I initially tried the palms open and quickly stopped because I lost all the stability I had worked so hard to gain. Now I can keep a straight enough line to ride on the road, but it's still a lot of work fighting the steering and balance. I guess I need to go back to the parking lot and work on 8's with open palms.
Mark I see you are riding a Vendetta. I started on a Silvio. But this is only my opinion, and I'm sure it varies from person to person. But for me I believe the Vendeatta to be more stable and easier to learn than the Silvio because of a few things, but I won't get into that on this thread. I now now ride a Vendetta 2.0 almost exclusively, and will get on the Silvio 2.1 rarely.
Anyway, the open palms are more of a concept I think, it's trying to get you to relax your grip. If you have a better way of doing this, go for. I can make the Vendetta shimmy or wobble by locking my wrists, elbows, and shoulders, by doing this I'm no longer allowing my legs and arms to sync into a rhythm to counter each other. The rhythm is subconscious and natural. We try and give you guidelines, but they are not set in stone and can be amended to meet your need, however the parking lot figure eights are pretty much a requirement.
First things first, make sure you are comfortable and have good frontal vision and just sit or lay on the bike in a relaxed position, and then take note how that feels. If the need is there, ad padding to the seat and headrest to prop you up a little, you can always remove it latter. And don't worry about looking silly, we already do to most people that haven't discovered a REAL bike yet. Arms kind of dangling to your sides, shoulders melted into the seat, etc. My learning experience was quick, we had no real guidelines to follow at the time, at least not like we do now. The Vendetta is a very stable bike once you let your self relax. A good circular cadence in the beginning helps. Clipped in helps quite a bit in my opinion, I clipped in within the first five minutes and feel it helped to excel my learning curve. But only if you are used to them. Most of us recommend staying off any other bike until you are feeling confident on the Vendetta. For me, this was and should be a requirement, otherwise the learning process becomes hindered and slow. Straight lines get straighter with speed. 5 mph vs 15 mph is a big difference in following the line because balancing the bike is no issue. Let you shoulders relax and fall into the seat. Relax your elbows a little, don't lock them up, and make sure you have a little to moderate bend to start out. You can always push the bars out and away from you latter on. And as Ratz have said, it won't hurt to move the boom towards you a little durn the learning process. After you are done with the figure 8's, find a nice straight bike trail or stretch of road and practice straight lines, use the white or yellow line as a guild. It's helps to find an area where you don't need to worry about, people, cars, and dogs. And practice your straight lines. Keep your speeds up around 10-15 mph or more. You can practice slow straight line later.
