Static Balance on Motorcycle

Static balance on a motorcycle is essentially lateral balance, which makes it a key skill for riding on any two-wheeled vehicle. This experience is very important both for motorsport and for ordinary motorcycle life.

Practical use

After these exercises it will be much easier to ride slowly on a road bike, for example during traffic jams or in the parking zone. This skill will help you to go straight when you have a passenger behind you who fidgets a lot.

For enduro this experience will be very useful, when you go along logs, curbs, downhills, on narrow lines… Actually, always and everywhere. Good balance allows you not only to overcome different obstacles, but also to ride more easily, more relaxed, to waste less energy. For example, if previously you had to stop before the obstacle and to help your motorcycle by pushing it, now you can get over it without touching the ground with your feet. In the cases, when you have to stop, you will need to ride a few meters to regain balance. These few meters can determine your success on difficult sections. For example if you have a short distance before the uphill, you may not make it if you stop before it.

For trials static balance is a basis, foundation. Riders there stand still very often and for a long time without touching the ground with their feet.

A slow wheelie requires not only longitudinal but also lateral balance, so static balance practice helps with wheelies too.

In motocross good feeling of the lateral balance is also useful, for example, when you go over a slippery surface, rut or narrow line.

Training

Static balance is a very affordable thing for training. You can use any motorcycle for this, in any conditions, outdoor or indoor. You can and should learn it from easy to hard. Our video shows in detail how to make your practicing easier in the beginning and how to make exercises more difficult step by step further to raise your skills. And how to get some variety in practicing.

The balance can be reached not only by movements of the body, pushing on the foot pegs, but also by small turns of the handlebar. This happens by itself when you are riding slowly. During static balance, the skill has to be trained separately, focusing on this particular method of balancing.

Once you are comfortable holding static balance, moving your feet over the pegs, removing your hands from the handlebar and removing your feet from the pegs one after another, add dynamics to your practice. First, while holding static balance, try to engage first gear and ride straight without losing a balance. The next step is to ride slowly and stop smoothly into a static balance. It is good to use a soft dirt hole or a rut to stop the front wheel in, it will help you much.

When you learn to do all this, you will be surprised how much information you can get from the surface under the wheels. You will start to “read” the type of dirt and any bumps in it; you will start to use for support not only dirt, but also roots, logs, stones or any other objects under the wheels.

What is surprising, during such trainings, not only the lateral balance is improved, but also the smooth operation with all control levers: throttle, brakes, clutch. Because any jerk will throw you off balance.

You will also develop the correct body position on the motorcycle, since in order not to get tired, you need to keep the body, hands and legs in a relaxed, unstressed state. You need to make counter movements not to “hang” on your hands, that is, to move forward when pulling away and to move back when stopping.

Balancing with a straight handlebar

In the video we say that you should train with the handlebar turned, as the motorcycle is more stable that way. This raises a fair question: is it possible to hold static balance with a straight handlebar? Somebody can say: “I saw so many times during trials competitions, how riders stand still with a straight handlebar”. And he will be right. There is a secret here; a motorcycle needs some support for static balance with a straight handlebar. Even the world's best trials riders do it when front or rear wheel pushes against an obstacle.

It’s easy to train this way: you need to go slowly in balance, stick into any obstacle (wood, stone, border, etc.) and pin the motorcycle against it so it's clamped, i.e. the tire is slightly flattened and the fork is slightly compressed. Here you need to use both brakes to get a good fixation. Or you can, for example, when riding off a large log, hold the motorcycle by the brakes when the wheel touches the log with its rear part. It is easiest to train balance with a straight handlebar when the motorcycle pushes against an obstacle both from behind and from the front; for example, it will be easy to do in a pit slightly shorter than your motorcycle.

Motorcycle

You can train static balance on any type of a motorcycle: road bike, off-road bike, dirtbike, scooter, that does not matter. It will be easier on motorcycles with a low center of gravity and where the foot pegs are in the center of the motorcycle (like in dirtbikes). If the pegs are not comfortable for standing on them, you can train static balance while sitting.

In summary, these exercises will not only improve your riding skills, but also they will allow you to do some stunts and to surprise people, for example, by kick-starting the motorcycle while standing on the pegs and riding off without losing the balance.