Personally, what helped me the most on loose surfaces or off road, was simply keeping 'eyes up' looking as far ahead as is practicable. When looking down close to you, one's focus becomes reactionary and your balance is totally off as the head is down and your body will compensate. It sounds weird, but try it, keep your eyes up focusing ahead and watch how stable the bike becomes and your speed off-road improves.

Thankyou Llewellyn. At 66 yrs, your vids have improved my riding no end. Have been practicing this and have incorporated it into my daily riding over the last 5 years, off-road and on. Its become and ingrained skill. I feel like a youngster again. Never to old to learn!

Coming from a dirtbike background I found it natural to ride on dirt roads on a adventure bike, I think if you have the opportunity to ride a dirtbike first before going on a big adventure bike you'll find it alot easier when you make that leap.

Thank you! This is the BEST explanation of trail braking I've heard yet!

Been riding 50years. You insrtuction makes me feel like a beginner. Fantastic stuff.

It’s been 3 years that i practice trail braking in most corners on asphalt; i love it; i didn’t knew i could also do it on gravel roads; thanks a lot; i will try it in my next ride; best regards from Montreal.

Really well explained. The maintaining the "attitude of the bike" is spot on... Work with the suspension, don't fight it.

Thanks for this video, I'll start working on this on my next ride!

Looking forward to putting these skills to use! Thanks for such brilliant and clear videos!

For those who wonder of you can use this technique on a non-ABS bike, you surely can but you need to drag and modulate especially the front brake and very light application on the rear brake, or no rear at all (useful in straight line). Also move forward to put weight on the front, elbows up. Comined with the engine braking as mentioned here, it is more stable that you think even on really loose gravel.

I have never really thought about it in dirt but it makes sense. Thanks.

Thank you ! I was always told to never use the front brake cornering ~ trusted my friend and did it ! Didn't lose one corner on the last trip learning & trusting this skill.

Excellent instructional video as always 👍

Great tips! Hits the Demo nicely. Saving Lives is cool! I ride in the Appalachian Mountains on Forest Service/Gravel Rural with mostly blind corners with all types of 2 way traffic (Logging Trucks!!) and stress the importance of these tips to everyone riding with me..

Hi, best mini tip monday ever! Great video, phenomenal descrition. Thanks a lot

Very well explained and the breakdown on the video and graphics helped make this a well demonstrated concept. Thanks a lot.

Thanks! Can't wait to put this to practice!

Love watching your stuff Llel. Perfect KZfaq. Great filming & editing, passionate about the subject and great at passing it on effectively. Sublime stuff. But you know the best bit? That you can do this with your dad. Keep it up and see you when I get round to Level 2!

One thing from my experience is that trail braking is truly something that can only be perfected with practice. It is a perishable skill because you end up losing the "feel" for it the less often times you do it. I always make it a point to trailbrake every corner...and I ride city streets. I am definitely very far from being perfect with it but I enjoy every time I get it right.

This transformed my riding on dirt and gravel in a huge way! I'm much faster and ride with alot more control! Thank you very much!

I began doing this by trial and error but didn't realize that was the "trail braking" I'd been hearing about until now. Thanks for the clarification.

Awesome video chap, and explains one of my issues around braking before the corner, then unsettling the bike by coming off the brakes. Will definitely practice this!

You deserve way more subs! Excellent video! Keep it up.

Well put sir.

Thank you for the video. Excellent tips and a skill we can all get better at.

As always .Clear and precise thanks for the tip this will be something I will remember.cheers from Australia

Great lesson..thanks for video.

Always good content. Thank you.

Great video. I have to remind myself to load the front suspension more going into turn. Hope to see more of these off-road tips. Excellent. Kam in USA

So well articulated-well done ✅ . The key here it seems is to be extremely gradual in engaging the brakes.

So this explains why braking in a straight line before the corner then coasting through it is making the bike lose grip. Thankyou. It's taken me a long time to realise this mistake👍

Thanks for this video. I started trail braking on the street a couple of years ago and it made a huge difference in my confidence. I never really considered it on dirt until watching this video the other day. Much to my surprise it felt really good. I'm very excited about practicing it in the future. I'm also shocked at how many people are resistant to trail braking in general. They all seem to argue that it is dangerous and should be reserved for racers on the track. Truth be known we all trail brake with our cars every time we go around a corner. I consider it one of the most important skills to learn and it's not really difficult to learn.

Very helpful! Thanks!

