Bad ADV Advice. Don't Be Fooled.
Adventure motorcycle forums are full of confident, well-intentioned, and frequently bad advice about riding off road. Some of this advice is harmless, but some will put you on the ground. Here’s what thirty years of instruction, crash reconstruction, and expert witness work has shown me.
WHY TRAINING MATTERS
Most ADV off-road riding advice passes from rider to rider without anyone asking where it came from or validating it. Unfortunately, this includes guidance given by many schools that are founded by self-declared instructors. Some of this poor advice originates with the dirt bike and motocross culturesz, where the bikes weigh closer to 200lbs pounds rather than 600lbs, and the riders are younger with faster reflexes and who are less likely to be injured from minor spills. During classes I often say “you can ride an adventure bike like a dirt bike, but ADV bikes don’t crash like dirt bikes”.
The myths below are common and not from some fringe of rogue tinfoil-wearing dirt bike riders. They come up in nearly every ADV training class I teach. Correcting riders that believe these myths is not a matter of my preferences; it is a matter of physics.
To explore these myths and mistruths in more depth, the video I made above covers each of them in a way for newer off-road enthusiasts to easily understand. Below is a written version for the rider who wants to understand the reasoning, not just the rule.
WHAT THE FORUMS (AND YOUR FRIENDS) GET WRONG:
Each myth below is real advice circulating in ADV communities. Each one contains enough truth to sound plausible, but contains errors to create danger for any rider taking them at face value.
"You need to air down those tires"
WHAT THE PHYSICS ACTUALLY SHOWS
For general off-pavement riding — gravel roads, dirt roads, sandy roads and moderately loose dirt, follow the tire manufacture’s recommendations.
The airing-down advice comes directly from dirt bike culture, where 8–15 PSI is the norm. Dirt bikes are light, have narrow rims including rimlocks, and most importantly, the tires are designed for lower pressures. Trials bikes even run lower pressures with 3.5-5 PSI being the recommended range.
The tires adventure motorcycles run are designed to use higher pressures ranging from 25-42 PSI (depending on the details). Run 8-15 PSI in an ADV tire on a bike that weighs 550 pounds, and you lose lateral sidewall support in corners, increase the risk of rim damage and can make the front end bounce off obstacles even more than an over-inflated tire.
The practical guideline: Start with the pressures recommended by the manufacturer. If you desire more tire flex, heat generation or impact absorption, you can drop your PSI up to 20%. Below that number and you increase your risk for instability and damage. The manufacturer who engineered that specific combination of tire and chassis already solved this problem. The forum advice that overrides it is usually based on a different bike, a different tire, and a different kind of riding. Most manufacturers recommend starting at about 10-15% lower than the maximum load pressure on the front tire. On heavy ADV bikes, or riders with loads or that weigh more than the 180lbs they normally recommend, start with the maximum load pressure.
There are always exceptions such as tires that are designed to respond to lower pressures, modified motorcycles with narrow rims, technical off-road riding, underweight riders without luggage as well as many more very specific situations.
To recommend that every rider drop their air pressure each time they leave pavement is poor advice. The only point I give to the “air down” crowd is the placebo effect is real and for many, it may make a difference to their perception of the bike’s performance.
"Don't use your front brake off-road"
WHAT THE PHYSICS ACTUALLY SHOWS
Using only the rear brake for stopping off-road can be very dangerous. The front brake is your primary stopping force including downhill stops and any surface that has friction or cleat traction.
This myth persists because of this truth: grabbing the front brake hard on an unpredictable surface could overwhelm the available traction and wash out the front end. The problem here is “grabbing the front brake” rather than using it in a firm, deliberate but modulated manner. The greatest error is in concluding that the solution is to abandon the front brake rather than to learn to use it effectively. If the front brake was truly that dangerous, we would see manufacturers putting large brakes on the rear wheel and small brakes on the front, but that’s not what they do.
Off-road braking demands precision and modulation, not avoidance. Two fingers on the front lever are all you need to help avoid overbraking but still ensure you have all the power needed to stop quickly. On very challenging surfaces such as a muddy downhill descent, you may drop to one finger to help avoid over-braking. If you rely on the rear brake alone going downhill, the bike will have a harder time maintaining straight line control and will stop in significantly more distance.
With rare exception, the front brake handles the majority of your stopping power on any surface. This is physics, not preference. Learning to brake correctly off-road is a core skill. Avoiding it entirely is an expensive workaround that creates its own serious problems.
"You need a steering damper"
WHAT THE PHYSICS ACTUALLY SHOWS
If your bike feels like it needs a steering damper, what is likely needed is a technique correction or it may be a mechanical problem that needs to be addressed. A steering damper does not fix a riding technique error; it masks it. Worse yet the damper may reduce feedback that would help you understand what is actually happening.
