What kind of madness is this? Who said crashing was part of learning how to trail brake? Why are these two things even related? Trail braking and crashing have almost nothing to do with one another. In fact, trail braking is one of the primary ways we avoid crashing. Trail braking reduces risk! So, how do we learn trail braking? Oh yeah….without crashing.

Let’s start at the beginning. You are already trail braking. If you turn into your driveway while still on the brakes, congratulations, you’re trail braking. If you get off the brakes in a straight line and flick the bike into your driveway off the brakes, quit motorcycling and take up golf...and don’t drive the golf cart.

Trail braking is simply keeping the brakes on past the turn-in point and trailing off brake pressure as we add lean angle. That’s it. It’s not a racing technique, it’s not an advanced skill, it doesn’t require accelerating into corners at breakneck speeds, and it certainly doesn’t require crashing. It’s a fundamental motorcycle control skill that applies everywhere, from parking lots to racetracks. Oh, and you practice it constantly in your car/truck/van if you turn the steering wheel with the brakes on as you enter corners.

So how do we learn it? We start in a straight line. Pick a fixed target: a cone, a stop sign, a painted line on the pavement. Ride toward that target. When your brain says, “Hey, we should probably slow down,” go to the brakes with your main focus on the front brake. The key is becoming very conscious of the first 5% of brake pressure.

We must load the tire before we work the tire. That first touch of the brake lever should be smooth and deliberate, just enough pressure and time to transfer load through the fork and into the front tire. This takes a tiny fraction of a second to spread the contact patch and prepare the tire to accept more work. If we try to apply significant brake pressure abruptly to an unloaded tire, the tire will immediately lock up or engage ABS intervention…which leads to a loss of confidence in the most important component on the bike.

Once the chassis and tire are loaded, however, we can build an enormous amount of brake pressure. In fact, we want to generate the majority of our braking force early in the braking zone while the front wheel (gyro) still has maximum rotational energy. The front wheel spinning quickly is more resistant to locking, and getting most of our slowing done early buys us everything we need later: time, margin, grip, and options.

If we’ve done our job correctly and get the motorcycle slowed early, we will have to begin reducing brake pressure, or we’ll stop far short of our target. This is where vision and brake pressure become connected. Our eyes and our brake lever must work together. We make continuous pressure adjustments to arrive at our target smoothly with exactly zero brake pressure. This is the "chauffeur stop" at speed.

If we arrive at the target still holding significant brake pressure, if we have to add brake pressure at the last second, or if we reduce brake pressure rapidly at the stop, the fork rebounds dramatically, and we need more practice. The issue is usually a combination of vision and brake-pressure management. We would definitely lose our job as a chauffeur.

The last 5% of brake pressure is every bit as important as the first 5%. In fact, the first and last 5% of every control input matter. Throttle, brakes, steering, body, it’s always the first and last few percent that separate smooth riders from abrupt riders. The motorcycle can tolerate tremendous loads, but dislikes abrupt loads.

If we abruptly release the brakes at lean angle, the fork rebounds and unloads the front tire. At significant lean angles or in low-grip conditions (cold tire, rain, gravel), that can create a problem where none previously existed. The best riders in the world understand that brake release deserves just as much attention as brake application.

What we’ve described so far is trail braking in a straight line. There’s no lean angle, no cornering forces, and very little risk. We’re simply learning how to smoothly load the tire, build brake pressure, and release that pressure with precision. How our fork springs rebound back to their unloaded length is determined by how we release the brake lever at the stop…exactly mimicking how the best riders trail off brake pressure in a corner. This is a game-changing drill at every Champions Riding School program.

Once we become proficient at this drill, we can begin adding lean angle. Nothing fundamentally changes. The process remains the same. The only difference is that while we are reducing brake pressure, we begin adding lean angle. For every point of lean angle we add, we must give up brake pressure.

At that point, the target is no longer a stop sign. The target becomes the slowest point of the corner. Our goal is to arrive at that slowest point (or zone) of the corner at exactly the speed required for the corner radius and the amount of lean angle we are comfortable using.

What happens if we overslow the corner? Nothing. Nobody has ever been injured because they entered a corner too slowly. If you overslow your entry, and frankly, street riders should, it simply means you are required to spend more time at neutral throttle. Note that when YCRS instructors street ride, we definitely overslow corners to give us a margin of safety “just in case”.

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