RIDER SKILLS: What to Do When the Front Wheel Starts to Wash Out
Adventure Rider Radio – Motorcycle Podcast
RIDER SKILLS: What to Do When the Front Wheel Starts to Wash Out
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Term
gravel or dirt
Gravel and dirt don’t grip as consistently as pavement. That means the front tire can lose traction more easily, especially in corners.
Term
front wheel starts to wash out
It means the front tire suddenly loses traction. When that happens, the bike can slide sideways instead of turning normally, especially on loose dirt or gravel.
Part
cycle pump tire inflator
This is a small pump you keep on your bike to refill a tire if it goes low. The host is saying experienced riders trust theirs when they need it fast.
Company
Best Rest products
Best Rest makes motorcycle tools you carry on rides. The point here is that riders trust them because they’re tough and backed by a long warranty.
Part
pannier
A pannier is a bag or case on the sides of a motorcycle for carrying gear. Here, it’s important because that’s where the rider keeps the tire inflator.
Term
Hex Wrench
A Hex Wrench is a multi-tool that combines different functions in one piece. In this case, it’s meant to help with tire work and basic adjustments when you’re out riding.
Term
sand
Sand is slippery for tires, so the bike can lose traction more easily. That means the front wheel may start sliding even if you’re doing everything “normally.”
Term
foot peg
Your foot peg is the platform you stand on. Here, the rider is talking about how their boot can move on the peg to help them react when the front starts to slip.
Term
traction
Traction just means how much the tires can grip the ground. If the ground is slick, the tires slide more and it’s harder to control the bike.
Brand
KTM
KTM is mentioned as another brand with front-wheel ABS that you can’t easily turn off. That changes how the bike brakes when the ground is slippery.
Term
ABS
ABS is a safety system that helps stop your wheel from locking up when you brake hard. If the wheel locks, you lose steering control, so ABS helps you keep it.
Brand
BMW
BMW is used here as an example of a brand where the front-wheel ABS can’t easily be turned off. That affects how you practice braking on slippery surfaces.
Term
exposed roots
Exposed roots are tree roots that have come up through the trail surface. They can be very slippery, and the front wheel can lose grip when you hit them.
Concept
Overland Expo West
Overland Expo West is a big event for people who travel and ride off-road. It usually includes training and gear, which fits the skills-focused theme of this episode.
Brand
Perley's possum socks
Perley's is a sock brand aimed at people who spend lots of time in boots. They’re made with special materials meant to keep your feet feeling better after long rides.
Term
dab
A “dab” is when you put your foot down to catch yourself. In trials, that’s considered a mistake because it means you lost balance.
Term
feet on the pegs
They’re saying you should keep your feet up on the foot pegs instead of putting them down for balance. That helps you stay controlled when the surface is slippery.
Term
wheel slip
Wheel slip is when the tire starts spinning or sliding instead of gripping. The lesson says you only want a little slip so you can steer and regain traction, not lose the whole turn.
Term
stock motorcycle mirrors
Factory mirrors can snap easily if you drop the bike. If the mount breaks too, you lose the mirror and may need to replace more than just the glass.
Company
double take mirror
Double Take makes mirrors that can fold out of the way instead of snapping off. That helps them survive drops, and they back it with a warranty.
Company
IMS products
IMS products makes aftermarket parts for off-road motorcycles. Here they’re talking about their foot pegs being designed to grip well, clear mud, and handle hits better than a basic peg.
Term
front brake
The front brake is the brake on the handlebars. It’s powerful, so if you grab it too hard on slippery ground, the front wheel can lock and slide.
Term
locked up front wheel
If the front wheel locks, it stops rolling and starts sliding. When that happens, it’s much harder to steer the bike.
Term
counterweighting
Counterweighting means moving your body around instead of staying planted on the seat. On dirt, that body shift helps keep the bike stable so the front wheel doesn’t slide out as easily.
