Yakaru The Violet Vixen



Name: Yakaru Location: Issaquah, WA & Las Vegas, NV Join Date: Jun 2012

Motorcycle(s): Perigee (250), Hotaru (250), Saturn (300), Pearl (300), Zero (S1000RR), Chibi (Z125), Xellos ('18 HP4R)

Posts: A lot. MOTM - Jun '16

On the technique of riding, my biased discussion of YCRS vs CSS technique



There were a few things I found intriguing about the instruction of the programs. One comment I made during YCRS is that “CSS has a bit of focus, especially early, on smooth use of the throttle; YCRS has a focus on smooth use of the brakes”. That YCRS’s program never formally covered throttle control was honestly surprising to me (Throttle Control Rule#1: Once the throttle is cracked on, it is rolled on evenly, smoothly, and consistently throughout the remainder of the turn.); but it did make the programs mostly complementary rather than rehashing the same ideas. In a similar regard, outside level 4, it wasn’t until recently that brakes were specifically addressed as a session’s focus (it is now in Level 2).



There were also a number of times I disagreed fairly strongly with some things taught at YCRS. My hope is that these are misunderstandings, similar to the misunderstandings I discussed about CSS. I want to be clear that I would like to attend the class again, and they are right about the proper techniques far, far more often than not. Their coaches are also absolutely top notch in their skills. I could also be the one in error and will try to keep an open mind when I do so.



My suspicion on many of these is something I’ve seen before which is what I’ll term “perception vs physics”; which is knowing what is actually happening and why one is easily misled by the perception of it. One good example of this is a common thought, from some EXTREMELY fast and skilled riders, that rolling on the gas will stand the bike up. It doesn’t, but it certainly can feel that way! For some techniques it’s actually worth going over both the perception and the physics to give a rider a full picture.



Here is a list, in no particular order, of things I felt worth commenting on specifically: Eyes: YCRS doesn’t talk about this very much, but they encourage a technique of “scan back” where you move your eyes from a point further out and then scan back. This is especially a good technique for street riding with unpredictable drivers around, but I do worry about how it might be interpreted in high speed track riding. Every time you move your eyes you lose a tenth of a second in a way you don’t even realize ( https://twitter.com/foone/status/101...922624?lang=en ). After discussing this with YCRS post-school I got a little more explanation (and an apology it wasn't covered more) -- they're using techniques that they've heard from racers and fighter pilots and after some reflection I think it makes more sense; though as I said I think it could be misinterpreted. CSS has a technique series on Wide View (and Wide View Transitions); from knowing a few fighter pilots I think this is the same technique -- wide view is about keeping a wide perspective and being able to accurately identify things in the periphery. This means that you can keep awareness without having to saccade (wide view) and where you do, your identifying where it is means you can move your eyes directly to it (wide view transition) instead of needing to hunt. Data does show that as riders improve, their eyes become smoother/more precise and change where they are looking far less often. Here's an article by a fighter pilot about using your eyes while driving that might be elucidating: https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-f...-on-the-roads/ Steering: When YCRS discusses counter steering, they discuss it as a “where appropriate” technique, specifically calling out places you steer while on the gas as a major example. They also describe counter steering as, “cutting a steak with an ax,” and that you want to be finer than that. I disagree with this quite strongly. If you want to turn a motorcycle carrying any momentum at all you must counter steer.

Link to original page on YouTube.

There are ways to counter steer other than bar pressure, but all techniques that cause a bike to turn are counter steering. I’ve heard YCRS instructors state, “you steer the bike by weighting your inside peg,”

Link to original page on YouTube.

and that you are steering this way due to the gyroscopic effect. This may be the way it feels, and it may lead to proper technique, but in my experience and opinion this is untrue. The gyroscopic effect is involved in how a bike functions, but it is far overstated, and the vast majority of it actually makes turning more difficult due to Newton’s Laws. After talking with YCRS I do realize that they differ on the definition of counter steering that I use -- for me it is any action that causes the bike to move the tire 'away' from the turn, forcing a lean, followed by a pro-steer into the turn. YCRS treats it as only pushing on the bars -- not even including the release of the bars to allow the pro-steer. They also said the CSS video above showed counter steering was "abrupt"; but I think this is misinterpreting -- the demonstration was to show how fast counter steering *can* be but it obviously can be slower and smoother, as appropriate for the turn.

Link to original page on YouTube.

This video is one of my favorites and goes over why countersteering works, and in part why I define it as the entire process instead of only pushing on the bars and include things that aren't bar pushes (though these are generally less effective).

Also I generally don't like to link to this video, given the copyright issue, but: https://youtu.be/odJJXhg79j8?t=149 (this link should jump to 2:34, where this is shown; you can see how body steering is causing a slow and minimal counter steer which leads to a slower turn. I also feel it's probably less predictable, though I'm sure this can be improved if you explicitly practice it.

