Riding Posture Tips: How To Get Comfortable on a Sportbike

Riding a Sportbike, especially the Supersports and Superbikes with absolutely committed forward leaning riding stance, isn’t an easy task. Besides the skill and maturity level required to handle such a machine, good understanding is also needed about the correct riding posture as it can make a huge difference between loving the ride on a Sporbike and loathing about it.

More often, people do not prefer to ride such full faired Sporbikes because they find them uncomfortable due to the demanding riding position rendering them impractical. Getting comfortable on a Sportbike, as a rider, is no less than an art, but one that can be easily learned by knowing few tips.

Comfort is relative though. While you won’t get comfortable on a Superbike in a typical sense, you can definitely adapt to it by following certain basic pointers:

1. Get Comfortable on the Seat: When you sit on the motorcycle, take time to get comfortable on the seat. There’s no need to be in hurry to ride out. Grab the handlebars for support and accommodate yourself on the seat, find the sweet spot.

If possible, put the motorcycle on the center stand/paddock stand, sit on the saddle and get familiar with the riding stance. Put you hands on the handlebar, feet on the foot-pegs and get the feel of the riding position.

2. Do Not Lock the Elbows: Do not keep your arms absolutely straight (or elbows locked) especially when riding a motorcycle. Keep them slightly bent because your arms also act as natural shock absorbers for your upper body.

Also, locking your elbows will make the arms (especially) more vulnerable to injury since they won’t have any bandwidth left to absorb the shocks coming up from the road surface. It’s not a good idea to depend entirely on the motorcycle’s shock absorbers.

3. Keep the Back Straight: Personally speaking on the basis of experience, almost all of the discomfort depends on how the rider keeps his back while riding a dedicated Sportbike. Keep the back straight (do not confuse this with sitting upright) and you are on your way to enjoy the ride. Arms slightly bent and the back straight.

However, some luck can also play a part in this in the sense that if you’re too short then you are going to find it pretty challenging to adapt to a Sportbike riding stance.

4. Rest the Front Part of the Feet on the Foot-pegs: Riding a Sportbike is about enthusiasm. Especially on a race track, you are continuously shifting your body on either sides as you take corner after corner. While doing so, you also take the corresponding knee out while resting the feet on the foot-pegs. Keeping the front part (area around fingers) of the foot on the foot-pegs allows you to be more in sync with the overall body movement.

5. Grab the Fuel Tank With the Thighs: Most people complain of wrist pain, which is quite obvious, since you lean forward putting the weight of your upper body on your arms and wrists.

Grabbing the fuel tank firmly with your thighs can help in taking off some weight off your arms. Try it, it’s quite effective. Also, grabbing the fuel tank with your thighs during braking helps in maintaining the stability of the motorcycle.

6. Wear Appropriate Clothing: Not related to the riding posture but important nonetheless. A very underrated aspect of being comfortable on a motorcycle – wear appropriate clothing while riding a motorcycle. Do not wear loose clothes because they make the rider vulnerable to wind buffeting. Wearing body fitting riding gear or clothes helps a rider to keep himself stable at high speeds. This also helps in keeping the motorcycle stable as well.

Try out these tips. They’ll only take few rides to get used to and we promise that you’ll discover the new joy of riding a proper Sportbike.

Ride safe.