What I love about forums is their thought provoking aspect. Rider’s comments, and personal experiences make me think. Behind every answer is a question and behind every question there is an answer. This trail-braking issue brings up a load of both. 

Ever since I first investigated trail-braking and graphed it and set up some guidelines for it in the first “A Twist of the Wrist” book in 1981 I’ve mainly focused on its more basic aspect, that of a rider’s Sense of Speed. 

Sense of Speed is a rider’s ability to accurately judge differences and similarities in speed from one pass through a corner to the next time they encounter it. No matter how or when a rider is braking his Sense of Speed directs the whole activity. This is the irreducible part of the rider/bike/road combination which must be in good working order.

Following right on the heels of this sense is the rider’s Sense of Traction and I’ll talk about that a little later in this.

One of the other main issues that revolve around braking is the suspension action. The compression and extension that can occur with either 1) straight up braking or 2) trailing brakes into the corner.

Cornering enthusiasts both feel it and understand that making the transition from on to off the brake(s) and entering the turn should be as seamless as possible in order not to upset the suspension (read traction).

On a telemetry graph it would look like a continuous line as the rider released the brake and the cornering forces took over--that goes for either method of braking.

Now if you look at this aspect closely you will see that there is actually another sense which we develop to comply with this demand to make that transition a smooth one. 

In order to make this work out we first of all must be aware of the bike’s dive attitude (how far down is the nose of the bike). In order now to make it successful the rider must also be aware of the compression the cornering forces will provide for the speed he has entered the corner. How much will it compress from that force?

A straight line braker’s ability to reckon where the suspension compression will be once he is into the turn plus his timing of letting off the brakes and turning to maintain the compression at that level have to be very good. 

The trail-braking rider feels his way into the turn more on his sense of traction and has both forces (braking compression on the suspension as well as the cornering forces on it) acting on the bike at the same time so his job is simplified to a great degree. It more or less eliminates the precision timing and sense of the bike’s pitched-forward attitude that it takes to do it the other way. He approaches the lean, speed, traction more gradually and gets continuous feedback from them.

With the straight line method the rider has to also determine by his feel and prediction just how quick his flick into the corner needs to be to maintain the suspension compression smoothly. A lot of multi-tasking is going on here. 

When you realize that this all has to be figured out just BEFORE he does it you see why the two methods are so different. 

Here is another way of saying it. The trail braking method privides the rider with feedback as he transitions and the straight line method doesn’t allow you feedback until after you already committed and completed it and there ain’t no fixing it, at least not on that lap.

There is a high degree of confidence in yourself and your prediction of the forces and your other senses of speed and traction and your ability to quick turn the bike that are essential before you’d be willing to make this level of commitment. 

Beside all that, there is another huge benefit to learning the straight up/quick flick style. It provides a rider with valuable feedback about tire traction and cornering loads. 

When you quick flick the bike with poor timing you get a sudden load on the suspension and the tires. This is the thing that riders get into their heads will make them crash–usually they think they are going to loose the front and go down. They get spooked from that sudden load. 

The feeling of the sudden load came from releasing the brakes too soon before they flicked it. The front end comes up from the release and then dives again from the flick in. If you break that down you’ll see that the load, while it may have a little higher peak force, wasn’t anymore than they would have experienced if they had made that transition into the turn with perfect control timing. The sudden load came from their error not because it is part of the style of riding. 

This is another one of those things that can become confusing to any rider. They have simply misidentified the real cause of the sudden loading. It could and often is enough to make riders think that they are going to crash by quick flicking the bike.

I think that the facts and the physics of the matter are this: If you had the front tire right at 110% traction and you flicked it in and maintained that load that you would be OK and have a killer turn entry speed. You would not have violated the traction limit of the tire (they like to slide a bit for max traction in any case) and would have learned an enormous amount about traction limits. It’s that commitment thing that makes this
difficult.

I have heard schools of thought that say that trailing the brakes is an “advanced” skill.
I have heard schools of thought that say you will get passed if you don’t learn to trail.
That may very well be true, I don’t know everything. What I do know is this: Once a rider can successfully and confidently do the straight line method; once he can do it with flawless timing and clean seamless transitions and he trusts himself and is willing to make these commitments, learning the trail-in style is a piece of cake. Doing it in the other order is not so easy.