Here's a wacky question... do you guys push or pull (or both) when you countersteer?  I actually push first to initiate a turn but I pull equally with the other arm thru a turn... I feel it gives me much more control while turning, especially at speed.  It also seems I can turn much quicker. 

A guy that works with my wife is a long time rider (cruiser), and we got into a debate about countersteering the other day(can't remember how we got on the subject)... he swears to me he turns the bike mostly by pushing down on the peg to the side he's turning and shifting his weight on the bike.  Of course I thought he was completely nuts, I told him there was no way you can turn a bike without counter steering.  Hell, sometimes when I turn I don't even shift my body at all, depending on the grade of the turn... I also said that you naturally lean as you turn but turning the bike is ALL counter steering over like 10 MPH...

Just one of those stupid things that went thru my mind on a ride today, figured I'd post it and see what the concensus is... LOL

Most experts agree that you should push on the inside grip to initiate a turn i.e. push the right grip to make a right turn, the left grip for a left turn etc.  You shouldn't have to pull at all with your other hand, in fact, the book "Total Control" says that your outside hand should be totally relaxed (some riders will even remove the outside hands on longer sweeping turns) so that your hands are not 'fighting' each other. 

Leaning alone will make only *minor* adjustments to your line of travel.  The biggest purpose for leaning into a turn is to offset the weight of the bike so that it doesn't have to lean to far.  This gives you extra lean angle in reserve so that you can make emergency manuvers if necessary, like in a decreasing radius turn.  Leaning alone, however, does not turn the bike.  More than likely, when he leans into a turn he unconsiously countersteers.  Most people will do it naturally (unconsiously) until an emergency pops up, then they consiously think "Turn left, go left".  That's why you have to practice emergency swerve techniques so that countersteering becomes intuitive.

You can turn a bike without using your hands. Shifting your weight will do the same as push/pulling the bars.

I used to ride at times without my hands, using my body to turn and change lanes. This was mostly straight roads and highways. I had the fast idle lever (FI "choke") adjusted to act as a cruise control. This was on my TLR.

Think about this....to initiate a turn, you start the bike to fall over and the rest of the turn you keep it from falling over (hopefully).

I've found when I'm purposely paying attention to countersteering, I push. But when I'm just riding and taking a turn, I've noticed myself pulling more than pushing.

Quote from: debtman7 on May 24, 2007, 12:59:05 PM
I've found when I'm purposely paying attention to countersteering, I push. But when I'm just riding and taking a turn, I've noticed myself pulling more than pushing.

Me too.  I feel much more forced when I think about it a lot, it's actually a bit harder to turn when I do that.  Today I noticed that I was just pulling a hair going around a corner after initiating the turn with a push, so the next couple of turns I experimented... definitely felt a lot smoother and more natural adding just a slight bit of pull.  I tried to lean to get the bike to turn without steering, and it was VERY hard to change the line of the bike, it just felt unstable to do that.  I do agree with dgyver somewhat, I mean you do have to lean more the sharper the turn obviously... I remember throwing dirtbikes around on a lean though... wonder if the steering geometry/weight/tires make it that much more different?

Interestingly enough, a guy I took my test with is a 400cc MX racer, about 30ish, he just got his street license and he told me that the hardest thing for him to get used to is the countersteering around corners at speed.

I5

I always push when I'm riding with two hands...   If only one, I push and pull with it.

As far as pushing on the pegs... Yes, that guy it a nutter, but as dgyver said, you can turn a bike without your hands...  The guy just doesn't realize that his leaning is causing the bars to countersteer and he's just letting them.


Even if you welded the bars in place, you could get some turn out of it by leaning...  But, I wouldn't suggest it.

We have round a bouts in england , so there really fun to get a lean on

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Quote from: Wrecent_Wryder on May 25, 2007, 01:04:56 AM

Quote from: Jay_wolf on May 24, 2007, 03:02:31 PM
We have round a bouts in england , so there really fun to get a lean on

We increasingly have them in the US too, and Washington DC has been famous for them for centuries. Of course, they go the other way...

