Oz Superbike School vs Stay Upright

Well the discussion of Australian Superbike School (ASBS) vs Stay Upright
(SU) has come up a few times on the NG, and I've finally done both and am in
a position to make a comparison.

1 - My recommendation is definitely do "SU - Advanced" first. This is an
excellent general motorcycling skills course, which goes far beyond the
learner and P's courses. It will polish your basic skills and teach you the
basics of how to use your body when riding the motorcycle.

2 - The next course to do would be "ASBS - Level 1". ASBS is 100% focused on
riding corners, and breaks each aspect of it down into a series of drills.
The drills seem obvious (throttle control, turning point, turning method,
etc) but the disciplined way it is broken down makes a lot of sense. I ended
the day riding better than I started, put it that way.

As for what is next, I would NOT recommend doing "SU - Cornering and
Braking" (C&B). I did it late last year, and found it quite disappointing,
and nowhere near as good as their Advanced course. Now having done ASBS, I
would question the accuracy of some of the material in this second course.
During ASBS I was advised to discard some of the techniques I learnt at
SU-C&B, and it improved things a lot.

I'm planning on doing ASBS-Level 2 in Feb, although I want to get in a track
day or two before then, to bed down some of what I learnt today. I'd love to
hear comments about the merits of ASBS Levels 2 and above from anyone who's
done them.

Manning

 

In aus.motorcycles on Fri, 16 Jan 2004 23:30:45 +1100

I thought level 2 was an utter waste of money.

In level 1, they put markers on the track to show you where to turn in.
They said that in level 2 you'd learn why they are there, and how to
read a corner to know where such points were.

They didn't. They did talk about the "vanishing point" and they did
talk about how the track was wider than you think, but I believe that
what was useful in the course was maybe an hour's worth or a halfday at
most.

Level 1 is brilliant and everyone should do it. Level2 may be useful
for racers, but I believe is almost useless for road riders. Don't
waste your money, spend it on track days to cement the level 1 skills.

Zebee

 

Did the SU course involve lots of slow riding and throttle control stuff?

I did the HART advanced course last year at Calder and that was pretty
much slow riding around cones and braking and/or swerving exercises.
It's funny how initially slow riding sounds a bit 'unexciting' but it
improved my riding big time.

Also, I reckon any of these courses are pretty much worthless unless
you actually go out and practice specific skills regularly afterwards
otherwise you forget and lose the skills. Or maybe that's just me

I'm booked in for ASBS level 1 in April at Philip Island.

 

There is about 30 mins of slow riding exercises, but the rest of it is
commuting to freeway speed stuff. High speed and emergency braking, body
position, sight lines general handling and throttle control are the main
topics.

Could not agree more.

You will love it - it rocks. Steve Brouggy's "Valentino Rossi post-race
interview" impression is almost worth the price alone. (OK, maybe not)

Cheers Manning

 

I agree with Zebee.

regards,
CrazyCam

 

Level 2 made no sense and seemed pointless to me until level 3... then again I
got more noticeable benefit out of the 2/3 combo (i did them back to back) then
I did out of level 1.

Put it this way, halfway through level 3 I came in from a session and commented
to the guy I was sharing a pit with (also did the 2 back to back), that I was
all of a sudden having trouble with turn 9, short conversation turned into
"you've not been doing the "wide angle view thing" entering the corner have
you......"hmmm yup, you're right, I wasn't" - go back out next session and start
scraping the pegs again.

The vision thing mostly prevents the unconscious survival reaction of I'm
entering the corner too fast - you get the tunnel vision happening - consciously
not doing that helps increase your entry speed. The turn points were covered
explicitly - which I bitched to Brouggy about, I commented there were three
possible ways I could be doing turn2, so he walked me through them - getting me
to explainin what the pluses and minuses of each were - at the end of explaining
it he just said - so you already know which one is the best don't you, "yeah I
suppose I do"

JL

 

I'm not interested in doing any of these courses, unless they'll help me
ride better from day to day. I don't do track days, I don't race, I don't
scrape pegs.
Are there any courses that are likely to give me significant improvement in
my general commuterish riding?

Cheers,
Adrian
CT-110

 

The HART advnaced course was all about bike control, not 'race' skills.

In fact, the first thing we did was a 100km/h* lap around Calder Thunderdome
to, in their words, get it out of our system.

The rest of the day was slow riding around a course with the aim of doing the
whole thing on first gear, thereby developing throttle control skills. It took
me a couple of weeks to realise how much that course had really improved my
riding.

They stressed that if you could control the throttle smoothly in first gear
without clutching it then that skill would translate to high(er) speed
control too.

*a 100km/h lap around Calder isn't fast

 

In aus.motorcycles on Sat, 17 Jan 2004 19:54:08 +1100

Stay Upright advanced has a lot of roadskills info and is pretty
squarely aimed at the roadrider who is cmmuting rather than fanging.

yes, you learn to ride at speed, but that *is* useful, as you learn to
handle the bike well. I go round a lot of corners on my ride to work,
most of 'em are taken at under 70kmh, but the training helps a lot.

They also do a lot of slow work which helps the manourvering.

Zebee