Body Position — Old School Vs. New School

In Ama Pro Racing, World Superbike And MotoGP there's been a shift in riding styles. From the days of '80s and '90s heroes like Kevin Schwantz and Mick Doohan who were forced to wrestle powerful, unruly beasts to their will, a younger generation of riders typified by Valentino Rossi and Casey Stoner took over, rising from the high-corner speed ranks of 125cc and 250cc Grand Prix machinery to the more refined, better-behaved MotoGP bikes of today with their complex engine-management software and traction control. Actually Rossi's career dates from the final days of fire-breathing 500cc two-strokes (he won the last 500CC World Championship in 2001, then piled up consecutive MotoGP championships from 2002 to 2005), which likely contributes to making him the most versatile and perhaps most talented roadracer of all time.

Focusing on riding styles, in particular body position while hanging off during cornering, we see the evolution from the more upright chest-over-the-tank style of the past couple of decades to the radically to-the-inside and almost under-the-bike shenanigans of the youngsters. The old school still has some fight left, as exemplified by former World Superbike champions Troy Bayliss (a dominant force in the series and currently leading WSBK points) and Neil Hodgson, one of our interview subjects here, who makes his return to AMA Superbike competition to take care of some unfinished business. Representing the new-schoolers is multitime AMA champion and factory Yamaha superbike pilot Eric Bostrom, a man who first popularized the modern style in the AMA competition despite his dirt-track and four-stroke background. When asked if the difference in riding styles comes from the younger generation's experience being limited to modern chassis and tire technology, Hodgson scratches his head and says, "Yeah, it's very possible; I've never analyzed it that way, but now that you've said it you're probably right."
Hodgson has been racing for 25 years, which along with being a proven world champion, likely contributed to his landing the much-sought-after seat on the factory American Honda Superbike team for 2008. Like any true champion Hodgson is also his own toughest critic. "I think your style is your style and it's hard to change it. I've criticized my own style and want to hang off more, but if I hang off more I lose the feeling for the bike," he admits. "It's so ingrained into me because I've been racing for so many years that I can't change it now. I can, but I go slower."

Hodgson's ( old School)  
style comes from the days of Schwantz and Doohan, when high-horsepower engines dominated underdeveloped chassis and tire technology; wheels were rarely in line with one another when the beasts were ridden in anger. Despite his somewhat retro riding style, however, Hodgson surprised many, including perhaps himself, when he snatched the pole qualifying position for this year's Daytona 200 in a one-off ride on a Honda CBR600RR Formula Xtreme racebike. All the more impressive is that it was the first time in his career he's ever raced a 600. 
Clearly, getting the most out of a 600 requires an emphasis on corner speed, so despite his relatively upright upper-body position Hodgson works his lower body to at least partially compensate. To keep the rear wheel on the ground under maximum braking, "I'm up against the tank in the corners, but then when I brake I always pull myself away from the tank, just obviously trying to keep the weight as far back as possible," he explains. "I move around on the seat a lot, really. A lot of riders, like Ben Spies, don't move around on the seat a lot; he moves his upper body around over it. I move my bum on the seat, but my upper body stays in the same position, so I try to keep a lower center of gravity by getting more of my backside off but keeping my upper body over the center." 
There's no disputing the effectiveness of Hodgson's riding; however, you need only look to MotoGP to see that the most advanced tire, chassis and engine-management technology in our sport has the days of old-school riding styles numbered. 
Formula Xtreme in 1998 on an Erion Honda (winning all but one event in each season), his radically hung-off style was a bit of a curiosity, as if he were more of a lanky 125cc GP refugee than the dirt-track kid he actually was. When filling in for an injured Miguel Duhamel on a few factory Honda RC45 guest appearances, however, he won two of his first three superbike races. After that everyone took him seriously as a force to be reckoned with.
As puzzling as the development of his style was to the rest of us, it made perfect sense to Bostrom. "Obviously I came from dirt-track," he explains, "and in dirt-track you always wanted to keep your bike on top of the tire, and you use a lot of body English in dirt-track to try to find the grip. If I have that one thing that's my forte, it's finding grip. So that's how I developed, always thinking like a dirt-tracker."