I just spent five days of scootering around the remote parts of the states of Utah and Wyoming. The entire time I focused on improving my techniques and this very video kept echoing in my head. While very few turns were as smooth as in the video - without additional factors of concern such as larger lose/embedded boulders, deep sandy ruts, flowing water, mud, washouts, etc. - the technique of trail braking worked like a charm and I’m gradually improving at it. While fancy foot-work on the rear brake pedal is still developing for me, and later braking is also a skill that needs improving, I feel tremendously more confident in most turns now. Yes, the added traction is indeed a game changer. I so wish I had been taught about it many years ago. My sincerest gratitude.

very helpful ... thank you.

Just started doing this on the road, really didn't now I can do the same off road. Thanks for your tips over the years!

A+. Love mini tip Monday.

Going to give this a go this weekend. Thanks.

Excellent video and explaination! I am coasting into gravel corners and now I know why it feels unsettled. Can't wait until my ankle heals and I start practicing trail braking!

Great tip thanks

Beautifully explained.

Great video well explained. Thx!

Thanks mate, great explanation

Fantastic! I love MT Mondays!

I ride a 640 ktm which feels big and all the knowledge I can get helps immensely.

Awesome 🔥

Thanks, this was exactly what i needed. I just started riding off road and coasting on gravel corners just feels really sketchy. It feels like if i do one wrong movement i wash out. Ill definitely give this a try, makes complete sense from a logic standpoint. Thanks for the clear and to the point video.

Very good tip. I will practice this a lot!

By the way, another thing you do when braking and compressing the fork is shortening the wheelbase, and increasing effective steering-head angle due to the dive in the front. This makes the bike more nimble and in combination with the additional grip you get from the load on the front, is ideal for cornering.

Great vid - thanks! I ride "backwards" (no, not that kind of backwards), I start out on gavel, then ride to pavement.I live from 5 to 8 miles away from nearest pavement, depending on which route I take from my home. I ride a dirt bike (street legal / knobbies) a commuter 300 (Mitas E07 rubber) and a bone stock Vstrom 650 with OEM tires. It's always fun to try to remember which bike/tires I'm on from one day to the next. Any tip to help on gravel is appreciated. Thanks again! -Ray, from the wilderness near Durango, CO

One day i would love to adventure ride out in country like that. Absolutely beautiful!!

Great video! Thank you.

Game changer... Thank you!

So true!

The best. Many thanks. I rode with a group of guys that shunned criticized going into corners. I knew they wrong

I apply the same principle to riding in the rain, although in the rain the front brake is peeled off slightly before the rear. You didn't mention foot peg weighting which I thought would go hand in hand with your excellent video. The reason I mention this is because there are newbies out there that are not aware of weighting the outside foot peg and what it does. Thankyou for sharing 👍

Works in a car too I find, especially when it’s wet or there’s snow on the road. You absolutely cannot be harsh with the application and have to feel the weight balance transfer, it makes riding and driving sooooo much smoother

A great vid , I thought tyre pressures may have been mentioned, but maybe thats another topic. Well done.

Want more grip in the corners, increased accuracy of your lines, less chance of binning it? Trail Braking. Great video guys.

This totally explains why when I feel like I am "riding aggressively" I feel more traction... when I ride harder I tend to brake later and further into the corner!

I agree 100% with trail breaking . But my only experience riding BMW Boxers ,was in the early 80s, riding my friends R75 s and R80s in Germany's Black Forest . I was with the Canadian Army during that period and i must admit that seeing somebody trailbreaking a Boxer, made me gringe. Great Video

great vid! more on board explanation pls!

I’ve been practicing trail braking on the street for some years, with great results. However, I’ve always assumed that the grip levels on gravel roads would be too low to do it there, but will try ASAP. Btw, one thing that wasn’t explicitly mentioned is to also overlap the braking and throttle. That is, while nearly at the apex apply a small amount of throttle BEFORE letting go of the brake (your brake pressure should be minimal at this point) and then smoothly increase the throttle while letting go of the brake. This way you avoid that slight “hiccup” when switching from braking to applying the gas.

I found the Karoo 3's and Pirellis I have on now also made a hell of a difference in my confidence to trail brake on gravel.That road in the video is endless in Colombia and a lot more tropical.The other fun part here is red Saprolite mud-add it in to that road in a random manner just for 30-50 meters where there was a landslide.Gravel aint too bad-Red mud will give you 3rd degree skids-in yer keks mind you!