The sensation that motivates this advice is almost always the handlebars moving left and right over rough or soft terrain. The motorcycle is doing exactly what it is designed to do. The self-correcting tendency of rake and trail combined with momentum causes the front wheel to recenter, creating a feeling of instability as the bike repeats this self-correction constantly. On pavement, this happens so quickly that most riders never feel it. On gravel and dirt, the movements are larger and more noticeable, and a rider who is gripping the bars tightly will feel the bike resisting that self-correction and by gripping harder, amplifying the movement rather than absorbing it.
The solution is grip, not hardware. Four fingers loose over the handlebars. Better yet, two or three fingers resting on the clutch and brake with only the pinky wrapping the grip. When you hold a loose grip, the bike moves under your hands rather than transmitting every correction attempt back through your arms and into the chassis. A steering damper accomplishes a similar outcome mechanically, but costs you the feedback you need and does nothing to address the underlying tension that created the problem.
Riders who install steering dampers and report that the problem is solved have, in many cases, also adjusted how hard they hold the bars in the process of installing the hardware. The damper gets the credit. The grip change is the actual fix.
"Always look as far out as you possibly can — that's the secret to off-road vision."
WHAT THE PHYSICS ACTUALLY SHOWS
Vision off-road is dynamic, not fixed. Where your eyes need to be depends entirely on your speed, the terrain’s complexity, and what you are trying to accomplish in the next three seconds.
The standard advice — look out as far as you can — is correct at higher speeds on open terrain, where conditions are changing rapidly and you need maximum time to plan. It is incorrect in technical, slow-speed situations, where it causes riders to miss the specific feature they need to place their tire on precisely.
Off-road vision has two distinct functions. The first is planning: scanning distance to identify what is coming, where the mud is, whether there is a rut on the right that will require a line change. The second is targeting: dropping your eyes to a specific clean track, a gap between rocks, a stable surface in a section of loose terrain, and using your gaze to guide the tire there. Both functions are essential. Neither eliminates the other.
The problem the far-gaze advice tries to solve is real: many new riders lock their eyes onto obstacles immediately in front of their wheel — the pothole, the rut, the rock — and ride directly into whatever they were trying to avoid. The fix is not to ignore everything close; it is to learn that looking at something on the road tends to put you there, and to train yourself to look at the line you want rather than the obstacle you fear. Distance vision gives you time to plan. Close vision gives you precision to execute.
"You have to stand up to ride off-road properly."
WHAT THE PHYSICS ACTUALLY SHOWS
Standing is a skill, not a requirement. For moderate off-pavement riding, sitting is entirely acceptable — provided you are sitting forward, not back in the seat the way you would on pavement.
Standing does provide advantages at higher speeds and in technical terrain: it allows the bike to move more freely underneath you, lowers your functional center of gravity relative to the contact points, and lets you absorb terrain changes with your legs rather than transmitting them directly to your core and arms. These are real benefits, and standing is the right position for demanding conditions.
For a first-time off-pavement rider, however, being told they must stand creates a compounding problem. Standing correctly requires its own technique — weight distributed through the feet, slight bend in the knees, neutral pelvis, relaxed grip. Without that foundation, riders simply go upright from the waist and stiffen, which is worse than sitting properly.
The more important correction is posture while seated. Most riders coming from pavement sit comfortably toward the back of the seat, weight settled into the seat pan, a relaxed lean that is appropriate for straight-line highway riding. Off-road, that position means the bike can pitch or deflect and throw you backward, causing an unintended throttle grab — what is sometimes called whiskey throttle. Moving forward on the seat, keeping a bend in the elbows and a forward lean in the torso, means the bike can move underneath you without destabilizing your control. That adjustment costs nothing and does not require any new physical skill.
"Off-road isn't really 'off-road' — it's just off pavement."
Why this framing helps new riders
The psychological weight attached to “off-road” causes riders to over-prepare, over-worry, and then over-react when the surface feels different underneath them. Most first ADV riding is gravel roads — the same roads trucks use every day.
When the road runs out of pavement and turns to gravel, the instinct for most street riders is to treat it like an emergency. The heart rate goes up. The grip tightens. The shoulders rise. Every small movement of the front wheel gets interpreted as imminent disaster. This tension then creates the problems the rider was afraid of.
The reframe that helps: most of what is called “off-road” is simply a different surface. Not a different set of physical laws, not a different bike, not a fundamentally different skill set. The same principles that govern traction, weight distribution, and balance on pavement apply on gravel. They require more precision and more attention, but they are not alien concepts. The rider who relaxes and allows the bike to move naturally across varied terrain will outperform the rider who braces for impact every time the surface changes.
It is worth your first off-pavement experience being intentional rather than accidental. Choose a straightforward gravel road. Ride it at a moderate pace. Pay attention to how the bike communicates through the contact patches rather than trying to prevent all movement. What you will likely find is that the bike is considerably more capable than you assumed, and the margin between stable and unstable is wider than it felt in anticipation.
THE RIGHT TECHNIQUES ARE LEARNABLE.
THE TIME TO LEARN IT IS NOW.
Bret’s training programs cover these myths, and many others, in depth. Courses are available across multiple states for all experience levels.