Bostrom ( new School) 

   
keeps his head so low, nearly always behind or physically beneath the bike's windscreen, that Schwantz once described it as if he had a six-inch string connecting his helmet chin bar to the top triple clamp. Former Bostrom crew chief, the late Merlyn Plumlee, noted the challenge of needing to trim back the trailing edge of the windscreen and upper fairing to keep them from interfering with Bostrom's helmet.
No one with even a fundamental understanding of physics doubts the advantages of keeping the rider's weight as low and to the inside as possible, but Bostrom also sees a compromise to his style when it comes to tires overcoming available traction. "I've gotta believe that their riding style is better for saving crashes, you know," he admits, "because you have more leverage to pick the bike up when you lose the front end." The Achilles heel in Bostrom's riding does seem to be his lack of ability to adapt to and overcome setup challenges.
With regard to where he positions himself on the seat, Bostrom details, "I'm mostly pretty forward on the seat [while cornering] but definitely back on the brakes. I change my position constantly. It depends on the corner-if you're into a corner that's not that heavy on braking then you can enter it straight from the front, but sometimes your front tires are so good that, like turn five here [at Miller Motorsports Park in 2006], I'll be on the back of the seat at the apex, still trying to get the bike stopped and still trailing because the front tires will take it. So you're not really in the right position (for steering the bike), but you need that weight back there because the rear is trying to come around."

The Way Of The Future
In terms of pure physics, the advantages of the new-school style of riding cannot be denied. The lower and farther off to the inside the rider gets his body, the more upright the bike is around a given radius at a given speed. Pure and simple, more is better, so long as your body position doesn't compromise your ability to stay connected to the bike so you can feel what's happening at both contact patches and maintain light and precise inputs on the controls. Since the days of rigid frames and spoked wheels, riding styles are constantly changing. Bike and tire technology, like time, marches forward and waits for no man-not even Schwantz or Doohan.

Mental Visualization — Think It, Be It, Do It

Mental Visualization — Think It, Be It, Do It
Odd as it sounds, sometimes the most beneficial riding practice takes place between your ears with your eyes shut and the ignition switch turned off. Mental visualization is used in many sports, and I actually picked it up from a coach while shooting small-bore rifle competition in college. The benefits were immediate and obvious, so I quickly applied it to my roadracing as well.
Visualization is obviously best used in conjunction with actual riding time, between sessions, but it has several advantages over track time alone. Over 80 percent of riding a motorcycle is mental. To get the full benefit of this technique, your visualization should be done in the most thorough detail possible. This means you're mentally going through not only all the visual information that you take in while riding but input from all your other senses as well. You should imagine your body position movements on the bike and each control input to the clutch, throttle and brake. Imagine hearing the engine note rising and falling with each throttle input, upshift and downshift. Feel the bumps and pavement changes, the bike leaning through the corners and the braking and acceleration forces as well.
I've heard the story of Yoshimura Suzuki hiring a former AMA Superbike Champion (whose name I'll withhold to protect the not-so-innocent) to its team in the mid-'90s and not knowing how to react when this rider performed his mental visualization on his bike, parked in the team garage, complete with body movements and even vroom-vroom sounds for the engine. I've seen a riding-school student of mine perform similar detailed movements in a classroom, though without the sounds, and when I asked him about it he explained quite unashamedly that he was part of a sky-diving team that made extensive use of mental visualization before ever attempting it for real. The point here is that while you can't visualize in too much detail, you may want to be careful selecting the company in which you do it.
Start your lap-or better yet, laps-at a specific point on the track, typically the start/finish line, and complete the lap at the same point in as much detail as possible. You'll likely find it difficult at first to complete the entire lap without pause or hesitation. These problem areas are often caused by a lack of information or a cloudy section of track where you're not quite sure where you are or what you're supposed to be doing. This is one of the biggest benefits of visualization: It tells you in no uncertain terms where you're struggling from a lack of visual reference points or uncertainty of how to handle particular situations. In actual riding at speed, failing to notice these blank areas is easy because of the constant distraction of motion and the never-ending stream of sensory input that goes with it. When lapping in your mind, however, the information gaps are painfully obvious. Go back over these areas over and over until you figure out what is causing the problem and what you need to do to solve it. Write down the gaps in a notebook and remind yourself to search for the needed information your next time on the track.
My routine for teaching two-day riding school formats always ends the first day with a mental visualization exercise. After explaining to students the method of experiencing the high level of detail using all their senses, I have them imagine approaching the start/finish line at speed-"You're crossing the line . . . now!"-and ask them to open their eyes when their lap is complete and remain quiet until the rest of class is done. If the track has a typical minute-and-a-half lap time, some students will open their eyes in as few as 45 seconds; most will complete their lap between one minute 15 seconds and one minute 45 seconds. A few students, often with grimaces on their faces, will not complete their visualized laps for well over two minutes. By the two-and-a-half-minute mark I'll end their misery and have them open their eyes.
The following discussion starts with a laugh over the new imaginary-lap record holders and asking them what they experienced. Typically, the quick visualized laps are a result of not enough information, sometimes skipping forward several corners while blanking out on entire sections of track. The slow visual laps are usually a result of the rider's mental process slowing down, searching for that next reference point or perhaps even backing up slightly and trying the troublesome section again in hopes of getting it right. Again, write down these problem zones and review them before your next time on the track. These are the areas you need to work on.
To really get serious about it, sit down with a stopwatch and time your visualized laps, say two or three in succession. If you really have a handle on the track, your mental laps should be within tenths of a second of your actual times. If they vary greatly and are too quick or too slow, use the above information to diagnose the situation.
A few tips for likely problem areas: Long straights are often confusing for people, so imagine the sound of the engine note rising under acceleration and dropping slightly for each shift. Try to keep the sense of timing in carrying each gear between shift points, watching the tachometer climb ever slower with each taller gear. Blind elevation rises require more reference points in a constant stream of information for you to avoid feeling lost.
Another advantage visualization has over actual saddle time is being able to imagine changes or improvements to your riding that you find difficult to institute at speed on the track. These situations often include pushing to a later beginning braking point or getting your downshifts done earlier in the braking zone. You might know and understand that it's possible to begin braking 15 or 20 feet later in the corner, for instance, because you find yourself fully off the brakes and back into neutral throttle before the turn-in point lap after lap, but seeing that turn rush up at speed you find it difficult not to clamp down on the brake at the same point as before. Visualize yourself holding that throttle open a tiny fraction of a second longer for five or six laps, using a new, deeper braking marker, and the next time you're out on the track it's almost like you've already done it.
I found mental visualization most useful in learning new tracks while traveling to AMA Pro Racing events early in my career. A single practice session each morning and afternoon at these new circuits left a lot of time in between to tune the bike and think about the track. My routine was to not only use visualization between practices to identify my problem areas to work on next time out (or better yet, a track walk or bicycle lap once the riding sessions are done for the day), I also made sure to do several laps in my head as I lay in bed that night before falling asleep and then again upon awaking. Though I can't explain why, sleeping on a problem like this has a way of reorganizing your thoughts far more effectively than attempting to solve it while you're awake.
Remember, next time you're tackling a new track or new section of road use your mind to its fullest: Think it, see it, be it. And then, finally, do it.
*Visualizing the track or road you'll be riding can usually be done more easily while relaxing, or even during nonspecific tasks ,Your mind can often find solutions to a particular riding problem when it's calm and not under pressure.
*Mentally going over specific sections and taking notes with the aid of a track map can help you identify areas where you don't have enough reference points. You can even use a stopwatch to time a "mental lap." The closer you are to your real laps, the better your reference points are.
*Of course your eyes don't have to be closed to be thinking about and visualizing your riding. Mentally going over what you need to do and then acting on those thoughts when you get back on the track is a technique used by all the world's best riders.