I agree with all you say, but it is funny you used a BMW telelever bike for the demo since those do not compress much under braking!

Great video as always! Imho, it would be even greater with a camera angle showing the work with the front brake and the throttle, at least for a noob like me! 😁

If you ride dirt bike with friends and they start correcting you with all sorts of this kind of advice, one thing that might stop all of that is to let them ride your bike for awhile. Not all bikes handle the same.

I live in NZ and locally have very twisty and steep unsealed roads which can have deep gravel or smooth clay. They are often steeply cambered from the crown of the road. Trail braking works exactly as you demonstrate but it must be tuned to what you are riding over. My bike is old, heavy and has road biased rubber. I have to transition from the brakes to the throttle before I get much lean on in a lot of places, often before the apex on corners which wind back on themselves. A few pairs of undies had gone in the bin before I got the balance of brakes and throttle right. A video of what to do when the front cries enough and how to use the throttle to balance and steer the bike through a scary corner would go a bit deeper down the rabbit hole and may save some plastic. Excellent vid, a scary number of riders still consider trail braking to be pointless or dangerous.

I've always has this question regarding long corners and trail braking. You reduce the speed before the corner, you decrease pressure as you get into the corner and add lean angle and keep just a tiny bit of break. However, the corner is so long that the tiny bit of breaking slows you too much and even if you loosen the break the motorcycle keeps slowing due to engine breaking. In these cases I add a tiny bit of acceleration to keep the speed but that changes the bike geometry and I loose a lot of the advantages of this technique. Is there a better way to deal with those? Great video

Proper braking is important but it’s secondary to shifting your weight to the inside foot peg (turning left weight the left foot peg, right turn weight the right foot peg). This places your full body weight on the tire contact patch on the inside of the turn.

That sequence at 6:45 where your dad demonstrates is super pedagogical. More of that sort please. Either by rider following or using drone.

This was new for me, really interesting. I'm sure this will be good stuff, gonna try i in the weekend :-)

BACK IT IN BABY!!! love taking the Road King out on the gravel

Awesome tip video, well done guys! And the comment award of the day goes to..."those people are wrong..." 😁

I'm trying to visualize how this feels. Before trail breaking, I would apply both brakes in a straight line before the curve then accelerate out of the curve. So with this technique, do I still slow down before the curve but still leave a little too much speed I know has to be taken up with trail braking in the curve? I'm just trying to prepare my mindset.

Great information thanks.👍🇨🇦

Careful on sandy corners though, keep the momentum up and don't put too much wait on the front

Thanks for this amazing video. Good to know about the trail breaking. Last week I have an accident on my KTM 1290 My front wheel went into a small mountain of loose and deep gravel with a bit of soft sand, and it started moving everywhere like a shimmy/Wobble, I don't remember touching the brakes, I remember keeping the accelerator, but I could not control it and directly to the ground. Can I ask you some questions to help to avoid this in the future, please? 1. what to do in these situations when the front tire start moving/Wobble in gravel 2. were put the body weight in gravel and deep gravel roads? Put the body weight more to the front or in to the read tire like sand? 3. what is the correct setup of the traction control on gravel roads in off-road mode or completely off? 4. my ktm has an adjustable steering damper, I don't know if put it on hard/tighter position is good or rather bad in these situations? Or in gravel/sand roads. Putting it too hard can limit the self-alignment of the front wheel, the same effect as if I were holding it too tight? thanks a lot!!

Awesome

I wish I had a road like that near me!

Very very interesting!!! Just wondering if it works even on a climb...is that technique applicable? Thank you!!

All good info. with one caveat: Front wheel traction. With ABS on in the front, less of an issue. With no ABS on in the front, traction is critical. When in doubt about your front wheel traction, best to go rear brake only.

With the linked brakes on the GS are you using only front brake lever pressure?

Do the GS’s in your video have the Sports Suspension/20mm longer? How do you find this compared to the standard GS suspension?

I am 53, been riding since I was 10, never heard anyone explain this. And, value the time riding with your father. Priceless...

I will have to give this a try. I trail brake with the rear only, and use the throttle to hustle quickly around loose gravel. I’ve always been told to stay away from the front brake.

