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Until the 1970s, that actually was the fastest way to stop a bike because even the best systems of the era, twin leading shoe finned drum brakes were marginally useless. (You may notice that a lot of the left over stupidity, urban legend, and bad advice about bikes is left over from that era.) Brake fade came in early and often, meaning that you could grab a handful of brake at speed, the bike would slow down a little... and that was all. Kawasaki’s H-series were notoriously bad for this, especially as they had undersized drums. Laying it down was actually taught as a valid braking technique by various highway patrols way back then.

Modulation was also difficult with those brake systems. For many bikes, especially Harleys and not a couple of Hondas (culminating in that company’s CB450 DOHC model which reviewed as having relatively good drum brakes for the era) often as not, grabbing some front brake meant that if you didn’t get the “slight deceleration,” you instead had your front wheel instantly lock up, partially due to the low traction ‘highway rib’ tires popular then. This, by the way, lead to the myth that many Harley riders hold today - “Don’t use the front brakes or you’ll go over the handlebars!” Some Harley owners and builders even today remove the ‘useless’ front brake (which is where 80+% of your braking is actually done) and rely on the rear brake alone. Then they wonder why they went into the back of the car ahead of them.

Then the disc brake that Honda introduced to the motorcycling world in 1968 with the CB750 became commonplace in their lineup and competitors began including the feature. Finally, you could have a brake that basically didn’t fade, that was easily modulated, and that didn’t have a binary “locked-wheel-or-nothing” tendency. Oh, and that would actually stop you! Double front discs and improved tire technology increased braking performance. Drum fronts were consigned to small economy motorcycles and the rubbish heap of history for the large ones.

Laying down the bike stopped being the most effective stopping technique as the disc brake matriculated through the industry. At this point, using any non-retro machine made in the past 30 years, laying it down is not a valid technique. It hasn’t been for a long time; hammering your brakes on the street will stop you shorter than laying it down ten out of ten times.

I also agree, how do these people ‘practice’ laying it down? Back when, people used to put these large crash hoops on their bikes and you could see the marks where they did practice (or had to do it for real). These days, you don’t see them doing it. Doing it wrong can result in a high-side and ejection.