Riders: Don't overlap throttle and front brake!

“Freddie was misquoted on [overlapping throttle and front brake] and we spoke about it at length. His technique was overlapping throttle and rear brake on the peaky three-cylinder two-stroke 500, as a pre-electronic traction control. He spoke about it at schools but it was printed in a book incorrectly.
In terms of overlapping front brake and throttle, Freddie laughed and talked about 'almost' overlapping them…going from brake to throttle, and throttle to brake, in minimum time…and then he made a point of how important 'almost' is in our two-wheeled world. I hope this explains the misunderstanding that is out there". -Nick Ienatsch (Lead Instructor at the Freddie Spencer High Performance Riding School from its inception to close).

If we're braking, we're trying to use the spring and compression damping of our forks to control our front tire's contact patch and load so we can brake or turn (or both, a la trailbraking!). If we're accelerating, we're trying to use the rear shock's spring and compression to manage weight transfer rearward and get the tire's contact patch to spread out so we can add power (the fun part of riding!). One reason we don't overlap: we're preventing the suspension from working properly in either direction because we're asking it to do two different things. Instead of allowing the suspension to manage load forward, we're asking it prevent load from going forward by adding throttle while braking. Conversely, we're asking the rear tire to load and suspension to compress while simultaneously asking it to focus on its own rebound stroke. We're placing the entire bike into a "catch-22" situation where it physically can't work as intended.

Don't feel like listening to us? Check out Sylvain Guintoli saying the same thing:    • 🇬🇧TRACK TUTORIAL / COACHING: TRAIL BR...  

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