*** FOCUS ON FRIDAY *** Customer feedback & Point and Squirt Its hard to believe but we ran our first Survival Skills courses all the way back in 1997. In that time, weve trained getting on for 2000 riders in post-test riding, with riders at all levels of experience from newly qualified to police class one, all ages from 17 to 70+, riding everything from Harleys to Ducatis*. So heres what a few of them think about the training. Suzuki-Boy contacted us via a motorcycle forum and booked up for a two day Survival; SKILLS course to get a balanced overview of his riding and to see what he could pick up after quite a few years on two wheels. Heres what he had to say: “Met Kevin for my advanced riding course and what a thoroughly good egg he is. Apart from being knowledgeable he has all the hallmarks of an excellent teacher, non-judgmental, patient and perceptive. “The two day course ran for 10 hours over Saturday and Sunday. During that time we covered a fair bit of ground. For me it was a case of being made aware of bad habits picked up from years of riding in London and 17 years of riding in general. “All the classics were there, particularly where London riding is concerned. Riding on the bumper of the car in front, not enough use of the mirror, although life-savers weren’t too bad, not enough indication, over confident filtering (especially on double white lines, oops), hugging the white line etc, etc. “But after talking things through and practising how to avoid and remedy my bad habits things started to progress nicely. By the end of the second day I’d learnt how to counter-balance on slow speed corners, invaluable for riding in London on a lardy bike. “I also really got into and enjoyed the ‘Point and Squirt’ cornering technique that Kevin showed me, very similar to the method used and developed by Keith Code. In fact by the end of the second day while leading, 9 times out of 10 I was picking the same lines as Kevin following. Which considering his experience can’t be a bad thing. “Overtaking still needed some practise though, which I enjoyed getting to grips with blatting up the M20 to make a quick trip home. “All in all a thoroughly informative and fun weekend, I learnt plenty of new stuff and broke a few bad habits from London riding, leaving the course feeling safer, smoother and quicker through corners. Although obviously it doesn’t end there as it’s all about practise.” How did we develop our Point and Squirt technique? Well, it all goes back nearly 30 years. When I was couriering, although I spent a lot of time in London, I used to get a lot of long distance jobs as I could actually read a map and end up in Ashford, Kent and not Ashford Middx (a common courier mistake!), so I developed my own cornering style out on the road. When I started riding in the 70s, the hot tip for cornering in magazine articles back then was all about the maximum radius line, with a wide approach, a mid-corner apex and a wide exit. The idea was (and you still hear people make both statements) it works the tyres less hard and that the wide sweeping line makes for smooth cornering. Well, it does if you maintain the same speed through the corner because the increased radius means you dont lean over so much. And given the teflon tyres, bendy frames and primitive suspension of bikes back in the 70s and early 80s, that wasnt such a bad idea! Of course, what most people did was lean the same amount, which meant they were now carrying more speed through the bend. But once again, given the limitations of the chassis and rubber, not to mention the relatively mild power outputs of machines back then, it wasnt very much extra speed, so as long as they judged the corner about right and actually did hit the apex somewhere near mid-turn, it didnt matter too much. Just so long as you didnt apex mid-corner on a right hander and find a Scania coming the other way. But bikes improved, cornering better and cornering faster, and the consequences of getting to the apex a bit early in the corner meant that sometimes I ran wide with a bit too much speed for comfort. Coincidentally, in 1985, I heard about Freddie Spencer having to use a different style of cornering to tame his NSR500. That was the bike on which he won his second world title that year. Because the thing produced so much power that it overwhelmed the tyres, he used a relatively slow mid-corner speed, turned the bike tighter around a late apex to stand it up sooner, then used the power upright to fire out of the bend. I have a feeling it was John Robinson who explained it with some handy diagrams and nick-named the technique Point and Squirt. I remember thinking that it would solve the problems of running wide on bends and getting too close to the centre line on right handers on the road too - Id just had a VERY near miss with a speeding police car that was taking a rather wide line coming the other way. I distinctly remember the ride I tried it out on the road. I had to make a delivery to somewhere in mid-Wales, and I took the lovely cross country route from Oxford to Tewkesbury and then on into the hilly border country. It took a bit of getting used to, but overall it worked better. I was quicker, made less run wide errors and kept my head on my shoulders. It became my default cornering line. A similar line was shown in a 1990 article in a series called Survival Arts (from Motorcycle Sport) which showed a deeper, tighter turning, exit away from the white line approach - written by a rider with courier experience, incidentally. Its quite obviously different from the diagrams in the Blue Book edition of Roadcraft which show near-symetrical maximum radius lines worked into the width of the road. Ive got some notes which date from 92 or 93 when I actually started to write up the on the road benefits of what would become Point & Squirt. Fast-forward to the 1996 when I was putting the very first version of the syllabus to what become the Survival: SKILLS two day course and I read a copy of Twist of the Wrist II, and theres Point and Squirt explained by Keith Code, of the California Superbike School. I subsequently picked up a copy of TOTW I (1983) and found a convoluted reference in that book about how he watched other riders cornering and realised that a rider who does not use all his ground clearance... will finish his steering as soon as possible, straighten the machine and move away from the turn as vertically as possible - its the earliest reference to Point and Squirt style cornering I can find. Convergent evolution. Wed both found the same technique independently - I was writing about it in my earliest days on the internet in 93 or 94, before Id read TOTW 2. The diagrams date back to the visual aids we produced for very first courses we ran in 1997. Since then, other trainers and journalists have picked up on the advantages of a wide approach, slow in, late turn line over the classic line. The deeper entry holds a wider line and you dont commit to the turn in until you can see your way out - if the exit is invisible you simply follow the radius of the turn. The lower entry speed means you can deal with decreasing radius bends far more easily, and the wide line on a right hander keeps you well clear of the apex till very late in the turn where it is easy to modify your line if something else wants your bit of road. If you want to experience the advantages of Point and Squirt cornering for yourself, its part of the Survival: SKILLS two day course, and both the one day Performance: BENDS and the two day Performance: SPORT courses. Two day courses are £360, one day courses are £185. Book yours now via the website survivalskills.co.uk, or email us direct at survivalskills[at]clara.net.
Posted on: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 08:49:42 +0000
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