Those books carry some good information and the techniques are correct for riding at any speed. Light on the bars, lines, and smooth throttle apply through the corner are appropriate at all speeds and a lot of practice can be done on the street without breaking the law.
Acquiring the feel and body position that affords a light bar feel is the biggest single step to learning how to ride well and is imperative to riding fast. It IS NOT imperative to GO FAST to practice these techniques, realize the benefits, and make that search for that feel a part of you. Once you've done it right you'll "get it" and search for that position on every corner. At normal street speeds it will not require moving your butt off the seat but will require moving just your upper body to the inside of the bend. The faster you go, the more body position that is required to get the bars light, eventually requiring moving your butt over. Hanging on the bars or tight on them is the source of many, if not MOST, riding problems.
The advantage to practicing this at street speeds is to acquire the comfortable feel of "light on the bars". As the speed increases and the threshold where you will need to move the butt over is crossed, it is the light bar feel that you're still striving for and will dictate when it's time to move your butt, what the feel is supposed to be, what you're striving for, and if you've done it right.
NEVER support your weight on the bars in a corner. And if you're not weighting the pegs, balls of the feet up on them, you'll never accomplish that. Unloading the bars requires you to anchor to the bike elsewhere. Anywhere else will be better than on the bars by default.
A good exercise to try on the street, to get some sense of what all of this means, is to find a long uniform sweeper, enter it at a totally comfortable speed, get the bike set on a good, smooth line, throttle steady at a comfortable level, trying nothing fancy. Then, all settled down in the bend, loosen your grip on the bars and see if you can detect what would happen if you were to let go of them completely (aside from the throttle going to idle)
. DON'T actually let go of the bars, just feel for the effort you're applying. 8)
Sitting upright, expect to feel that you'll be pushing lightly on the inside bar and if you were to release it, the bike would dive in tight and crash.
That won't do, will it? ;D
Now, lean just your upper body to the inside of the bend. The effort on the inside bar will diminish the more you move your upper body to the inside. Eventually, you'll find a point where you
could let go of the bars and the line would be maintained. THAT'S the point you're looking for that allows totally light bar input. If you don't feel it or aren't a believer just yet, try leaning your upper body to the
outside, like a dirt bike, pushing the bike under you, and you should feel the input on the bar get even
heavier. THAT'S what you're dealing with. It's the
light bar feel that you want.
As your speed goes up, like at the track
, you'll reach a point where just the upper body movement won't be enough weight transfer to accomplish the light bar feel. That's when you'll need to start moving your butt over but it's always the same, going for the light bar feel. That's the starting point of learning to ride well at speed. After getting a decent line and looking deep through the corner, everything else builds off of the light bar feel.
The books will go into much more detail on this but hopefully this simple exercise will demonstrate what you're dealing with, that it matters, how comfortable the bike feels when you get it right, and make a believer out of you. Once you realize the comfort of riding this way, you'll want to know what else is hidden in 'dem pages 'o 'dem books.
Hope that helps.
Edit add: And once you've tried this, report back. Make a post, tell us what you found.
Edit add (2): Don't mistake the bar input, countersteer, to
initiate turn in as not being required. It IS! What I'm describing is once you're in the bend with lean angle set. Turn in at big speed and rapid can require a pretty forceful bar input, more than you might expect. It is once the lean is set that the bar input should be about zero, totally relaxed. Hope that clarifies. Maybe that's why there are whole books on this stuff and not just a few paragraphs.