https://www.nature.com/news/the-bicy...matics-1.20281 is an excellent read on bicycle/motorcycle physics by the way. One thing I feel neither school addressed as well as they could've: In my experience, just moving left and right on the seat has a tendency to rotate you around the tank instead of purely strafing. To compensate for this I usually think about moving my thigh/butt ‘backwards and towards the seat’ – this both helps get the leg out naturally instead of feeling like a yoga pose and tends to correct the counter rotation. -- see the attached pictures. Both schools talk about 'about a fist off', YCRS advises "one cheek off" while CSS has generally advised slightly less. I think this depends a bit on leg length -- I should move off the seat way less than someone who's 6'1" because otherwise I need to hold on with the bars. Throttle/Slowest Point in the Turn: I had a debate on this with the instructors. They referred to the slowest point in the turn as the point where you let go of the brakes and get back on the throttle. I brought up that this is technically incorrect – you just ‘decelerate slower’ until you hit somewhere between 25%-50% throttle, depending on the turn. The instructor stated that this would only be true if you were in too high a gear. Pro race data I’ve seen disagrees with this. I think some fairly trivial experiments can tell you why: If I’m going in a straight line with my throttle at, say, 90% and then I roll off to zero I will decelerate. I will continue to decelerate until my throttle reaches nearly 90% again. This doesn’t mean I should downshift – I’m near the top end of my current gear and downshifting would cause me to need a lot more clutch finesse and I’d quickly redline the engine. This is the one point that YCRS and I continue to disagree; and I feel in part it can be related to the SPEED of roll on rather than the AMOUNT -- you can roll on quite aggressively and early for turn 6 at Laguna but you are going to be slowing until you reach 50%+ throttle more often than not. “Do what champions do”: generally this can be a good philosophy but it can lead to bad theory work if you don’t understand why and how they do these things. For example, racers tend to have bike customizations that general riders don’t, like customized gas tank shapes, which gives them options that they wouldn’t have otherwise. One of YCRS’s most famous lectures is their “100 points of grip” discussion which I like but have some refinements I feel to be important. I think they’d agree with this, given their time spent on smooth controls and “load the tire before you work the tire” mantra, as well as their first 5 and last 5% being the place you should focus the most on smoothness. They discuss that your grip can be used for brakes, lean, or throttle. If you want to add throttle you need to take away lean, for example. I think an important note is that the smoothness and aggressiveness of inputs here has a huge impact that is understated in this lesson. If you’re at lean and roll on the throttle very, very slowly you will be able to get to an extremely high amount while maintaining grip, far more than you might suspect given the 100 points lesson -- the metaphor I like is it's like a person's attention -- if you sneak up behind them and shout suddenly they'll jump and you'll take away all their focus. On the other hand there are some actions that will make the 100 points a bit irrelevant (though partly still applicable) -- if you add lean and throttle at the same time for example you aren't just "using up points in two places at the same time" but you're causing other issues. One way I describe this is that when you roll on you're asking the rear wheel to keep going around the curve (or, if sufficiently aggressive, to widen it as speed increases radius), while adding lean -- generally to tighten the turn, is telling the front wheel to deviate from the current path. The tires disagree and down you go. I also feel that they don't cover how to know how close you are to the 100 points; but neither does CSS in my experience. One thing I really liked was hearing the “same lesson a different way”. For example, YCRS has a lesson of ‘head lowest at the exit’ which is similar to a lesson from CSS (the “pick up”) but with a different focus on the approach. I find that hearing these sort of things with those different philosophies is often extremely valuable.

In the end, I felt I was able to take the lessons and methodologies of both schools and combine them into a superior end result. I used CSS’s “no brakes for sense of speed” along with YCRS’s “brake until you’re happy with speed and direction” to refine my ability to not over slow for a corner entry by using a very minimal amount of brake to help psychologically calibrate my speed not to the point I started leaning but to the point I had the bike at lean and, usually, pointed where I wanted. There were a few things I found intriguing about the instruction of the programs. One comment I made during YCRS is that “CSS has a bit of focus, especially early, on smooth use of the throttle; YCRS has a focus on smooth use of the brakes”. That YCRS’s program never formally covered throttle control was honestly surprising to me (Throttle Control Rule#1: Once the throttle is cracked on, it is rolled on evenly, smoothly, and consistently throughout the remainder of the turn.); but it did make the programs mostly complementary rather than rehashing the same ideas. In a similar regard, outside level 4, it wasn’t until recently that brakes were specifically addressed as a session’s focus (it is now in Level 2).There were also a number of times I disagreed fairly strongly with some things taught at YCRS. My hope is that these are misunderstandings, similar to the misunderstandings I discussed about CSS. I want to be clear that I would like to attend the class again, and they are right about the proper techniques far, far more often than not. Their coaches are also absolutely top notch in their skills. I could also be the one in error and will try to keep an open mind when I do so.My suspicion on many of these is something I’ve seen before which is what I’ll term “perception vs physics”; which is knowing what is actually happening and why one is easily misled by the perception of it. One good example of this is a common thought, from some EXTREMELY fast and skilled riders, that rolling on the gas will stand the bike up. It doesn’t, but it certainly can feel that way! For some techniques it’s actually worth going over both the perception and the physics to give a rider a full picture.Here is a list, in no particular order, of things I felt worth commenting on specifically:In the end, I felt I was able to take the lessons and methodologies of both schools and combine them into a superior end result. I used CSS’s “no brakes for sense of speed” along with YCRS’s “brake until you’re happy with speed and direction” to refine my ability to not over slow for a corner entry by using a very minimal amount of brake to help psychologically calibrate my speed not to the point I started leaning but to the point I had the bike at lean and, usually, pointed where I wanted. Attached Images IMG_7670.jpg (111.1 KB, 2 views) IMG_7669.JPG (21.0 KB, 1 views) IMG_7667.JPG (120.1 KB, 2 views) IMG_7666.jpg (95.2 KB, 1 views) IMG_7665.JPG (196.9 KB, 1 views) IMG_7664.JPG (93.5 KB, 3 views)

"most folks racing this bike get it in a competitive state of being with much less invested than you've already put in Saturn." - __________________________________________________"most folks racing this bike get it in a competitive state of being with much less invested than you've already put in Saturn." - Alex Last futzed with by Yakaru; December 2nd, 2019 at 01:44 PM .