Countersteering confusion : (

You can get the front to countersteer lightly no-handed through using gyroscopic forces. If you tweak the bike over to the left with your hips, the front wheel will steer to the right a little, which rides the wheels out from underneath the center of mass of you and the bike and leans the bike to the left.

It's still countersteering. Much more effective to push left on the left bar to get the bike to lean left. Gyroscopic forces are much smaller than when you push on the handlebar.

I keep glancing at this thread when I know I shouldn't, but it keeps drawing me back in! Many claim CS is natural and we're trying/forcing riders to over-think it. Personally, I don't feel active, intentional use of CS is natural at all. Some stumble upon it, like I did, but didn't make it really active to the point I decided when and how much to use. Others never have a clue about it, unless given training.

My opinion on CS is based on using it and finding out what works. Then practice and coordination of visual control with CS and I found the twisties much easier and quicker. Yes, look to the exit is KEY to getting you there, and your body does follow. But not enough for all instances. There are times, like quick/accurate motions (swerve, curve-line adjustment, lean angle adjustment) that are best done with active CS.

My opinion is also based on 20+ years of MSF BRC and ERC teaching, over 3,500 students, from total newbies to so-called "experienced" riders. Of that group, very few had any knowledge of CS. But all that tried it enough to "feel" responded positively to it. So in my opinion CS is not natural, and not something a large numbers of riders know how to actively use. What we talk about online, or claim "works for everyone" has to be taken with a block of salt. Being involved directly in rider training for 20 years has slanted my opinion for sure.

Finally, a decent point!

All you guys who've been riding and racing saying "just do it, you don't have to know what you're doing", I think it's a bogus point. Practice what? Just do what?

Turn your head and you will automatically steer?

I've been riding bikes since I was a kid. Lots of BMX bikes, lots of ten speeds, an XR50, XR100. At around 18 yrs old I helped my Dad get his old CB350 back on the road, then I stole his keys and made a copy of the ignition key. Took the bike up to the DMV and got my M classification.

I rode that thing all over, and finally after a few months Dad caught on, but ended up being OK with it. I was the only kid in highschool riding a motorcycle to school.

Anyhow, as I ventured out to the country and started riding at higher speeds, and sharper corners, I had a few scares. Almost running wide, a few Target Fixations etc. I hadn't really thought about how I turned the bike. I kinda shifted my weight toward the inside of the turn, pushed on the outside peg, twisted my shoulders and around I went. I rode like this for a long time, 2 years at least.

Talking one day with my Dad (He was an Engineer) he brings up counter steering. Of course I had been counter steering the whole time, but I wasn't aware of it. I had my own technique for making a bike go around a turn.

After that, the first time I went around a sharp corner, it was a sinch. Holy shit, I could just flick the bike over, and flick it right back up. snap snap. Just a subtle move of the bars, no need to do yoga on the seat anymore. It was a whole new ball game. Those turns I had almost run wide in before, soon I could take them at twice the speed. It changed everything, and now I had something to practice.

Knowing what to practice is important. I could have spent the last 20 years practicing pushing on the pegs to turn or winking to turn. You can hang off the seat, you can weight the pegs, and these do help the bike go around the turns, but counter steering is THE way we start a turn.

Keith Code knew what he was doing when he created the NO BS BIKE.

He installed fixed handlebars above the normal ones- hard mounted to the bike, not the steering head, and they have no effect on turning the bike.

This was to demonstrate that you can't LEAN a bike into a turn,and you can't do it with body position or turning your head.

Looking into a turn will have no effect on where the motorcycle goes, unless you turn the handlebars as well.

http://www.superbikeschool.com/machinery/no-bs-machine.php

See my last comment. You can guide a bike through turns with just body movement, no-handed, and I've done it through gentle curves for miles. But you're still countersteering...getting the steering head to move to initiate a lean.

That is true, because the reaction of CS is the bike initiating lean into the turn. The action of CS is when the bike is leaned into a balance condition off of vertical (didn't know a better way to say it) into a curve direction, which is/can be initiated by:

• looking through the turn to the exit
• leaning the upper body into the turn, this can be done with hands off the grips )be careful trying this)
• pressing down on one footpeg more than the other (try it)
• pressing a knee hard into the side of the fuel tank (try it)
• pressing more on one handgrip than the other in the direction of the turn
• pulling on one hangrip more than the other opposite the turn direction (the opposite action of pressing)
• some combinations of the above actions

If none of this worked, how do some riders go record distances with no hands on the grips? But active use of CS is very beneficial to know and use. Active CS is best done at the handgrips. Plus how can you argue a known cycle expert like Keith Code? The other forms of CS, looking, body lean, footpeg pressure, knee/body english are more passive forms of CS, but still a form of CS. Reg Pridmore, another renowned cycle training expert puts less emphasis on handgrip induced CS and more on body english CS. Part of that rationale i think is to maintain a lighter grip/feel ay your hands and arms, less tense. Still, I feel and agree with Keith Code, that active use of CS really improves a rider's ability.