Term
look where you want to go
Look at your intended path, not the problem area. Your eyes help your body steer the bike. This is especially important when the front tire might be slipping.
Concept
obstacles
Obstacles are the tricky parts of a trail, like rocks or uneven ground. The speaker says you should mentally plan how you’ll ride through them. If you can’t picture it safely, don’t force it—go around or turn back.
Company
Smart Performance Center
Smart Performance Center is a place that teaches riding skills. The instructor mentioned in the episode works there and helps people learn safer techniques.
Company
Green Chili Adventure Gear
Green Chili Adventure Gear is a sponsor of the podcast. They sell riding gear for adventure-style riding.
LIVE
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.
Stay with us.
We get a good one for you.
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Wyndham Pusket.
Chickney Coates.
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Lisa Chalvis.
Graham Jarvis.
Clinton Smout.
And you're listening to Adventure Rider Radio.
Experience riders choose the cycle pump tire inflator made by Best Rest products for one reason,
because they can count on it when they pull that out of their pannier no matter what.
They're so tough, they're warrantied for life.
Best Rest has loads of other motor-specific products like the Hex Wrench,
which is a combination tire iron slash wrench,
and they're known for their top quality tire plugs and patch kits.
More at CyclePump.com.
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?
The problem with stock motorcycle mirrors is pretty simple. When you drop your bike,
and we all do, they break. I've had it happen to me, I've watched it happen to other riders.
And if it breaks only the mirror, I think you got off pretty easy because sometimes it'll
break the mount. And when that happens, if it's on the mount is on your controls, you've got a
much bigger problem than just a missing mirror. But even if it's only the mirror, your ride changes
right there. Now you're riding without a mirror. Then when you get back, you've got to replace it.
And when you find it with the dealer wants to charge it for a stock mirror, man, it hurts.
But after all of that, when you get that mirror replaced, you're right back where you started
again with another mirror that can break the next time the bike goes over. That's why we have
double take mirror. Double take mirror has a double ball and socket design that allows the
mirror to fold out of the way. And instead of acting like a rigid stock, just waiting to snap off
like the stock one does, you just fold them in for tight riding, set them where you want.
They give you a better view behind. They're super tough. And double take mirror now backs the whole
system with a lifetime warranty. They say if you break it, they replace it the mirror, the arm,
the mount, the whole thing double take mirror.com and really go to your way to let them know you
heard them here on adventure rider radio. It's important with anybody you hear on adventure
rider radio, especially nowadays, let them know you heard them here on adventure rider radio,
double take mirror.com. A foot peg is not just a foot peg. I mean, anybody can make a chunk of
metal with teeth on it, but IMS products puts real design into theirs, a bigger platform for
leverage and control, tooth design that grips without being crazy hard on boots, mud relief,
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
review from you anywhere you're finding the podcast that helps other people find the show.
As I've said before, it's a noisy world out there, so your help would be greatly appreciated. Also,
if you could share it on social media, tell your friends about it. All of those sorts of things
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built on a model of advertising and listener support. We'd really appreciate it if you drop by
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.
About this episode
Clinton Smout (Smart Performance Center) breaks down the split-second moment when a dirt or gravel front end “washes out” and why the instinct to chop throttle and put a foot down often makes things worse. He explains traction loss as a mix of terrain changes, braking/throttle inputs, and weight transfer, using analogies about how tires behave when leaned over. The episode then gets practical with drills to practice rear-wheel slides and controlled front-wheel lockup on gravel, emphasizing staying calm, keeping feet up, and structured practice to build confidence.
Original notes
When the front tire starts to lose traction or the bike suddenly feels like it’s about to go down, most riders react with some kind of defensive move that feels instinctively right. But is it? In this Rider Skills episode, Clinton Smout joins Jim Martin to look at what’s really happening in those split-second moments when an adventure motorcycle starts to let go off-road — and why what feels like a save may not be one at all.
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Adventure Rider Radio – Motorcycle Podcast
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