Get your knee down (without the rest of you following)
Getting your knee down is not just about looking good. Mastering the technique can improve your everyday cornering, too.
You could argue that there’s little point in scraping your knee sliders outside of riding on a race track, but mastering the technique can also improve your cornering smoothness and safety – it’s not all about riding like a hooligan. At least, that’s what I was told at a one-day knee down course organised by the i2i Motorcycle Academy.
Riding on this course is done on the trainer’s bike, the exercises are set away from public roads and you’re well away from the beady eyes of onlookers. All of that made for a nice and relaxing atmosphere. Not having to worry about crashing my own bike or colliding with other vehicles sounded good, and the secluded environment meant there was no public scrutiny.
There were five of us pupils on this course, each looking quite uncertain of what the day might bring. Luckily Tom Killeen, our trainer, was a man with a plan, and quick to put you at ease: “Getting your knee down is easy. It’s all the other stuff that we’ll do before the knee down that will be more difficult. Once you get through that, getting your knee down is no problem.”
Start with the difficult bit
So, what exactly did he mean with all that ‘other stuff’? Well, we started nice and easy, just doing some circles and figures of eight to get used to the bike. Then we moved on to experimenting with how different steering inputs made the bike handle and how stable we could make it through the corners. Each exercise was preceded with a bit of theory about why the bike handles how it does, how the laws of physics dictate this, and how our brain is wired to see things in a certain way, even if that isn’t always the most helpful thing in controlling a motorcycle.
As the day progressed, the exercises developed gradually, and we moved on from just circling at our leisure to using counter steering, and further to doing turns and circles with just one hand on the bars. With each exercise our circles started to look more consistent, our lean angles more stable, and it seemed like we might be able to pull this off.
That’s when Tom introduced the toughest bit of the day: maintaining consistent lean angles using only your body positioning on the bike, with no hands on the bars. Anchoring your legs to the bike and keeping your core stable, you lean into the bend with your upper body. Once you find the balance point it is surprisingly easy to take your hands off the bars and let the bike travel in a circle. This felt like nothing short of a miracle.
Getting your knee down is easy
As I was taking a breather and sipping a cup of coffee by the training ground, I couldn’t quite believe how far we had already come that day – and we hadn’t even started the knee down bit yet. At the start of the day we had all been visibly nervous and unsteady, but looking at the guys now, circling around with no hands on the bars, it was like a different group had taken over.
But before I had too much time to congratulate myself, it was time for the day’s main event: the knee down practice itself. Tom started by talking us through the correct body positioning we needed to adopt to get our knees down safely and in a controlled manner.
So, you move your body sideways to the inside corner, making sure that the spine lines up with the bike, the balls of your feet on the pegs, your outside knee anchored to the tank, your inside knee turned out, and… well, that was it! No twisting around or desperately stretching to reach the ground, just a slight adjustment in your riding position, while still in full control of the machine. It sounded pretty simple.
Jumping on the bike, my first couple of circles felt okay, but my knee wasn’t anywhere near the ground and I knew I could push for a bigger lean angle. Tipping the bike further, I felt that I was getting closer with each attempt. Then, after half a dozen approaches it happened, I heard the scraping sound of plastic meeting the asphalt, and I felt the knee slider make contact. The sensation was surprisingly gentle, the sound unexpectedly loud.
100% success rate
It felt great to get your knee down in such a calm and controlled way. And in the process I had learnt a whole lot about how to steer a bike efficiently and effectively, and perhaps most importantly, how to keep the machine stable mid-corner.
I wasn’t the only one who came out of the experience with a big smile on my face. Everyone in the group got their knee down by the end of the day. We had a 100% success rate, which is apparently quite normal.
Is this course for you?
I felt like I learnt loads on the day, not just about getting my knee down, but also about general bike control. It was a bit of a revelation! If you want to improve your cornering, machine control and confidence, then this course will be perfect for you. And you’ll likely get your knee down in the process.
It felt great to get your knee down in such a calm controlled way.