Customer Reviews

A Twist of the Wrist 2: The Basics of High-Performance Motorcycle Riding

5 star:		(63)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This book will teach you how to ride like Doohan instead of riding like a squid (eg fast and smooth instead of point and shoot).

"A twist of the wrist 2" will teach you how to ride faster, smoother, safer, it could save your life and will teach you more about motorcycle riding technique than you thought you could ever know. This guy (Keith Code) taught Doug Chandler how to go faster. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. This volume teaches you cornering technique that applies to any situation. The main chapter headings are "throttle control", "rider input", "steering", "vision", "braking", "traction" and "racing".

You will learn that smoothness equals speed and safety. Using the techniques taught by Keith you will find even a bike like my Yamaha Virago 1100 is a pretty quick bike through corners as long as you set up a smooth entry into the corner, then power through and blast o! ut the other side. I've blown away squids on GSXR750s and 1100s using this riding style, mainly because I can now carry a higher cornering speed.

Keith teaches you that braking hard into a corner just upsets the suspension and maked the bike pogo all th way through. Get your braking done before the corner and the suspension is set up to provide traction all the way through the corner.

I don't know about everyone else, but when I read a book I learn from it. There is a lot to learn in this book. I am glad a I read it a few times already because I think what learned from it saved my skin the other day when I hit a large hole in a country road going about sixty or seventy in pretty good lean on a right hander. I think my forks bottomed out because they made this ugly noise and the bike started bucking like a horse ( I don't have steering damper ). I did what the book suggested in this instance: I didn't get scared ( until later ), I relaxed, I got out of the saddle, balanced on the pegs, and gassed it. Result: bike stayed up and I didn't eat it. Keith will tell you to trust your bike and let it do its thing, he says riders and their fears are the reason bikes go down and all you have to do is learn to be a good rider and let the bike do what it is designed to do. Excellent advice. This book might save your butt. BUY IT AND READ IT OVER AND OVER.

"Twist II" contains the most useful information to street riders, out of Code's three "twist"-series books. ("Twist of the Wrist" and "Soft Science" are decidedly more racetrack-oriented books and aren't really applicable for street riding, but if you race then those will be useful to you!) Code's discussion of Survival Reactions or "SR's", and his explanation of the results of applying certain inputs (brake, throttle, steering) to your motorcycle, in various situations, are the two most useful topics of this book, and are worth the price alone, whether you race on a track or ride on the street (and make sure you never confuse the two! ;-)

As a beginning rider that completed the MSF riding course, I was searching for the tools that would allow me to ride faster and safer. While the MSF covers the "how to" it doesn't really go into the "why"...This book does an excellent job of telling you why you do things on the bike and how the bike will react.

If you are a street rider wanting to ride faster, better and safer than skip "Twist of the Wrist" and buy this book instead. "Twist II" really should have been the first book in this series as it focuses on fundamentals, while "Twist" emphasizes the skills of road racing, which are obviously different than street riding.

While the information contained in this book will always be relevant, the text and layout look a bit dated, especially in this day and age of "...for Dummies" books. The text is easy to read and comprehend but can be a bit juvenile at times.

I have read and applied the concepts of this book to my everyday riding and feel it has accelerated my learning curve tremendously over what I would have learned simply by doing or listing to the advice of friends.

Bottom line: 95% of riders can benefit from reading this book. Read it, apply it and be a better rider.

Code's book changed all my perpective towards motorcycling. Reading it and applying the information given in it improved my way of riding dramatically. I generally ride big enduros and at first, I was thinking that this book was for only the sportsbike riders or even for the race track fans. I was on a vacation at the Mediterrenian coast when I started to read the book on the beach. After reading a few chapters, I found myself on my bike exploring the new world of curves. My wife was a little bit angry with me but on the way back home, she was also very impressed.
Improving your cornering is only one of the many other perfect riding techniques that you can benefit from Code's book. You will also be surprised when you learn braking, looking at the road, sitting on the bike etc. Every corner of the book is full of information and it is really very difficult to get everything at once. I read it maybe 5 times and everytime again and again, in order to get the feeling what is explained in it. I got up early at weekends and rode to my favorite curves in the city just for practising. Everytime you become well at doing one thing and find out that you couldn't pay enough attention to another point. But as you practice, you make incredible improvement.
There is only one point which I found annoying in the book: The meaningless vocabulary at the end of each section. My language is not english, maybe that's why I couldn't get "the point". It was confusing.
My last word is "ANY motorcyclist SHOULD read this book regardless of what kind of a bike she/he is riding.".

