Trackdays are good for ALL KINDS of things, but just to practice braking, you should start in a parking lot to get your technique down. You're not going to be doing many panic stops on the track (but you will be doing some insanely hard braking). Still, if you haven't figured out the technique, you won't be able to take advantage of your bike's potential, like Cepahs said. Also, when practicing braking, you'll want to do it only going in a straight line. That way if you do skid, or the back end comes up, you won't crash (probably)
I only use my front brake, so my technique is obviously goign to cater to that. I use NO rear brake.
I look at braking as a 2-step process.
Step 1- Initial application of brakes. During this stage, you're applying relatively light pressure to the brakes to shift the weight of the bike forward and flatten out the contact patch from your front tire. By shifting weight forward, you're putting a lot more weight on the front tire, which effectively squishes the tire down into the pavement, giving you a larger contact patch, which equals more braking power.
Step 2 - hard braking. This is where the REAL braking happens. Once that front contact patch is squished out, you can REALLY get on the binders. Just gradually squeeze the lever harder and harder. You'll be amazed at how much braking power these bikes have. Your back end might even come up a little bit, so be careful.
Why the 2-step process? Well, if you grab a fist-full of brakes without doing that initial step, you'll probably just lock up the front wheel and skid. Because you don't have weight shifted to the front of the bike first, the contact patch is still quite small and the momentum of the bike will just push that front tire.
I hope that all makes sense.
Eli
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Throw that Bob Marley wannabe motherf**ker outta here - Maynard
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Braking
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