Unfortunately, they are still unudual enough that the drivers here have not gotten the "hang" of the fact that traffic in the "roundabout" (circle)  has right-of-way, and half of them just barrel right in there and expect you to avoid them. Makes it somewhat less "fun".

Actually, my introduction to "riding" was pretty much renting scooters in Bermuda. No license, an hour of familiarization and off you go, into heavy traffic, on the "wrong" side of the road, the "wrong" way around traffic circles, in the rain. It was very invigorating. That was when the thought occurred to me that I really ought to try motorcycling, if I lived through it.

I really didnt have a clue that america had them , Learn some it new every day , kool

If you have to think whether to push or pull, you could get into serious trouble!  It should be automatic.
PUSH PUSH PUSH.  My friend's exwife crashed, she was going into a rt turn a little fast and got scared, and tried to brake, laid it down.  She should have trusted her scoot and PUSHED like crazy.  Scoots will turn if you make them.  They would rather go straight though, due to inertia.

I think the main reason for saying push is so the direction matches the direction you want to go. When I first started riding and heard of countersteering, it was described as turn the bars left to go right. Push left, go left and push right, go right is just easier to teach to beginners, and less likely to get them thinking too much about what they're trying to do.

And for the idea of welding the bars in place and still steering by leaning; unless you disconnect the bars from the forks it can't work. If you make the bike turn just by leaning, it is because you induced the countersteering by shifting the center of gravity. If you modify the bike so the front wheel doesn't turn, all that will happen when you lean is that you will fall over.

If you want to get a better understanding of the physics of riding a motorcycle check out Proficient Riding.  It seems to be in most major bookstores.  In the first 20 or 30 pages if I remember right there is almost a whole chapter on why it works. Its not exactly scientific but it seems to help provide a basic understanding. I've been drinking (dogfish head is amazing) and I haven't read the book in about 6 months so this is all a little fuzzy but here it goes (as the book explains it as I remember):

The bike has a natural tendency to stay upright and travel in a straight line.  If you could draw lines with the tires theres actually a little side to side motion that is mostily self correcting and usually hard to notice but crucial for counteracting road and rider imperfections and keeping you up.  When you want turn you are actually "unbalancing" the bike in some sense. You initiate the lean and countersteer at the same time by pushing on the grip.  If you lean the bike one way its going to countersteer naturally to maintain a force opposing the lean to keep the bike upright. One  can not exist without the other and keep the bike upright.  In fact, I'm willing to bet that it would be all but impossible to keep a bike with front and rear wheel fixed (or welded) upright for any distance at any speed.  The bike would not be able to counteract the natural side to side wobble and youd be on the ground faster than a newbie in a gravel driveway (cough me cough cough). 

Quote from: Jay_wolf on May 25, 2007, 02:06:01 AM

Quote from: Wrecent_Wryder on May 25, 2007, 01:04:56 AM

Quote from: Jay_wolf on May 24, 2007, 03:02:31 PM
We have round a bouts in england , so there really fun to get a lean on

We increasingly have them in the US too, and Washington DC has been famous for them for centuries. Of course, they go the other way...

Unfortunately, they are still unudual enough that the drivers here have not gotten the "hang" of the fact that traffic in the "roundabout" (circle)  has right-of-way, and half of them just barrel right in there and expect you to avoid them. Makes it somewhat less "fun".

Actually, my introduction to "riding" was pretty much renting scooters in Bermuda. No license, an hour of familiarization and off you go, into heavy traffic, on the "wrong" side of the road, the "wrong" way around traffic circles, in the rain. It was very invigorating. That was when the thought occurred to me that I really ought to try motorcycling, if I lived through it.

I really didnt have a clue that america had them , Learn some it new every day , kool

we have them in arcata here in california and one in by mckinleyville.  Its a bunch of hippies that control the town and limited the growth by population and allow no more fast food places to come in even though there are way more people now.  Stay away unless you like berkley a whole lot and desire more hippiness!

