Originally Posted by
Sixty Fiver
Was just comparing how much braking power you can get from the rear compared to the front.
Technique is really important and something that one should be practising constantly... sometimes one might want to treat every stop as a panic stop to get a really good feel for how their bike performs. As I am pretty light it is not hard for me to max out my braking and once you can do nose wheelies and not kiss the pavement, you are probably stopping as fast as your bike will allow.
When my daughters were learning how to ride I told them they would be able to go on longer rides once they mastered panic stops which was 90% technique and 10% response to me calling for them to STOP.
Along these lines I practice squeezing both levers very hard and when the back starts to skid/break free I actually let up on the FRONT just enough so it (the back) stops slipping. That puts the back tire back in contact for maximum grip. That is not intuitive as you want to let go of the rear, but that doesn't work well at all.
Try it both ways and you will experience it. We (me) tend to get lazy and only use one brake at a time, but it's not a bad idea to practice.