tjscott2012

Most people who ride a 125 2 stroke know that after awhile, that overwhelming feeling of power just dies. You are no longer scared of it, and you aren’t amazed at what it can do anymore. Well, believe it or not, it’s not your bike that is getting worse, it is you that is getting better. Now a huge mistake that 50% of the people on a 125 do is think they have excelled in riding skill enough to move on. Well, you have not. You still have much, much more learning to do before you can start saving up for that Rm250. All buying a bigger bike will do is make you too scared of your bike again to learn anything, and you will also probably get hurt in the process. To learn to use all of your 125cc’s you need to practice, practice, and then when you’ve done that, practice some more. Of course wear gear so you wont get hurt, and go to the track to practice all you can. Learning to stay in the power band is very important, sometimes it’s the only way you can get those tricky doubles that pop up right around the corner. Which brings me to the most important part of riding a smaller bike, cornering. Cornering is very tricky, some people like to drift them, some people just slide their rear end letting their front swivel on the smaller corners, and some people just like to slow down and turn them. Well, its pretty much whatever works for you, but you really need to master leaving the corner with more momentum than you had coming in. Use your front brake as much as you’d like, it’s the most useful thing to use when cornering, once you get into the turn its really important to pull off of the front brake just enough so you don’t lock it up, then add some rear brake in there because its near impossible to stay on the bike on a turn you used too much front brake on. Another thing you need to learn on corners is just how fast you can take it, now obviously for you Supercross riders it doesn’t matter because all of your corners don’t get rained on, but for the MX guys, a wet corner really sucks! That’s where learning to drift comes in handy, its extremely hard to get a great drift, but you will get it eventually, act like you are in a whip, have the bars counter steered, have the bike leaning the opposite way of the corner you are taking, keep that rear end loose and leave all of your weight on the outside peg. A good drift will look like this . Drifting isn’t always necessary though, on a really dry corner, your 125 can be really hard to break loose on dry, hard packed dirt sometimes, and you can get in a mess quick! Try to only drift your bike on a corner if it is faster to do so. When you come into a corner, always slow down at the last possible second, but alternate brakes, you don’t want your most useful brake locked up, but you really don’t want your rear brake locked up, because then your rear end will get loose. So stay on one brake for about 2 seconds, then go to the next one. Don’t worry about getting your rear end up with too much front brake, its almost 100% unlikely to happen unless you are trying to do so. OK, now with cornering down, we need to move on. Lets talk about power. To maintain power, you need to redo your top end when your compression reaches 120psi and under. And properly jet your bike all the time. Of course clean your air filter too and repack your silencer. Also, don’t worry about speed, I can guarantee you the fastest you will get on the track is 60mph. And that is with someone who can use all of a 125 on it. So if you are going to change your sprockets, take one off of the front, and put 2 or 3 on the back. This will give you a large difference in torque with your 125. Remember, Your 125 most likely has 6 gears. If your not using them all, why are they there? They are just dead weight. And I can guarantee if you are any good you wont be using 6th and usually 5th gear on an MX track with stock gearing. OK, so now that you can corner, and use and maintain your power, you need to learn 1 last thing, jumping. Jumping can be hard to get right on a 125. Clearing a tabletop is intimidating, but doable. The best thing to do is go as fast as the guy in front of you did, hopefully he clears it. If you are alone, well it is always better to land in the middle of a tabletop, than overshoot it. So go a little faster each time until you get over it. You’re on your own with triples. Just turn them into doubles until you get the hang of it. OK so, you pretty much know the basics of using your entire bike. The only way to can master these techniques is to practice a lot! Remember, you haven’t outgrown a bike until you are able to ride it WOT around the track. So go practice! NOW!!!!!


TJ Scott

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