as they watch you go through the section.

Every time you put a toe down, that's called the dab, which is a negative. And they hold the digit

up. So when I first started riding trials, I borrowed a fellow instructor's wife's bike.

And Kareen's bike was a Honda 125. Fantastic four stroke, but I was terrible at it. But

the more I did it and I realized the goal is to keep your feet up. You have that kind of psychological

bungee cord. You do everything you can not to put a foot down. And that made me a better rider

as far as being able to handle lack of traction at either wheel, ride it out, fight to keep your

feet on the pegs. And that really helped. So that's what we should be doing on our adventure bikes,

then the same thing. That's your whole point of saying that. And it's difficult to do, as we've

said, I guess the number of times at this point, everyone understands it's difficult to do. But

the more you do it, the more used to it you get. Like I know that those slips that I was experiencing

way back then on that first day with those new pegs, I'll get those and they don't make me react.

I don't have that same immediate feeling. I have the immediate feeling of, oh, this isn't good.

But I hang on because I think I've learned that no matter what I do here, I'm not going to be able

to save it anyway. And that was my point. I wanted to just go back where you started to go through

an obstacle and then you stop and you stop in the worst spot. The reason you stop there is because

you thought you're going to save it. You thought, oh, I better stop here. I can put my foot down

here, whatever the case is, but you're setting yourself up for failure because as we know,

usually when you try to pull away at that point, things get ugly and then you end up not making

it or dropping the bike. Yes, exactly. That's a big part of enduro racing or trials is going

over obstacles. And that's what holds people up is they don't use their momentum. They stop

and then it's really hard to get the front wheel over. Yeah. Yeah. It's always the worst thing,

isn't it? I mean, look at anything. I mean, hill climbs, think of any spots where you are.

It's more difficult to get going than to keep going. Yes. So anything that upsets the chassis,

I guess we could say, is something that is going to cause more trouble. So I think of any one of

these examples, any one of these things that we're talking about, if the bike is already in motion,

if you do something, step on the brake, let off the gas, shift your weight. If you do something,

unless it's a weight shift that could help and it doesn't upset the chassis,

any of those movements is going to upset the chassis. And when you do that, you're making

something that was bad even worse. So when we think we're doing this to save it or help ourselves,

slow down, let off the gas, jump on the brakes, we're actually making it worse.

Yes, I agree. One of our instructors is named Michael, but his nickname is Pez. He talks about

the spinning top. We had them as kids. I don't know if they're even for sale now, but if you had

it on a board and tilted one side of the board, the spinning top would still be pointing vertical.

It doesn't move on an angle with the board and it keeps its rotation as long as the RPM stays up.

But as soon as you lose revolutions, RPM of the roundness of this little unit,

it's just like us slowing down, chopping the throttle. The bike is more likely to fall over

when you've chopped the throttle after losing traction. Whereas if you can keep the gas on,

keep your momentum, then you're less likely to tip over like the slow moving spinning top.

Let's talk about how we can learn to do this, how we can learn to hold on that extra half a

second. And I guess we're avoiding panicking. Does that sound sensible? Yes. Yeah. So let's do rear

wheel first, Jim. Okay. I think that's an easier wheel and safer wheel to put out of traction on

purpose with the goal of learning how to recover the traction, if that makes sense. Yeah. So the

best way to practice this, we call it traction loss control or rear brake slides or drifting.

What you can do is shut the ABS off on your bike if you can, or if you have ABS,

it'll shut off on the rear wheel. That's the one we want to work with first.

Ride along about 20 kilometers an hour, 15 miles an hour on gravel, maybe some sand,

and then you do three things to start with. Pull in the clutch, shut the gas off and hammer on the

rear brake, really stomp it hard. The tire is going to lock up in skid and you'll get a nice

long brake slide out of it. And normally it doesn't go perfectly straight. Because we're hammering on

the rear brake, it's basically peg waiting. And that can cause the back wheel to slide out a little.

