WEEKEND WORKOUT - smooth, beautiful riding from Survival Skills PART FOUR

WEEKEND WORKOUT
…smooth, beautiful riding from Survival Skills
PART FOUR

What have you got planned for riding this weekend? Another rideout to the local cafe you’ve visited with your mates a dozen times before? One more hoon down your favourite road to add yet another video to your growing collection?

Or you could just spend a few hours over the next month or two giving your riding a weekend workout instead, which is why over the next few weeks, we’re continuing to publish a FREE step-by-step guide to improving your own weekend riding skills.

Last week we started on the Saturday with what might seem like some very basic stuff, but the effort we put in working on improving our posture and relaxing really is worthwhile because it’s our body that controls our machine, and on the Sunday we moved onto the use of the throttle and gears. Yesterday’s workout was aimed at improving our braking technique, and today in Part Four we’re looking at the final means of control – how the bike steers. Once again, I do recommend that you work through on Parts One to Three before starting on today’s workout and you can find Part One here, Part Two is here and yesterday’s Part Three is here.

Today, we’ll work our way through how we get the bike to turn – cornering. We’ll start with some basic theory and some simple exercises you can work through off road, then we’ll move onto steering on the road.

WEEKEND TWO, DAY TWO – How to make positive steering inputs

When we ride, we get the bike turning by using the technique of countersteering. If we can ride a bike round bends, we’re countersteering, whether we realise it or not. But to ride round bends well or to use steering as an emergency technique (and an alternative to braking), it’s important to fully understand how countersteering works and how the bike responds using countersteering. Lack of confidence with, and not fully understanding how bikes steer are two of the reasons riders freeze when a simple push on the bars would have got them out of trouble in tightening bends. Countersteering is how we get the bike to:

- lean in the first place
- to maintain the lean angle
- to change the lean angle

Countersteering with the bars is nothing particularly complicated – in fact Orville and Wilbur Wright (before they got interested in building aeroplanes they built bicycles) worked out the principles of countersteering some 100 years ago. Now, I’m not going to try to explain WHY countersteering works but simply to show how to use it. The basics are quite simple – we push the bar AWAY from us in the direction we want to go. In other words to turn left, we PUSH LEFT; to turn right, we PUSH RIGHT. At normal road speeds, we really don’t need much pressure to steer the bike – when I demo countersteering I show that I can steer the bike using the pressure of my index finger alone; we certainly don’t need a big ‘heave-ho’ on the bars to get it to turn.

TIP! if you’re trying out the following exercises on the road, ride a bit slower than you normally do, don’t try these exercises when approaching cars or hazard sand remember to watch the mirrors for following drivers. Remember to push VERY gently – the bike will probably respond a lot faster than you expect – to keep your elbows relaxed and to ease off the pressure to let the bike come upright.

Relax the arms. For these exercise, you’ll need plenty of space, preferably find a LARGE and EMPTY carpark – you’ll need to be able to get up to about 25mph/40kph or so and hold that speed for several seconds and then be able to stop again. Failing that, use a wide, straight bit of road you know well that’s going to be free of traffic and make sure you’re in the middle of your lane. Countersteering only works smoothly if our shoulders and elbows are relaxed – if we’re leaning on the bars, we can press as hard as we like on one side and the other won’t move. So, remember Part One and the exercises on posture (you DID try them out, didn’t you?) and ride in a straight line, stiffening your back and making sure your shoulders and elbows are loose.

Push right, go right… push left, go left. First up, a very simple exercise to see what happens when we countersteer. When you’re up to speed and in the right place, gently press the RIGHT handlebar away from you – the bike will turn right. Gently press the LEFT bar away from you and the bike will turn left. Repeat until you can steer the bike predictably. The bike will probably turn a lot faster than you’re expecting

See what happens when you relax the pressure. Virtually all modern bikes are designed to return to the upright position when the bars are released (*see Note 1). There is a very good reason for this – improved straight line stability. This self-straightening ability of the steering means the bike will recover from a wobble or hitting a bump without rider input. Press as usual to get the bike leaning but this time see if you can feel what happens when you stop pushing the bars. You should be able to feel how the bike lifts itself up out of the corner and steers itself straight when you relax the push.

To keep turning, maintain the pressure. So if bikes steer themselves upright into a straight line, it should be obvious that you need to keep some pressure on the bar to keep the bike turning. If you’re got space in the car park, try holding a smooth turn; alternatively on the road feel how the bike responds as you go round a bend. This needs a sensitive touch but having pressed on the bars to start the bike leaning see how much pressure you need to maintain a smooth turn. You should be able to feel that having got the bike leaning to the angle you need to get round the bend, you release some but NOT ALL the pressure. A reduced push on the bar keeps the bike turning smoothly on a curve.

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Based in Kent? The long evenings are here and for the next 12 weeks or so we’re offering training to take advantage of the extra hours of daylight. Rather than just go out for a ride, why not book up a couple of hours of training? If you’ve just passed your test, why not look at our Confidence Builder development course split over two evenings, if you want to improve your twisty riding skills go with our inexpensive two hour ‘Bends Basics’ course that gives you the fundamentals of cornering in a quickfire two hour session, or if you just want an all-round overview of your skills, take our comprehensive riding assessment with detailed review and personalised future development plan. Head over to www.survivalskills.co.ukformore details about these courses and all our other training!

