How to Ride a Motorcycle on Gravel Roads: Five Gravel Riding Tips for Beginners

Hello friends and welcome back to the dork side. I'm the dork in the road and today we're about to hit this gravel road and talk about some beginner tips for riding gravel roads on your motorcycle. I'm the dork in the road and I want to be your internet riding buddy so please consider subscribing. We are out here on my KLR exploring some of my favorite gravel forest roads and while I ride I thought it might be neat, fun, helpful, interesting to talk about some of the tips and tricks that might answer some of the concerns that new off-road riders have about riding on gravel. If you're a person who has some confidence on gravel likely these tips are not going to benefit you. It's stuff that you've moved past so you don't really think about anymore but I can distinctly remember my first time on gravel being worried about things like what if I hit a big piece of gravel and it puts a hole in my tire. Like I was very nervous about riding on gravel for the first time and I know that some of you are too. So for reference I'm riding a KLR 650 with decent 50-50 tires. They're not knobby tires by any stretch but they're also not street tires so they have a little bit better traction. The first tip I would give you if you're at all nervous about riding on gravel is get tires with some good grip because it makes a big difference on the gravel. But let's just hit this gravel road see some of the scenery and talk a little bit about some of the concerns you might have and some of the tips that I will offer you some of the suggestions I might make for you in order to make you feel a little bit more comfortable on gravel. The first tip I can give you for riding on gravel is it feels wobbly. It's supposed to and it always does. This is more dirt with some gravel on top of it but if it's like freshly graveled or deep gravel a couple layers deep of gravel your front end is going to be squirrely. It's going to wobble and it's terrifying and it's the most intimidating thing at first because you feel like you have to fight it because you're going to lose control and really what the thing is the opposite is actually true. Like many things in motorcycling the answer is counterintuitive and so the answer to that wobbliness to that front end instability when riding on gravel is to hold the bars a little looser and just kind of let it wiggle. Let the bike find its path. Remember that this bike wants to stay upright. If you were to jump off the bike it would continue to stay upright until it lost enough speed to fall over. So it it wants to stay upright that's just physics. All you have to do is let it. So when you get that front end wobble that comes with riding on gravel and it's really again counterintuitive you have to think about this and do it on purpose but relax and let the front end move a little. That's not to say you'd like take your hands off the bars and let Jesus take the wheel. A little movement is okay. It's acceptable. Your job is to keep the bike generally pointed in the direction you're trying to go and let the bike figure out the exact path that it takes through the gravel. Whoa that's new. That's the old tree that was over the road. It broke finally. Huh well that's scary. Sand is the same way. You kind of got to let the front end pick its way but on gravel it's going to be wobbly and you need to just loosen up and relax and let it be wobbly. That's tip number one. Tip number two for riding on gravel is straight line. Now once you get a little bit more comfortable this is less important but at first in particular if you know what your head is doing is telling you that because the surface is loose if you make any sudden moves if you turn your rear wheel is going to slide out from underneath you or your front is going to skid and you don't want to do that so that that foot slows you down and makes you anxious and so a good way to avoid that particular anxiety is straight line. I mean that in several ways. One I mean if you're accelerating do it in a straight line not leaned over not while you're turning but accelerate in a straight line and the same as if you're going to slow down do that in a straight line. It's really easy to lock up your rear tire on gravel particularly if you don't have abs which I don't on this bike and two if you're only braking in a straight line and you do happen to lock up your rear tire it doesn't matter. Here I'll demonstrate. As long as you keep your head and just go in a straight line keep the front wheel pointed the right way. See that was 100% a rear tire skid and it doesn't matter if you lock up the rear in a straight line it's a different story if you do it while you're turning. So at first I would encourage you to only accelerate or to mostly not only mostly accelerate and decelerate in straight line and the other straight line thing is and this is a little bit dangerous depending on the situation so if you're on a road that you know is deserted and you can you come to a corner like this and you can swing wide and then go through the apex of that corner in this in a straight-ish line like this straighten out the corner a little more and then go wide on the other side that's going to require less work from your tires to keep traction but on a two-lane road or a two-way road that's dangerous you always want to ride right so that's mainly for closed roads or roads that you know you're the only one on or when you have a very clear vision but straight lines accelerate in a straight line slow down in a straight line and even turn corners into straight lines where you can that's my tip number two. Tip number three on gravel is just trust your tires man if you're riding a dual sport or adventure bike I used to get super paranoid about putting holes in my tires and it takes a lot to put a hole in a dual sport or an adventure bike tire if you're running off-road tires so don't like these little sticks I'm running over right now not even hesitating these little rocks even honestly any log up to about up to the height of your axle off the ground you can probably ride over I wouldn't go out and do that right away the thing