You mean because you're pushing down with your right foot sort of thing to put the rear brake

on, you're sort of peg waiting that side, right? Yeah. So your reaction should be not to panic,

simply steer the front tire where you want to go. So look over the headlight and point it in the

same direction you were going before you hammered the brakes on. That's stage one. If you do that

five or six times, you know, in a careful spot, then do a careful U turn. Look behind you before

you do that and go back the other way. And the idea is if you do it quite a few times,

you get more relaxed with this lack of traction at the back wheel. You're not screaming in your

helmet anymore when you lose the traction. And then kind of a second stage of it, this is the

really fun one, is you do the same thing. Clutch in, gas off, stomp the brake. As soon as the wheel

is locked up, turn your handlebars to the left, not full lock, just a little bit. And the back wheel

that's sliding will step out to the right. It'll drift to the right. Now your job, while it's still

locked up, because you keep the brake on for three full seconds, while the bike is drifting to the

right, you've got to correct the drift and control the lack of traction with your front wheel. Again,

point it straight where you want to go. You've got to recover by looking where you want to go

and turning the handlebars that way. And that way the back wheel that was drifting comes back in

alignment with the front one. And you let out the clutch, get off the brake, get off the brake

first, let out the clutch, and you continue. You don't have to come to a full stop. So we call this

drifting brake slides. And the whole idea is that if you practice it enough, which is really fun,

and there's almost nowhere on your rear tire, because it's soft gravel. You're doing on pavement,

it's going to chew up the rubber, but gravel, it's perfect. The idea is when, not if, but when you

lose the rear wheel traction and it's about to slide out, this practice you have under your

belt will kick in and you'll ride it out. You won't, you know, put your foot down and fall down.

Another thing we do with the rear wheel to get it out of traction is throttle.

So it's a little more exciting, but what we'll have people do is in a big wide corner where it's

dirt, gravel, hard pack sand, whatever. Let's say we're turning left. As you start the turn and

you're leaning over, cover the clutch with two fingers. That's a just in case thing. And then

light it up, give it a shot of throttle. Because we're leaned over the contact patch of the tire

changes, now you're a little bit more on the sidewall and the back wheel will spin easier,

especially in soft terrain. And it will step out to the right, a drift to the right,

very similar to you hammering on the rear brake, which we did in the last part of the lesson.

But the idea is you can use the throttle to turn the motorcycle and you're losing traction on purpose,

but you learn how to control it. So if you give it full throttle and hold it on for a long time,

you may not make that turn because it could slide right around in a 180 degree. You're going back the

other way. And that's pretty hard to hang on to, you probably fall off. So we only want a little

bit of wheel slip from the throttle input. And we get kids doing it and adults on the corners,

light it up a little, and the back wheel will slide just for a second. That creates a smile.

And again, it's that practiced muscle memory that if they're turning and they lose the back wheel

on a wet paved corner or off road, it only breaks loose for a little bit and then the

traction comes back. So it's all a matter of the same thing, steering where you want to go

and hanging on to it. Don't stop everything just because the back wheel slides out a little.

You don't have to chop the throttle and slow down. Just keep going, ride it out. And that gives people

good experience under their belt for that just in case. And when you pull the clutch in, the rear

wheel wants to just pull in line with the front wheel most times, doesn't it? Yes. Yeah, it's pretty

cool how it happens. That's one of the biggest things that we coach folks off road on is you've

got to leave those two fingers up there on the clutch. Okay, so that's the back wheel. That's

not only is this interesting to do, but both of those maneuvers are fun to do that you just

talked about. It's a lot of fun for anybody trying that. But the front wheel, the front wheel is the

one that really is quite scary in my mind. How do you get used to that feeling of the front wheel

sliding for a short distance?

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so the peg can still work when things get messy, even built in flexibility in a hard hit to reduce

the chance of frame damage. Those are just some of the differences. IMS products foot pegs are

engineered for the way we ride adventure riding IMS products.com. Anytime you deal with them,

throw in there that you heard them here on adventure rider radio. Make sure you do that.

IMS products.com. Yeah, it's far scarier when the front tire washes out and when it loses traction.

If it doesn't come back, there's not a lot you can do. You know, it's going to crash. So you can

train for recovery with practice. What we advise people to do is if you have an older adventure

bike, older style technology, you might be able to shut the ABS off on the front wheel, where the

modern ones, as we were saying, you can't anymore. Older bikes or maybe bikes that don't have ABS,

dirt bikes for instance, that's what we use for this training. And what we would ask you to do is

find some gravel, a little bit of sand, something other than pavement.

