Counter steering?

[neillfergie]

Hello again all, since i picked up my sv i've been slowly upping the pace and finding my feet with it and a few people ive spoke to have been talking about counter steering, now i know the basic premice of it but im confused as to the black art in general, any useful pointers???:confused:

[kitkat]

you are probably doing it without being aware that you are doing it. when i started IAM they went on about it and I thought it was a wind up. instructor took me to a quiet straight road and told me to sit up straight and put extra pressure on left handlebar, bike drifted right after having done that a few times we did it slowly round corners, tell me to lean shoulder in. it works but i dont concentrate on actually doing it any more, i think its just one of those naturally occuring things

[neillfergie]

Yeah seems to be the way, just read i wikipedia article on it (busy at work again) and it does sound like what i do naturally anyway, still always worry im missing a trick!

[DoubleD]

If you are going round corners faster than 5Mph then I would say you are doing it already as kitkat says.

you can actively counter steer if you want by gentle pushing on the bar to help the bike lean for want of a better word.

Say you are going to be going round a right hander then push forward on the right bar.

try this out on a quite road so you can see/feel the effects first and start off with gentle slight pushes at first as only a little movement is needed.

[Alpinestarhero]

You will already be doing it, but to understand it can save you from tricky situations!

The one and only thing my dad has ever told me is "if you are running wide, push on the inside handlebar". I've run into corners a bit too fast for my abilities a few times, but my dads advice has got me through and out the other side unscathed every time.

Matt

[jimmy-james]

You are doing it, it is impossible to go round a corner fast otherwise without falling off. Useful tip which helped me feel more secure is putting more weight on the outside peg forcing you to lean in more thus faster corners. I must admit i struggle with nerve as i only recently passed and i cant help feeling the bike will fall away under me but i will get there eventually!

[ThEGr33k]

you are probably doing it without being aware that you are doing it.

You do. Its been proven that you cant turn the bike with fixed (i.e. no stearing) handle bars. So you DO do it. Most noticably youll do it when changing from full lean one direction to full in the opposite. :cool:

[garyholc]

I always tend to ride this way, keeping myself upright while taking a bend. Basically its more leaning in the opposite direction to the way the bike is leaning, in effect cancelling out the lean on your body and keeping your centre of gravity on the bike.

[lukemillar]

I always tend to ride this way, keeping myself upright while taking a bend. Basically its more leaning in the opposite direction to the way the bike is leaning, in effect cancelling out the lean on your body and keeping your centre of gravity on the bike.

That is not countersteering! What you are describing is the way people ride dirt/motard type bikes i.e pushing the bike away from them

[Steve_God]

That is not countersteering! What you are describing is the way people ride dirt/motard type bikes i.e pushing the bike away from them
+1.
That is done to keep the centre of gravity central as you have FAR less grip on mud.
Similar principal to cycling in mud.

You can counter steering regardless of where you position your body, from either bolt upright, or hanging off the bike trying to get your knee-down.

[joshmac]

I'm sure you've all seen this before, but it really does prove that you can't go round corners without it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nRUeEkS644

[Mudder]

There is an excellent book by Lee Parks called "total control" that cover countersteering in easy terms. Great book, easy to read, covers a whole lot of ground, especially if you're an intermediate rider.

[sinbad]

I think it's very important for riders to be aware of how it works. It's very simple but knowing what's going on and what you are doing with the bars makes it much easier in my opinion. Alpinestar's tip is a brilliant one, I think I may have read that when I first came here (you've posted it a few times iirc) and it stuck.

If you think your SV turns a bit slow go out at about 40mph and give a proper tug on one of the bars. It's incredible how much more nimble a bike can feel if you're actively doing "it".

There's a LOT of nonsense posted on forums about it, though. Loads of people who are adamant they don't do it, who think it's all about the gyroscopic reaction to twisting the front wheel, who think there's a certain speed where it magically "switches on", who think it would be impossible to turn without it, or who think it cannot work at low speed. So only pay proper attention to decent literature. Wikipedia isn't bad though (at least it wasn't last time I looked).

[northwind]

I always used to think I didn't countersteer, because I rationalised it as pushing down on the inside bar. But when I broke that down, I realised that because the bars are in front of me, when I pushed down I also inadvertantly pushed forwards, so I was countersteering without knowing (and really ineffectually).

Here's a good rationalisation/simplification that sticks with the easy "turning by leaning" way of thinking at it. Think of knocking a very large man over. Do you do it by climbing on his head and throwing your weight around, or do you do it by kicking him in the knees :D Countersteering is kicking your bike's wheel out from under it.

To start the bike leaning to the left, you can leave the wheels where they are and lean the top of the bike to the left- but as you're balancing on top that doesn't work, you have no leverage, and it'll react back after every movement. So, instead of pushing the bike to the left, you drive the front wheel out from under it-turn the bars to the right, the top of the bike stays where it is, but the wheel moves to the right. As it goes, the bike inevitably falls to the left.

The end result's the same, but this time instead of trying to exert a force from on top you're actually using the controls and the wheel to do the work, which means a tiny input is amplified by the bike instead of trying to fight against it.

That's how I was taught, anyway- I found it very useful because the whole concept just sounds ****ed otherwise, but this is easy for me to understand.

Incidentally, anyone who saw Marc Gillespie's stunt show between about 2002 and 2004 has seen the "No BS bike" be disproved- he used to have a bike with locking steering, which he demonstrated turns and various stunts on. But he didn't ride it like a bike, you couldn't do it on the road- he said to me "I don't turn it, I just knock it over, that's easy- the hard part was working out how to stop it :smt119"

[sinbad]

Countersteering is kicking your bike's wheel out from under it.

To start the bike leaning to the left, you can leave the wheels where they are and lean the top of the bike to the left- but as you're balancing on top that doesn't work, you have no leverage, and it'll react back after every movement. So, instead of pushing the bike to the left, you drive the front wheel out from under it-turn the bars to the right, the top of the bike stays where it is, but the wheel moves to the right. As it goes, the bike inevitably falls to the left.


Well put. I think the important thing to remember is that the bars do steer the front wheel, and where the front goes the back follows. It's like when you see that possible-nail in the road about 3 yards in front of you and you just whip the wheels around it whilst leaving the mass of the bike and yourself pretty much where it was. That's the basis of countersteering.

I think your analogy was good, and the theory applies to anything tall with mass at the top and drive at the bottom. Even when we run we do the equivalent of countersteering. You lean forwards before you set off sprinting, or else you'd just fall over backwards. You step outwards with your feet when you turn sharply for the same reason.

I think one of the easiest to follow examples is one of the simplest: balancing a broom on your hand (with the broom head pointing up) and attempting to make a full quick 360 spin in one direction and then the other.

I think if you can visualise that then countersteering is crystal clear. The movement of the bars might be tiny, and you have to remember that geometry and steering mass makes a bike want to straighten up on its own, but it's all that is required to "upset" the balance, and alter the roll angle of the bike enough to allow you to turn.