to look out for there is broken branches that might have a point sticking straight out because if you hit that with your tires straight on you're definitely going to get a flat but for the most part your tires will protect your tubes you're not going to get a flat just doing regular riding unless it's a freak thing which just happened and you couldn't have avoided it anyway or you hit something real crazy but like this kind of gravel stuff is not going to mess you up so trust your tires trust the grip that your tires give you and trust that they're they're going to stay you know in one piece for you while you're riding that's tip number three that was a big fear that I had tip number four and this one's counterintuitive for you new riders it was something that I used to think was very difficult and now it just sort of happens naturally but it's stand up says the guy sitting down while riding just easier to talk while I'm sitting because you get more wind up here but the thing about riding gravel is that squirreliness I talked about right it's all through the bike and the front end is squirreling the rear end is squirreling your rear end's going to dance around a little and that's all very normal but when your ass is on the seat then when the rear of the bike dances and gets squirrely you dance and get squirrely and that's scary that can trigger your uh you know your fight or flight reflex it can you know make you tense up get anxious but when you stand up like I'm doing right now if that rear starts to dance I am barely going to feel it through the foot pegs it is an entirely different feeling riding on loose terrain while standing up than it is while sitting down there are a bunch of other benefits to standing up you can see farther down the trail you can see obstacles it's much easier to use your legs to absorb unexpected bumps there's a ton of reasons why you should stand up while riding but while first learning gravel the biggest one is it's just less scary because you don't feel all that wobbly movement underneath you as much as you do when you're sitting down on the bike it also gives you a lot better traction because you're getting your weight more evenly balanced over the bike you're way more over the front tire than you are when you're sitting down and all your weight is on the rear and so you have much better traction which prevents some of those other things you're worried about like the tire sliding out from underneath you and all of that while you're riding in the tough sections your instinct is to sit down because you're like I gotta have my feet closer to the ground in case I gotta put my foot down and that's fine at first I mean that's natural so practice standing up on the easy sections like this learn to stand up on the parts that aren't hard and then eventually you'll gain the confidence that you'll instinctually stand up on the parts that are but learn to stand up learn to lean forward get out over the tank a little bit get your weight over that front tire to increase your traction oh that was a little sketch see right there I would have felt it way more if I hadn't been sitting down got into some of that soupy gooey decomposing stuff but that's step number four stand up and I know you don't want to at first it's hard at first it's tiring at first it's uncomfortable at first but you've got to get used to it because it's going to make your riding so much better and the sooner you get used to standing up the better off you're going to be so stand up on gravel step four or five I've already forgotten so the next tip five or six I don't know we're on let's say five sure why not my fifth tip look at this view I love just looking down in the valley like this is uh is that gravel riding is very different and this applies to all loose surfaces than street riding on the street we lean with the bike right you lean the bike over and you stay straight up and down parallel with the bike right yeah parallel you stay in a straight line with the bike on the street and you're letting the side the traction of the tire you know hold you in the line that you're holding on a loose surface like gravel you want to stay perpendicular to the ground and move the bike underneath you which means instead of leaning with the bike I should have got a third person shot for this you lean it underneath you like this and that's how you make the tighter corners and that honestly feels a lot better on gravel especially if that rear tire starts to slide so one thing to practice as you're going through corners at whatever speed you feel comfortable is instead of turning the front lean the bike underneath you and stay upright lean it from side to side to make that corner and get used to using the side knobs on your tire that's what they're for but it's a completely different type of riding and you have to make that switch when you get off road or else uh you're gonna you're gonna have trouble you're gonna have a bad time so definitely get used to the idea of leaning the bike underneath you here like this this is a corner see I'm leaning it and I'm over here right and I stay upright versus leaning with the bike uh and that that's a skill to master and definitely consciously make that switch when you get off road that's a skill that'll carry you all the way through your career and you'll just get faster and faster and faster at taking these corners I love riding fast gravel and it's something that I used to scare the crap out of me and so hopefully just remembering a few of these tips these five or six tips I don't know how many because I did this off the cuff but will help you get a little bit more comfortable on gravel and help you be more comfortable in the backcountry riding whatever bike it is that you so if you have any questions or additional tips for new remember this is for beginners beginner gravel riders please feel free to leave them in the comments I'd love to see them love to have you share them with the others that might be interested in learning more but for now and as always I just want to say thank you very much for watching I appreciate you and please do not forget to be excellent to each other I think excellent