You get your weight back as far as you can because we want to lighten the weight on the front tire.

It's straight line. There's no turning here. You leave the clutch out, but you have two fingers

on it. Just first gear. You don't need speed to do this. Your throttle is on gently, let's say 10,

15 kilometers an hour, 10 miles an hour. You're going to put two fingers on the front brake

and slowly and progressively pull in the front brake. So the clutch is out. You're trying to drive

along, ride along with the front brake on. And if you do it progressively, which is a little bit

of brake at a time, pull it in and to the point where the engine is starting to chug a little

and the front tire actually locks up for a second. And if you can do that just for a second of locked

up, then get off the brake and feed the clutch back out because you may have had to slip the

clutch a little bit so the bike didn't stall out. And then you've got a skid mark that you made with

the front tire that's just a couple of feet long. And then you try it again and again and again to

the point where you could maybe skid the front tire for a yard or a meter. And then what you develop

is a sensitivity of recognizing when the locked up front wheel is about to slide out either to

the left or right and crash. And that sensitivity is phenomenal experience for when you lose the

front tire, you can kind of sense if it's going to come back or not. And it will help prevent

losing the front wheel because as soon as you sense it's doing it, you might be able to change what

you're doing. Instead of turning so abruptly, you could straighten the wheel out a little.

Instead of putting the brake on as hard as you were doing, release some of the front brake so it

starts rolling again. That's a lot harder to learn than it is the rear wheel brake slides that we're

talking about. But it is a learnable skill. You know, if you picture a gravel corner, you're

making a gravel corner and your front end starts to wash out, is there any recovery maneuver there?

Yeah. Sometimes shifting your body weight more, if you're turning right, shift your body weight

more to the high side of the bike to the left. And that weight transfer onto the what remains

of the contact patch of the front tire gives it better traction. The other thing you can do is

if you're returning the corner too fast, if you roll off a little bit of speed with the throttle,

that changes your suspension a little, puts more weight again on the front tire. So

it was sliding. If we could push down on the front tire a little harder, it might regain traction.

It might. So there are some recovery. Now, if you're on a tight corner and there's a cliff

on the left, you can't really straighten the steering too much, can you? Because, yeah,

you didn't fall on the corner, but you went off the cliff or you went into the ditch. And that

happens a lot with folks who they lock up either wheel and it doesn't turn as well or they don't

know how to turn it with a locked up wheel. So it stands the bike up, won't turn a corner

standing up. So it goes straight off the corner into the ditch. That's quite common when speed is

too fast going into a gravel corner. You're turning right, it'll always go into, it'll go

left into the ditch if you do it wrong. So recovery is harder with front wheel lock up,

but those are a couple of things you can do. Can you talk for a minute about counterweighting

and the importance of it for cornering in the dirt? Yeah. So if you think of it, it's not

really required on the pavement. Even a pretty slow tight turn, because we've got such great

traction, rubber, dry pavement, you don't really have to counterweight a lot. But now we get into

a dirt corner, it's gravel, maybe a little sand, loose gravel. When we're turning right, what we

suggest people do, get your butt off the seat, standing or sitting, and hang off the bike to the

left. And if you do that, it allows you to have a safer lean angle to the right,

and it kind of stops the front wheel or minimizes the front wheel sliding out to the left when

you're turning right. Right. So quite an exaggerated lean off then. Yes. And when we test this in

competitions in trials and GS challenges, things like that, hard, hard riding, that's a pretty

easy way to separate the really good riders from the not so experienced, throw them into a really

tight turn where they're not supposed to put their foot down. The experienced riders, you'll see,

to do this 90 degree turn, they're hanging off the bike like crazy, and it minimizes the chance

of losing the front wheel. And the not so experienced person won't hang off the bike as much,

and they usually have to put a foot down or fall. Yeah. I think it's easy to get complacent as

you're riding down some dirt trails, you know, you're sitting on your seat and you don't move

around very much and you make a bit of a corner and then the front wheel slides out. The difference,

I find the minute difference, I notice it particularly with sitting, the difference of how

far my cheek is over on the high side, just like inches makes a huge, huge difference in the

traction that I get and the stability of the bike in the corner. Yeah. And it helps if you're kind

of an analytical rider, like you're analyzing how far your butt was off the seat. Most people

aren't even thinking about that. They just turn and fall down. They don't understand why it happened.