And as a very SPECIAL OFFER to readers of these WEEKEND WORKOUT articles, we’re offering an inexpensive training course based specifically on these exercises – it’s not listed on our website so to find out more about the WEEKEND WORKOUT course
drop us a line at survivalskills@clara.net
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It’s time to try it on the road. When we’re happy practicing off road, then it’s time to try out countersteering on the road. IMPORTANT – don’t try this in extreme left or right positions – keep to the centre of your lane whilst you get used to countersteering! Pick a road you know well that’s reasonably traffic-free and has some nice smooth bends. Ride it at a speed that’s somewhat below your normal speed for that road, then use countersteering to negotiate the bends. Keep the bike centre of the lane whilst you get used to the way the bike responds – it’ll probably turn faster than you’re expecting to start with. Keep your eyes up, don’t look down at the road surface but use peripheral vision to keep the bike online.

How does the throttle affect steering? The other important component of steering is throttle position. The bike steers best if the rider is lightly on the throttle maintaining speed or accelerating very gently. If we shut the throttle, we load the front tyre and tend to make the bike sit up. Braking does the same but more dramatically. Too much throttle means the bike gains speed mid-turn and runs wide. So cornering at constant speed is a good plan! Try this. Again, it’s a good idea to use a road you know well that’s reasonably traffic-free and has some nice smooth bends and to ride it slightly slower than usual, then whilst you use countersteering to steer round the bend try to monitor what you’re doing with the throttle. You want to be able to open the throttle slightly as you steer to maintain or maybe gain a little speed.

How much lean do we need? The precise lean angle for any particular bend is dependant on our speed and the radius of the turn. In other words if we go round the same bend faster than normal, we’ll need to lean further. Or if the bend tightens up on us and we’re already leaning as far as you can, the only way we’ll get round the bend is by slowing down! A quiet roundabout is a good way to test this out, but do make sure it’s quiet. Just go round it, a nice easy speed to start with then see what happens to your lean angle as you speed up a little – but do watch out for cars – they don’t expect bikes to go round and round!

That’s enough for today. The important thing is to practice till you’re entirely comfortable with the light touch on the bars that steers the bike just where you want it. We’ll be back next weekend with more things to try out!

====================================================
Based in Kent? The long evenings are here and for the next 12 weeks or so we’re offering training to take advantage of the extra hours of daylight. Rather than just go out for a ride, why not book up a couple of hours of training? If you’ve just passed your test, why not look at our Confidence Builder development course split over two evenings, if you want to improve your twisty riding skills go with our inexpensive two hour ‘Bends Basics’ course that gives you the fundamentals of cornering in a quickfire two hour session, or if you just want an all-round overview of your skills, take our comprehensive riding assessment with detailed review and personalised future development plan. Head over to www.survivalskills.co.ukformore details about these courses and all our other training!

And as a very SPECIAL OFFER to readers of these WEEKEND WORKOUT articles, we’re offering an inexpensive training course based specifically on these exercises – it’s not listed on our website so to find out more about the WEEKEND WORKOUT course
drop us a line at survivalskills@clara.net
====================================================

Magic Bullet Number 4

For smooth cornering, understanding steering really is important. A motorcycle in motion has to lean to negotiate a curve, and the mechanism by which we achieve that is countersteering. There are regular arguments about achieving lean by body shifting and peg weighting, and whilst you can steer a motorcycle hands off, countersteering gives the rider instant control and also progressive control. The key points are:
- the harder you push, the quicker the bike rolls
- the longer you push, the further it rolls

Red Herring Number 4

Countersteering’s only for racers, for ordinary cornering you only need to lean into the turn, right? Wrong. Leaning our body to one side doesn’t actually make the bike lean the same way! For example if we lean into a right hand turn, the bike actually sits up because it counterbalances the movement of our body to the right by moving to the LEFT. This is “action and reaction” in practice, and exactly how ‘counterweighting’ works, and that’s something we’ll explore when we come on to talk about slow control. When riders claim they lean into a turn to steer, what they’re actually doing is putting weight on the handlebar on the side they lean towards and pushing it gently away from them… in other words, they are countersteering without realising it.

Note 1. Having said that, this straightliine stability can be affected by things like loading, tyres and suspension settings which affect rake and trail – racers often set up bikes to turn faster at the expense of straightline stability and older bikes which didn’t have the performance of modern machines don’t always behave the same way either. How a bike steers is also affected by throttle setting.

Kevin Williams is a qualified advanced instructor as well as a holder of an NVQ in ‘e-learning techniques’ and has been providing solid, practical and above all proven advice to riders on the internet since the mid-1990s. Find out more about Kevin and Survival Skills here:
www.survivalskills.co.uk/more.htm

IMPORTANT: All exercises are undertaken at your own risk. If you have any doubt about your ability to perform these exercises safely, or if you have not previously received training in performing controlled riding exercises, get professional assistance before attempting them.

(c) 2012 by Kevin Williams and Survival Skills Rider Training

Weekend Workout by Kevin Williams / Survival Skills Rider Training is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

You may download it and print it for your own use, or to share, but it must not by altered in any way, nor uploaded to another site without including this copyright notice and giving the original author full credit.

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