Motorcycle Forums

The advice

the guys have given you is good, the reason for front brake first (by a very small amount of time) is to allow the weight of the bike to be tranfered to the front, thus loading the tyre so that it is giving maximum grip, over brake and you go past this point and lose grip.

Instruction Advice

Your instructor was completely WRONG to tell you to only use the front in an emergency as you've already gathered from all the previous sound advice, as an instructor myself (over 20yrs experience) I would recommend using a different school as this is a Fundamental flaw in their teaching & potentially dangerous (I do not type these words lightly either!).

The advice on "covering" the front brake lever was actually correct, you should only have your fingers on the lever if you're Using the brake, covering it all the time reduces the control of the handlebars, introduces the potential to use "comfort" braking (touching the lever enough to light the brake light whilst not actually having any true braking action) and in the event of you running into a pothole or something causing a hard twitch of the handlebars could quite possibly make you accidentally actuate the brake & cause greater problems!

Braking itself; always "Caress" your levers in a Smooth manner, put front on a fraction of a second before the back then SQUEEZE up to the point where you feel you can't put anymore effort in (the "book" quotes 75% front 25% rear, yeah, right, that really works on my FireBlade!!), gradually you'll find you can increase this pressure as your confidence builds with more on the front & less on the rear, most important (as has already been said) is Take Your Time, make sure you practice somwhere quiet so you don't disturb yourself or others!!

Lastly get your test done this year mate, it's gonna change for the worse next year

Best of luck with it all 

Braking

Either I misunderstood what I was told on my CBT or was told wrong but when I first started riding my bike I only used the front brake thinking that was what I should be doing.

Only after taking a lesson from a different instructor was it drummed into me to apply the front brake first, then the rear, bringing the speed down releasing the front (below approx. 15/20mph) so as not to get the 'bounce back' from the front brake which happens at low speeds. This applies to a normal slow down/stop.

The improvements in all of my riding was unbelievable purely because I was using the correct braking procedure.

Speeds under 15/20 mph then it's rear brake only. The improvement in stability was amazing.

Emergency stop is as others have said.

Always squeeze & never snatch the lever.

I was also told off for 'covering' clutch and/or brake levers.

The advice given on this forum is first rate, I've learned a lot from reading the posts. I must admit though, even after 40+ years of driving I struggled to adapt to a bike & the second instructor taught me so much in the 2hrs lesson.

My riding improved so much just by following three bit of advice he gave me.

1: Keep my head up.

2: How to brake correctly.

3: How to position my feet on the pegs.

..

everyone on here is right.. but be careful of too much front brake in the wet..

To show us

on my CBT, the instructor did an emergency stop with just the rear and then with both, with just the rear it locked and just skidded for about 3 times the distance it took to stop with both brakes.

Emergency stop with just the back is asking for it