So if you can be conscious of everything involved in that leading up to the loss of traction,

you can usually isolate, ah, I know what I did wrong. I had the front brake on a little bit

too hard and it was softer terrain. But if you do hang on that extra little bit, that extra half

second or whatever, it's not going to really change the outcome unless it recovers. Like if

it's going down, you were going down anyway and that extra half second isn't going to mean anything.

So you're better off in what we're talking about here today. You're better off to hold on that

extra half second to hold on to see if it's going to recover, if you can gain more traction.

Exactly. Because you've given up and you've sealed your fate. If you chop the throttle,

panic, look at the ditch, put your foot down. All three of those things means you're done.

You might as well just fall off. And you just mentioned looking at the ditch. That's the other

thing and I know you say it all the time is, is you need to look where you want to go, not where

you're going. Yes. Yeah. I've often thought, why don't we put black duct tape over half of the visor

on the helmet or black out one side of their goggles. So they had to turn their head to see.

But I think HR might say that's not a good idea. I can imagine that. I've always wanted

or maybe have a sharp stick to motivate people, poke them to get their butt off the seat.

You really have some strange ideas to train people. You can't do that stuff.

No, we can't do that anymore. You can't bungee cord people's feet to the pegs anymore. It's frowned

upon. The other thing I was going to mention is especially with obstacles, I think that

sort of what I've thought about over the years is I realized that when I come to something,

if I can't actually picture myself riding through it, in other words, if I don't look at it and

think, okay, I can see what I can do there, I can go there, I get traction there, I can move over

here and I'm going to turn up there and get onto that rock. If I can't do that in my head, for me,

it's time to either find a way around or turn around and go back because I need to increase

my skill level to get through. Does that make sense? Oh, excellent sense. And it's a great segue

into the most important thing practice will give you if it's structured practice is confidence.

But a well-rounded adventure bike rider has that experience under their belt

to handle this lack of traction and to be able to hang on that extra half second so they don't fall.

Well, now I'm going to go outside and get on my bike and give some of this a try.

Thanks so much, Clinton. Excellent.

That was Clinton Smout, chief instructor from Smart Performance Center in Barry, Ontario,

Canada. Smart Performance Center offers motorcycle, ATV and snowmobile training and

certification programs as well as tours their website, smartperformancecenter.ca. Now we've

got some photos from Clinton depicting some of what we spoke about today and the links associated

with that all in the show notes as we always do for this episode on our website adventureriderradio.com.

This episode was brought to you in part by Green Chili Adventure Gear at greenchiliadv.com,

best rest products at cyclepump.com. Anytime you're dealing with these companies or anything

you hear on Adventure Rider Radio, let them know you heard them here. And this show is built on a

model of advertising and listener support. The combination of the two, we'd really appreciate

if you go to adventureriderradio.com and click on support. Well, that about wraps up another

episode of Adventure Rider Radio and we sure hope you enjoyed listening to it as much as we did

making it. Special thanks to our producer, Elizabeth Martin, and you. Thank you very much for being

a part of it by listening to the show. Hey, if you're into it, we would love to get a five-star

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our website and consider supporting adventureriderradio.com and click on support. Well, now it's time to

get out there and ride your bike. If you can, my name is Jim Martin. Thank you so much for listening

and I will talk to you next week. Hi, I'm Jess Stone. And I'm Greg Stone from GoRoughly. And

I'll see you in the next video.

RIDER SKILLS: What to Do When the Front Wheel Starts to Wash Out

About this episode

gravel or dirt

front wheel starts to wash out

cycle pump tire inflator

Best Rest products

pannier

Hex Wrench

sand

foot peg

traction

KTM

ABS

BMW

exposed roots

Overland Expo West

Perley's possum socks

dab

feet on the pegs

wheel slip

stock motorcycle mirrors

double take mirror

IMS products

front brake

locked up front wheel

counterweighting

look where you want to go

obstacles

Smart Performance Center

Green Chili Adventure Gear

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