Uh oh.

Just wait for people to jump in and explain that he must counter steer to make a turn.

If we can just distinguish between the two meanings: the act of push steering (consciously counter steering by the rider as meant in the quote), and the bike counter steering to make/change a turn because that is how physics works, then we can eliminate 80% of the arguments and misunderstandings in this thread.

I think btao means here that the rider does not push the handlebar in the intended direction of travel, because he leans his body instead.
The BIKE of course counter steers momentarily or it wouldn't make a turn.
Amiright? Amiright?

Yep, it has to.

+1. Wether the rider does it intentionally, or by other actions, the bike DOES Countersteer. Has to.

Out of curiousity, I did this once on a road I am very familiar with; big sweeping turn, very easy to go through with no perceptable CS input needed, about mid-turn I "steered" the handlebar into the turn direction like you would driving a car if you wanted to make the turn tighter. I made it an intentional, direct input.

Holy Crap! I was quickly in the LEFT lane of this two lane road.

So in midturn, after the bike's steering geometry had stabilized to maintain a constant arc through the turn, a steering input caused the bike to do opposite what a car would do. To me that was pretty clear that in the hands of a rider not knowing what makes a bike handle a curve, things can go QUICKLY wrong.

To see counter steering of a two Wheeler in action, ride a bicycle without using your hands and go around a turn.

As you shift your weight to the inside of the turn, you see the front wheel first make a quick flick to the OUTside of the turn, immediately followed by it falling into the turn.

Tadah. Counter steering taken care of all by itself.

Oh, don't try this if you aren't already comfortable riding a bike without using your hands, both in a straight line and around a turn. :)

ROFL!!

This made my morning , thanks.

http://totalcontrol-news.blogspot.com/2010/06/some-thoughts-on-motorcycle-stability.html

^^^

The Total Control Riding Clinic's blog (dated 2010) is okay in its way, and helps clarify some issues ~ despite its forest of words.

But even in the blog, you will note a confusing comment such as "the C of G is immediately between the contact patches of the tyres." [Found about 3/4 of the way down the page]

Probably the writer doesn't mean exactly what he says, but is just taking an excusable shortcut . . . but it is a shortcut which may add more confusion into this ADV thread of confusional froth & quibble.



Warning! Will Robinson! Warning!
The real C of G is not at the ground level.
It should not be necessary to mention that here . . . but apparently there are still some riders who believe that the rider's C of G is at the footpeg level.
And if that is the case, no wonder they are confusing themselves into a mental pretzel about the simple concept of countersteering and the desirability of emphasizing some practice of it for novice riders.
.

Great, now that this countersteering information has "Leaked" out to the general public, you all realize that next week we are going to have to teach all of the beginners and novices about braking, adhesion, and what to do about fixed objects in the road (deer, gravel, oil, pedestrians, etc) that suddenly are closing at a much faster rate.

I LOVE THIS THREAD!!! Can you say High speed Multi-tasking.

Texting and riding is one thing, but I can't imagine trying to read advrider and ride at the same time.

There is an App for that!

You're fine. Countersteering is only taught explicitly so that those who really didn't know how to swerve quickly will know how, and to help reinforce the instinct of those who are already comfortable with the idea.
For me it goes like this... I'm riding... I swerve for some reason... somewhere in the back of my mind I think "Yep - that was countersteering."

It's like when you carry a really heavy toolbox in one hand and stick the opposite arm out to the side. Nobody taught you to do it, but if you know basic principles of statics, you can think to yourself "that arm is a counterballance", and perhaps take better advantage of the principle.

Noticed this is signature!

This i like.

Sent from my Tandy 1000 mobile using DOS

This has probably been covered before, and its pretty embarrassing considering ive been riding since 18, but I dont really push to initiate a turn. As others mention, it is mostly instinctive to me in terms of lean and all that.

However, when I need to use bars to help bring the bike back over the top and into the next turn quickly, I find that I PULL the opposite bar. To clarify:

Suggested method:
Need to turn left quickly; push the left grip.
Need to turn right quickly; push the right grip.

My faulty method:
Need to turn left quickly; pull the right grip.
Need to turn right quickly; pull the left grip.

However again, when I just gingerly make a left at a light, I can feel my body pushing the left bar :huh and the same turning right. It isnt like I dont think about this or that I constantly dont try to hone my control of the bike. It just feels like when I need to shift fast I have so much more control pulling then pushing.