30-Tips from Kevin Schawant

30-plus KSSS-approved things to do at your next track day

1. Increase your speed incrementally.
2. Find and use reference points for braking, turn-in and apex.
3. Focus your vision way out front.
4. Select a gear that uses 60-80 percent of redline at the exit.
5. Be loose on the bike and bars, not rigid.
6. Get body position set for corners early.
7. Hang off slightly--and comfortably--in corners.
8. Use your legs to move you around the bike, not your arms.
9. Go slow when learning a new track. Get the flow first.
10. In the wet, be super-smooth with all control inputs.
11. Ride with the balls of your feet on the pegs at all times.
12. Weight the inside peg entering corners.
13. Weight the outside peg at the apex and exiting corners.
14. Perfect practice makes perfect--helps muscle memory.
15. Ignore the rear brake.
16. Walk the track if possible.
17. Don't apex early; late apex whenever possible.
18. Get to neutral throttle ASAP approaching the apex.
19. Apply smooth but forceful throttle exiting a corner.
20. Keep body movements small or smooth while cornering.
21. Braking distances increase exponentially with speed.
22. Monitor chassis feedback through hands, feet and butt when braking.
23. Ease off the brakes smoothly as you lean the bike into a corner.
24. Brake in segments: first 10 percent (to settle chassis), then 75 percent (hard braking), then 15 percent (releasing smooth toward apex).
25. Get hard braking done early; don't wait till you see God!
26. Passing tip: Let off the brakes sooner and carry a bit more speed into the corner.
27. Release the brake more slowly than you initially grab it.
28. Ride a bicycle for leg strength and cardiovascular training; it'll make you a better rider!
29. Control panic by being in control at all times; resist the temptation to go beyond your personal comfort envelope.
30. If you get in too hot, look where you want to go, relax and will yourself to make the corner.
31. Resist the temptation to tuck completely behind the bubble; sitting higher allows you to see more, which helps nail your braking and turn-in points.
32. If you crash, get wide. It resists flipping.