Learning from scratch how to ride a motorcycle can be stressful for a beginner and may lead to questions about how long it takes to get comfortable riding a motorcycle. The power and responsiveness of a bike, especially the modern ones, can often take new riders by surprise and can be an intimidating undertaking for a new rider.
You should become comfortable riding a motorcycle within a month if you are riding daily or 600 to 650 miles if riding less frequently.
Learning to ride a motorcycle involves incorporating and coordinating your entire body in the activity. You need to be in control of multiple limbs and coordinate balance, dexterity, and road awareness all at the same time. While this may seem challenging, it is only slightly more complicated than learning to ride a bicycle!
While I was learning to ride a motorcycle many years ago, it took me about six weeks of riding every day to feel comfortable riding my bike. Everybody is different, though, so It may take some people longer and others less time to get entirely comfortable riding a motorcycle.
What Influences How long It Takes To Be Comfortable Riding A Motorcycle?
There are a few determining factors that will influence how long it will take you to get comfortable riding a motorcycle.
The factors that affect the learning curve will take varying amounts of time to master, depending on your individual experience and skill in learning new tasks simultaneously.
Here are the top factors that will influence the time it will take for you to get comfortable riding a motorcycle:
- Your sense of balance.
- Your prior experience with motorcycles.
- The level of your skill.
- Your road awareness.
- The amount of time you dedicate to riding the motorcycle.
Sense Of Balance
Let me ask you a question before we get into this topic. Can you ride a bicycle? The sense of balance you acquire as a fundamental building block when learning to ride a bicycle will be crucial to getting a headstart to getting comfortable riding a motorcycle.
If your sense of balance is right and you have not forgotten how to ride a bicycle, you should quickly pick up the balance component of riding a motorcycle. This means that it is something that you will not have to devote attention too, and you can concentrate your efforts on mastering other aspects of riding a motorcycle.
If you have never ridden a bicycle, you start at a disadvantage, and I would recommend that you learn on a bicycle before you try to learn your balance on an expensive motorcycle.
Extent Of Prior Motorcycle Experience
If you have prior experience riding a different type or size of a motorcycle, even if it was when you were younger, you will have a distinct advantage. You will become comfortable riding a motorcycle relatively quickly.
This type of prior experience can fast-track your time to become comfortable riding a motorcycle and may even halve the time it will take for you to feel confident.
It is the combination of balance, throttle, and clutch control that many beginners find difficult to time correctly. Still, your prior experience with this aspect of bike riding will enable you to become comfortable riding a motorcycle within a week or two, depending on how long ago your previous experience was.
It may take you up to 100 or 150 miles of riding from a mileage point of view to establish your motorcycle confidence.
Level Of Dexterity
To get comfortable riding a motorcycle requires any rider to gain the skill of coordinating both hands, both feet, and balance, all the while keeping their eyes on the road.
Most people familiar with driving a car, especially a manual transmission car, will be familiar with this kind of skill requirement. However, balance is not a requirement here.
The throttle and clutch control timing while on a motorcycle is often the combination of movements that most beginners struggle with, sometimes even when switching from one type of bike to another, which may have a different “feel” to these controls.
Practicing daily with the clutch, throttle, and other bike controls would allow a new rider to master the skill required in about a week. Getting to the point of feeling comfortable with these controls will probably take closer to two weeks until you can handle them without conscious attention.
Any person wishing to ride a motorcycle will not get very far if they can’t master this part of riding a bike, and if you would not be able to practice daily, from a mileage point of view, it should take you no more than 25 to 50 miles.
Road Awareness
Road awareness may not directly have much to do with learning to ride the motorcycle, but it does have a bearing on feeling comfortable riding the motorcycle.
Learning road awareness is crucial to your comfort on the motorcycle and your survival out on the road.
The level of concentration and road awareness required to comfortably and safely ride a motorcycle is about four times the necessary amount to drive a car, especially in traffic.
Unfortunately, this skill can only be mastered by riding a motorcycle in traffic and practicing. Depending on the traffic and road conditions you ride in, this may be one aspect of motorcycle riding that will take you the longest to become comfortable with.
You will be building this skill during your learning curve to becoming comfortable on the motorcycle. You should have developed this skill within a month of riding if practicing regularly, or up to 650 miles of riding if practicing less frequently.
You will constantly be learning and adapting to the traffic and road conditions in which you ride. Being aware of other vehicles using the road can never be an aspect of motorcycle riding that you can afford to let slip, not even for a second!
You will constantly have to be vigilant whilst riding a motorcycle and ride defensively, as many times other road users will not be aware that you are there. Riding defensively means that when out on your motorcycle, you will be watching what other road users are doing, being ready to take evasive action at all times to avoid any potential accidents.
Defensively riding a motorcycle will take a lot of practice, especially in the rain or other adverse weather conditions. Getting to a stage where a motorcycle rider feels comfortable riding a motorcycle in this way can take a few years, depending on how often they ride the bike in these types of conditions.
Amount Of Time Riding A Motorcycle
If you ride your bike daily, you will become comfortable with the motorcycle much faster than if you only ride on the weekends.
This is why the estimated time taken to become comfortable riding a motorcycle is sometimes calculated in miles spent riding on the road instead of time. This is for riders who do not ride daily to be able to estimate their progress.
Riding daily will make you familiar with the bike controls much faster and establish the muscle memory you need to perform these tasks as a reflex action rather than thinking about them.
The quicker you master the motorcycle controls to the point that you can devote most of your attention to road awareness and other biking skills, the faster you will feel comfortable riding your motorcycle.
Riding daily, you can probably get to this level in three weeks. If you only ride periodically, it will take longer than this in time, but you will reach this level within 200 to 300 miles of riding a bike.
Conclusion
Motorcycle riding is huge amounts of fun, but there is no question that the activity is fraught with dangers and pitfalls, some of which could be none of your own makings.
The key aspect when learning to ride a motorcycle is practice, practice, practice!
The faster you become comfortable riding a motorcycle, the safer the rider you will become, and the more you will enjoy your bike and the riding experience.
Even if you are only a weekend rider, persevere with your learning experience. The freedom and fun that motorcycle riding gives are unequaled by any other motor vehicle!
I need to give a disclaimer here and inform you that you will probably be a biker for life once you are comfortable riding your motorcycle!
Happy riding!
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