After the much awaited debut of Marc Marquez to the MotoGP circuit, one can’t browse the social media networks or open any respectable magazine without hearing or seeing all the commotion over his infamous form and extreme lean angles.  Regardless of which school of thought you subscribe to on such drastic lean angles, one absolutely cannot dispute; …the kid has got talent!   While the rest of us mere mortals will never ride like Marquez outside of our dreams, (despite one or two chaps strutting around the club paddocks claiming this of course), we can learn much from his example.

Body position is typically the first area of focus instructors and riding coaches work to improve on with students, and often for most, one of the most challenging skills to develop.   New riders are notorious for a gamut of poor techniques that can potentially cause very big problems as their pace improves.

Some of the most common hot ticket items are:

*Sitting too upright (Think Driving Miss Daisy vs. Crouching Tiger)

*Shoving the bike underneath you (‘Motocross style,’ baby! Potentially the most dangerous)

*Not getting that booty off the seat (A hot button for coaches)

*And my favorite, the “crossed up style.”  (Everyone has seen this guy; he looks like he is falling off the bike and trying to climb back on with his shoulders at the same time.)

I will be the first to admit, my track photos from my NRS are the perfect example of what not to do and I’m surprised I didn’t tuck the front every lap through T9 with how I was shoving the bike down.  My riding coach used to scold me for this regularly.  There is much literature available on this topic broken down step by step scientifically, but the simple idea behind this being that when you drop your head and shoulders and get off the bike, you’re able to push the bike back up and away from you onto the “meat of the tire,” enabling you to get on the gas sooner and minimizing the chance of high sides.

Keith Code breaks it down for us, “Conceptually, hanging off couldn’t be simpler. Lower the combined center of gravity of the bike/rider and you go through the same corner at the same speed, on the same line with less lean angle. It’s a brilliantly utilitarian racer’s tool with huge residual benefits, chief among them an accurate, on-board gauge for lean angle.”  He also describes the tendency and detriment of riding crossed up.  Code says, “True to most evolutionary progressions, function now rules the look of roadracers. Riders are low and inside of their bikes. More and more we see them perfectly in line with their machines, not twisted or rotated in the saddle. The bum off/body twisted back across the top of the bike, which many Phase 4 riders had used, remains an interesting piece of self-deception. Having their torso on the high side of the bike not only neutralized the mass of their hips being off the bike, but actually raised the combined bike/rider center of gravity; thus defeating the technique’s main purpose.”

Mark DeGross, of 2Fast Trackdays & Instruction has developed the “Lean Machine” tool to help teach students proper form in the classroom sessions of his Performance School. DeGross explains, “We feel body position is foundational to riding, so we built the Lean Machine to work with riders.  By replicating the motion of a bike going from straight up and down to leaning over in a corner, we can work with students in our schools helping them to achieve an optimum smooth transition and body position.”

Professional racers at higher levels practice some downright astonishing techniques manipulating the center of gravity on their machines, but on a less complicated level, one school of thought suggests riders should utilize this concept by dropping their shoulders with their booty half off the saddle.  (We all have a handy little halfway gauge just for this.)  Riders lower their head below where a mirror would be with their outside arm stretched out over the tank and essentially “taking a bite out of their inside forearm” thus forming a more stable “triangle base” in which to maximize the contact patch of the tire.  Ladies, you will always feel much lower than what photographs will illustrate, so rock some Lil Jon in your helmets and “Get Low!”  …whatever it takes!

I have found that when you consciously make the effort to drop your shoulders, you’re better able to read the feedback of your tires and chassis at any point in the corner.  It also seems to slow things down a bit in order to better process your surroundings, which will be reflected in your lap times.  With a little practice and some seat time with your riding coach, you’ll see this too.  So get those shoulders down and ‘drop it like it’s hot,’ Vixens.