Quote from: MikeNW on May 25, 2007, 07:04:58 PM
If you have to think whether to push or pull, you could get into serious trouble!  It should be automatic.
PUSH PUSH PUSH.  My friend's exwife crashed, she was going into a rt turn a little fast and got scared, and tried to brake, laid it down.  She should have trusted her scoot and PUSHED like crazy.  Scoots will turn if you make them.  They would rather go straight though, due to inertia.

Yeah, I actually don't have to think about it, I just noticed that I was doing it (pushing and pulling).  I was on some long backroads and just thinking while I was riding and the countersteering conversation I had popped into my head... so I started paying attention to what I was doing and experimenting.  I felt a little bit more unstable when I actually did think about it and consciously and purposely just pushed.  It was kind of strange actually, LOL.  I have Proficient motorcycling... oddly enough though everyone you read always uses push to describe counter steering, but at the same time you never really see anything about pulling, good or bad.  I actually googled it after starting this post and found some descriptions that said it was taught as a racing tip in the 70's, but I haven't been able to find anything that says it's a no-no.

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Quote from: Wrecent_Wryder on May 26, 2007, 07:06:30 AMThey teach that "direct" (tricycle) steering works up until some really arbitrary speed (often quoted as "about" 10 mph), and that countersteering is the only way to turn above that arbitrary speed. But.. "direct" steering and countersteering are, by definition opposite effects for the same input.  Think about that.. opposite effects for the same input. They CANNOT overlap. At all.

Doesn't that, by definition, imply that there has to be some speed where neither works?

No wonder so many beginners crash.. they don't tell you that there's a speed at which the motorcycle cannot be turned. 

Yeah, I stirred it up once on another forum, under another name with that one. It's not plagiarism.

Hmmm, that's a frightening thought... LOL

Haven't tried the Dogfish... I'll have to see if I can find it.  I did have some Old Speckled Hen not to long ago, I think that may be the best beer I've ever drank!

[5

Another thought:
I swear that I have seen photos of MC racers, coming around turns, at high speed (therefore bikes leaning a lot) and the front wheel was either straight ahead or maybe turned slightly in the wrong direction.
I rode bicycles (same principle as MC) since I was 5, all of my life, when I bought my first scoot (at 41), I had no idea what "countersteering" was, I just got on it and rode it.   

Now I think about it.... 

Quote from: Wrecent_Wryder on May 26, 2007, 07:06:30 AM

They teach that "direct" (tricycle) steering works up until some really arbitrary speed (often quoted as "about" 10 mph), and that countersteering is the only way to turn above that arbitrary speed. But.. "direct" steering and countersteering are, by definition opposite effects for the same input.  Think about that.. opposite effects for the same input. They CANNOT overlap. At all.

Doesn't that, by definition, imply that there has to be some speed where neither works?

No, faulty premise.  I don't believe "tricycle" steering ever works on a 2-wheel vehicle with rounded profile tires at any single digit speed.  With a fixed COG and tires upright 90 deg to the surface, any steering input will cause the bi-cycle to fall over in the opposite direction. 

Falling into the same direction that the wheel is turning can only be accomplished with a prior countersteering input or a prior or concurrent change in body mass distribution--actions which mostly go unnoticed at walking speeds. 

Once countersteering begins to cause the bi-cycle to heel over, the steering input has to be reversed and wheel must then turn into the lean to stop the bike from falling.  For a given steering angle there is only one speed that will keep the bike balanced and on a constant course; less speed and the bike will fall into the turn; more speed and COG w/centripedal force will flop the bike over in the other direction--the countersteering effect. 

In the early days, I used to ride with a guy who had absolutely no knowledge of countersteering yet he could still whip me in the faster twisties that gave him that little extra time to get the bike leaned over by feel and instinct.   Takes a lot more courage to ride that way.