There are some excellent ideas in here. Whether you've just started riding or have been doing it for years it will help you think objectively and scientifically about a motorcycle as a physical system. From this understanding of the dynamics of a motorcycle during cornering, acceleration and braking you will be able to better understand and manage manouvers on the road or track.

The downside of the book is a bizarre fascination with jargon, and annoying definitions of perfectly commonplace words. (I can only wonder if Code picked this up from Scientology, as L. Ron Hubbard is credited in the front matter.)

There is also a considerable emphasis in the examples and photographs on the track rather than the road, but all the lessons carry across well. None of the lessons will require you to have a race bike. All the necessary parts: braking, acceleration and cornering are covered, though you'll need to look to other books for discussion of road surface, traffic, street signs, weather, and so on.

Nevertheless. Ignore the annoying parts; buy it and read it. I'm pretty confident you will be a safer and (optionally) faster rider afterwards.

Although clearly written for the high-performance and/or racing addict, "Twist of the Wrist 2" is highly useful to help road and touring riders get the most out of their machines as well. Although if I get carried away, I start dragging pipes, saddlebags and floor boards on my touring cruiser, Code's instructions on when to roll the throttle on, when to brake, counter-steering and turn entry and exit, etc., etc., work just as well on heavy touring barges as on crotch-rockets - may be even better, because no one expects them to handle. Oh, and stealthy application of the appropriate technique sometimes allows you to catch unawares those sport-bikes that enjoy more power than rider skill. By the way, efficient riding makes life easier on the passenger as well, they can't see the speedo - smooth riding makes for happy passengers!

I question the priorities of all those who rated this book so poorly. What it has to say is far more important than how well it's said. Now if there were other, better written books out there with as much useful content then I would recommend them. In this case, however, there is no competition. I have been riding for over 15 years and have read everything under the sun about it. This book has become my personal Bible on motorcycling and it's the only one I constantly re-read. Code's first couple chapters covering "survival reactions" and how they affect one's riding are some of the most valuable things any rider (street or track) can know. The rest of the book goes very in depth into the dynamics of motorcycle control. This serves to benefit the performance rider more than any other, but it's still useful to even a casual rider. I would still recommend a Motorcycle Safety Course for new riders. This is not meant to teach beginners on the very basics of motorcycling or how to ride in traffic. Yes, the book is poorly written but that's secondary to what it's actually teaching you. You want good writing? Go buy a Tom Clancy novel. You want to become a better, safer motorcycle rider? Get this book and never stop referring to it.

Now, this is an interesting book...

On one hand, it is packed with very useful information for both the street rider (the group of which I am a part of) and, I assume, the track rider. Code brings some interesting things to the table and makes these concepts pretty easy to understand even for the novice rider.

On the other hand, as has been mentioned in plenty of other reader reviews, this book is likely the most poorly written professionally published thing I've ever read. It is *filled* with errors, inconsistencies, howlers, and non sequiturs. Not only that, but words are seemingly randomly bolded and asterisked (sometimes both at the same time) and more random words are thrown into a glossary at the end of the chapter. In a lingo-centric sport like motorcycling, why not define more things like low-side, roll-on, contact patch...things like that? Instead, we get words like:

Sail: A Piece of canvas or cloth spread to the wind to cause a vessel to move

or

Point: A particular spot

or

Dazzling: To Impress deeply. Brilliant

or

Wisdom: A wise saying or teaching

WTH? Very strange. All in all though, a good book that I, as an intermediate rider, was able to glean much useful information from. If you can get passed the irritating manner in which that information is presented, you'll probably find it helpful as well.

This book has some definite merit; however, readers will most certainly feel that they have earned the knowledge it contains by enduring the book's oppressive style and format. Mr. Code's credentials as a trainer of riders sound impressive and he does seem to understand motorcycles, especially their road-racing aspects. His difficulty lies in explaining the principles and techniques he espouses in a clear, concise manner. Never have I encountered a book such as this one where the writer feels compelled to include definitions for words like "goals", "purposes", "exaggerate", etc. Perhaps the riders he normally instructs abandoned education in their quest for undying motorcycle glory. At any rate, if you can get beyond the book's second-class writing and worse illustrations, there are some "gems" of wisdom to be found. Take this book in-hand when you have time to concentrate on what is being taught in spite of how it is stated.