Steep Gravel hills with turns still bring me anxiety

Nice vid - Generally, the same physics are at work on the road, and I trail brake there. I'm definitely going to practice doing this off-road too (need to practice using the rear, which I usually avoid). I did an advanced riding course on the weekend and when the instructor asked me why I was braking into the corner I explained - pretty much what you've said here. He looked at me like I'd grown another head. We discussed it for a while longer, whilst I kept trying to help him understand the physics of trail braking. In the end, he said it wasn't the system they were teaching and insinuated I should not ever brake in the corner, implying heavily that it was a dangerous and pointless thing to do. I'm a bit surprised an instructor didn't really understand the process. Glad my thoughts on the subject have been confirmed here.

I have always trail braked on a street bike but I didn't know I could do this on an adv bike on the dirt so what your say is use both brakes to trail brake not just the front? Oh and what about on sand roads?

Awesome information! All my riding is trail/ challenging Enduro and cornering is definitely a weak point on the trail for me for the very reasons you described. I'm going to start practicing this. For some odd reason it seems as right hand turns are more problematic for me. Anyone else get that too?

Firstly great, lucid video. So having tucked the front end of my Fizzy 46 years ago I’ve never since braked deep into a corner. I have the cornering speed (and probably skills) of that Fizzy still, albeit on a rather large BMW as shown in the video. 15-20 years ago I was fortunate enough to have Pavey senior run me through the off road skills course and power slides on the old 1150, then 650 and finally the 1200. It was an amazing experience. Sadly I still coast up to corners and drift round with the aimlessness that’s bought me to a sensible age in life. Counter steering again is another skill passed me by, I try but it just feels like you’re trying too hard. I hardly ever ride on the dirt now so maybe I might have to book in for another two day course in Wales - even if it’s to improve my one road skills…

thanks for the advice, I'll have a crack at it. Whats your advice on body position in corners, I tend to weight the outside peg and position myself accordingly on gravel/dirt roads I find it grips better going into or at the apex of a corner

Does this apply only to front brake or also to the rear?

Amazing video and advice all the way. Is the clip filmed in Wales?

I totally agree that trail braking on the asphalt is an essential riding skill that all riders would benefit from learning. I am new to ADV biking off-road but I am not yet convinced that the same techniques can be applied as the physics of off road riding are different. However, I am open to considering any techniques that will keep me safer and in control. I have found that rear brake control, clutch control and body position are critical to cornering safely off road. Off road, we don't lean into corners or rely on front tire grip in combination with trail braking (tire grip is the other critical part of loading up the front suspension in a corner), instead, we weight the inside peg, counter-balance over the rear wheel and actually "steer" into the corner by "burping" the clutch and getting a controlled slide on the rear tire - and you can clearly see this is the technique you are actually using at 3:21 from the sliding movement of your rear wheel and your body position weighting the inside peg of the corner. I do agree that applying light front brake on this type of turn certainly would help you maintain even better control, however your clutch body position and rear wheel control is what is actually getting you through that corner safely IMO.

Great video, one thing though, you talk about using both front and rear brakes progressively, however on BMW r1250's the front brake also applies pressure on the rear brake, on the new 21's this also happens in Enduro Pro mode although to a lesser extent, just asking if you think that matters and that the electronic assist is better being supplemented by direct rider input?

I like the idea of loading the suspension and more than anything shortening the reaction time when a logging truck comes around the corner. I recently looked up reaction time vs age and would advise riders returning to the sport after a long break, you're not as quick as you where in your youth. What used to be safe distance in your youth should be doubled at age 65.

I've been lucky enough to have been brought up riding 80's and 90's bikes before electrickery gizmos appeared. With these bikes you have to pretty much trail brake to get round a corner sharpish. Except, it didn't have a name then, it was just instinct and knowing that with the brakes on, the front dips and it's more stable around a corner. Anyone remember Gpz 900's? Or even Gpz 1100 or CBx's? If you dont dip the front end a bit before entering a corner, you can hang off all you like and counter steer (another new term for an old technique) all you like, you will go wide! Great video and your dad is a hard as rocks on that bike!

Most of my fellow riders only use rear brake when on the dirt. Doing this in a corner means that you remove some of that weight from the front end thus reduce front tyre grip / traction. Once you get the geometry right and can trust the front end, the front brake makes all the difference.

With ABS and particularly cornering abs this works great on dirt roads. With no abs it can be dangerous because you can wash out your front wheel if it loses traction. Those corners you did where quite gentle but if they get tighter your chance of washout increases assuming you carry speed and brake in the corner. You can get away with little front brake dragging but that means your entry speed is low enough for you to handle the corner with gentle trail braking. That’s been my experience anyway.