10 Steps To Braking Like A BSB Champ

Nailing your braking won’t just make you a faster rider, but a safer one too. We hooked up with BSB’s Josh Brookes to get some tips…

- Pretty Boy

In the BSB paddock, ex-champ Brookes is known for his demon late braking, and, if you excuse that little known skittling incident from many moons ago at Mallory Park, he’s highly regarded for being one of the smoothest anchormen on the scene, being able to not just slow a bike rapidly, but get it on its ear and into a bend with epic smoothness too. Cosied up for a chinwag with the Aussie superstar after he’d just broken the BSB lap record at Oulton Park, and taken the top spot in the timing sheets, I was gagging to know what made him the machine he is when it comes to performance braking. He kindly went through his technique, one step at a time.

1 Prep for performance

The bike setup is absolutely pivotal. It all starts with the tyre; you need a grippy tyre with the correct pressure so it doesn’t deform easily; although a tyre is designed to flatten for a larger contact patch, it can only take so much before the energy wants to resist like a spring, giving you a walking feeling exacerbated by a heavy set-up and heavy braking. There’s so much detail setup-wise that can make a difference from the rebound on the back to the geometry of the bike (if the thing’s sitting on its nose the rear will be loose) but essentially when the setup is softer, the energy transfers through the suspension more, working it how it should. The trick is to not be too hard!

2 Body language

It’s always best to position yourself before getting into the braking zone if possible; it stabilises the bike and keeps the process smooth as there’s already so much pressure on the bike. Get your ass over early to suit whichever direction is needed for the upcoming corner. Lock yourself in and brace your arms in advance, as this will help you to apply more pressure and keep the process smoother.

3 Think distances