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Tip of the Week
Your Shoes are not Brake Shoes.
This tip, and all of our tips-of-the-week, are general
principles provided for your consideration. They are not
hard and fast rules that should be applied without thinking
in all circumstances. Always use your judgement and take all
current safety factors into account while riding.
What's The Problem?
You will often see riders dragging their feet on the ground while moving
at slow speed.
Sometimes this is to aid their balance as they decelerate,
while sometimes they are actually pressing their feet to the ground to
help stop the bike. Both are bad habits that you should break,
or ensure you don't form.
Dragging your feet can hurt your balance more than it helps;
It should not help your bike stop (your brakes are quite capable of
doing that all by themselves.); It puts you at serious risk of injuring
your feet, ankles, or legs (think what will happen if your boot snags on a
protrusion in the pavement); It wears out your boots for no good reason;
And it is often the symptom of additional control problems.
Reasons
People seem to develop the foot-dragging habit for a variety of reasons.
It may be a habit carried over from dirt-riding experience
(where it is a legitimate technique in quite different circumstances)
but it has no place on the road. Or, it may come from a misunderstanding
of the best way to correct some problem or concern. We hear reasons like these:
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Equipment or Clothing Problems:
I'm dragging my feet because I once caught my pant leg on
the footrest and I don't want it to happen again.
Balance Problems:
My bike gets really wobbly at slow speeds.
Besides, it will fall over when I stop, so of course I need my feet down.
Big Cruiser:
I drag my feet because if my bike ever starts to tip, I will not be
strong enough to stop it, and I can't afford to repair the plastic.
Braking Problems:
I'm stopping with my feet because my brakes don't stop me well
enough. If I press any harder on the rear brake my wheel locks.
And my friend told me that if I touch the front brake I'll be
thrown over the handlebars.
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The Solution
Dragging your feet while you stop is poor practice and dangerous.
All of the problems listed as reasons above have better solutions.
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Equipment or Clothing Problems:
If there is a problem with your clothing or equipment, fix it.
Don't wear pants with frayed bottoms that can catch on pegs, or
wear boots designed to cover the bottoms of your pants.
Wear boots that don't use laces, or tuck your laces in so they
don't dangle. And if there are protrusions or edges near your
pegs that are catching you, get them fixed.
Balance Problems:
Rather than accepting poor balance and dragging your feet to
compensate, practice your balance skills. The two critical
factors are to keep your body parts close to the bike and still,
and to keep your gaze up, toward the horizon.
If your legs and knees are extended away from the bike, your
centre of gravity will be shifting around as your legs move,
making balancing much harder. Keep your knees pressed against
the side of the gas tank.
Most important, keep your eyes up, looking in the general direction
you want to be going. Looking at the controls or at the ground is the
single greatest contributor to poor balance. Practice balanced slow-riding
frequently and you will gain the confidence you need to keep your
feet on the pegs.
Start to put your feet down no earlier than during the last bike length
of travel before you stop. If you are using proper balance technique
there's plenty of time and your foot or feet should be planted firmly
as you touch the ground.
Big Cruiser:
Worrying about your large bike tipping is valid. But putting your feet down
just before you stop tends to evolve into putting them down long before you
stop. (Legs out will make your balance worse, increasing your feeling of
unsteadiness and encouraging earlier dragging.) Also, catching your
foot or ankle may become the most likely cause of a tip.
Braking Problems:
If dragging your feet is contributing to your braking ability, you have a
serious problem with your braking technique and are eventually going to
collide with something.
Practice braking by always using both brakes, with more pressure on
the front than on the rear. Begin with gentle pressure on both brakes,
then increase smoothly. Increase rear brake pressure only slightly,
but continue to squeeze more and more firmly on the front until you
are getting the braking force you need. (There is an upper limit to how
hard you can squeeze the front, or your front wheel will lock, which
will usually cause a crash. Practice braking in a safe place, with
supervision; consider taking one of our
courses for help.)
Keep your feet on the pegs
and put them down only when the bike stops, not before.
As you'll learn in our courses, about 90% of your braking effectiveness comes from your front brake, so if you are using only your rear brake, you are taking about 10 times longer to stop than necessary. If you take our
Gearing Up
or Experienced Rider
courses, you'll have ample coaching and practice
to hone your braking technique.
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The MRC Tips of the Week are a collection of riding tips written by, and drawn from the riding experience of, the MRC instructors, a group with hundreds of years of cumulative riding experience. The tip changes every week. Check back to our main page every week to learn more from experienced riders.
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