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SkillsNDrills

HOW TO PIVOT TURN A DIRT BIKE

This is a great skill to acquire for the hard enduro enthusiast, maneuvering your bike in tricky situations relies on the basics of this skill. Learning the pivot turn is not just about making pivot turns but it greatly increases your clutch craft and your front wheel/fork loading and maneuvering. So very often we have to get the front wheel moved a foot left or right without moving the bike back or forth. A stationery maneuver that requires you to compress your forks and using the clutch to catch that rebound with minimal rpm and rear wheel slip. There are a few key aspects to getting it correct, tips and tricks to assure your success, follow these guidelines to make learning this skill easy!

  • Front fork compression – holding your front brake lever set your weight towards the back of the bike, then shift it forward and down to compress the forks, you can practice this maneuver on its own for now so you gather an understanding of the rate of rebound! In fact do this drill for now with the motor off and get comfortable with it.
  • The clutch – no point in having the clutch pulled all the way in for this one, with the front brake in you can release the clutch to the point that you can feel it pushing into that front wheel, it’s at the friction zone which makes it easier to control the next movement!
  • Now go for the weight shift and time the clutch release when the forks rebound, and to start don’t even rev the bike, let it stall out! This is just so you can get comfortable with the feeling and in fact if you are doing it correctly the front will pop up a bit. You can repeat this process by giving it a touch more rpm, just think start with 1500rpm, then try 2000rpm, then 2500rpm… The point here is to start small and work your way higher, as you get the front lifting higher, grab the clutch to remove power and bring the front back down, so clutch pop to start, then as the wheel pops up, grab that clutch again to bring her down. For now as you are learning this drill there’s no point in floating that front wheel, that will come later as you master the steps and get comfortable with each stage.

A tip when learning this is to find a slight up hill ,this will make it easier to get the front up, and if you’re a bit short, find a rock or something similar that is raised that you can step on! Learn by first turning to the left, and hang your butt slightly off the left hand side of the bike, it will help turn it in the desired direction.

You can also see my video here of me practicing these techniques – Learning the pivot turn

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