In the rest of the shots you can see how useful the preparation was, it allowed me to come through the corner carrying more speed, breaking on the downside and late into the corner allowing me to carry a flowing line through the corner to get on the gas sooner.

General Braking Practice

Practicing nose wheelies or ‘stoppies” – These are really great practice, they teach you how to control your weight while using your front break and how hard and fast you can stop. If you find it difficult to do them, try leaving your feet off the pegs and just before grabbing a handful of the front break, move your weight forward and throw your legs forward, this will help with the momentum to get your bike to roll up onto the front wheel.

Another good technique is to use braking points on the track, whether it be a tire, branch on the ground or hay bale. Use your practice session to remember where each point is and throughout the session see how far forward you can advance them.

Here's a very simple technique to improving your braking skills. Using the Figure 8 pattern, find yourself 2 markers approximately 50 yards apart. Get two more markers and put them 25 yards apart, these are going to be your braking points. Start at one end of all the points, accelerate toward the end marker, at the marker before the last begin braking. See how close to the final point you can stop and remember to keep control, trying not to skid. When you feel comfortable with this you can move the braking points 5 - 10 feet closer to the end points. Practice this for 10 minutes each time you visit your local riding spot. A variation to this is to make the distance smaller and smaller. This will give you a great acceleration and braking exercise. You will be able to asses your progress by seeing how close to the end points your braking markers are, and it can be done just about anywhere.