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Fast cornering and counter-steering......

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Road Cycling “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.” -- Ernest Hemingway

Fast cornering and counter-steering......

Old 02-09-04, 09:06 PM
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Fast cornering and counter-steering......

Seems like a knowledgable pack..........

Thinking about trying some crit / 5 racing and would appreciate any pointers regarding technique / skill:
Into a crit right turn with weight on the down outside left pedal and...

?lean me or the bike
?more weight on the inside right or left bar
?inside knee out or in
?drops
?counter-steering is...
?pedal through or not

Thanks
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Old 02-09-04, 10:52 PM
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?counter-steering is...
Counter steering is how a 2 wheeled vehicle initiates a turn. Not very well understood still by a lot of people because it's also counter-intuitive. It's also why kids fall over when trying to ride a bike for the first w/o training wheels; they haven't yet "learned" counter steering via trial and error...

On a bicycle, it's hard to feel counter steering because it requires so little of it to get big results. So most riders steer by "learned instinct"...

Physics time! Your two rotating wheels are gyroscopes. Their gyroscopic mass resists being tilted or pivoted from their rotational plane. Up and down and side to side is fine, but they resist deflection. This is the main reason why a bicycle stays upright. To further demonstrate this, those of you who ride rollers know that it's easier to balance on them in a high gear with a high wheel speed than it is in a low granny gear and low wheel speed. More wheel speed equals more gyroscopic stability; i.e. the faster the gyroscope spins, the more it resists deflection.

However, when you DO deflect or pivot a gyroscope (such as when steering your bike), the gyro responds with a motion in different direction from that of the input. This is called precession.

When you turn the wheel to the left, the wheel instead leans to the right (provided that the wheel is spinning in a "forward" direction). Turn it to the right, and it leans to the left. This is precession in action. It's also the "Counter" in "Counter-steering".

The best part about this bit of theory is that there's an easy way demonstrate it to yourself. Take the front wheel off of your bike, hold it in both hands by the axle, and give it a good forward spin. Now, gently and "intuitively" turn the wheel to the right... What happened? It leaned to the left! (Please try this! It's far more telling than just listening to me!)

Rate and degree of precession is also dependant upon rate and degree of input. In other words, steer hard and fast and it'll lean hard and fast. Get your wheel spinning again. This time, turn it to the right again, but do so quickly and firmly. Wow, it leans over pretty quick, huh?

As long as you have that greasy axle in hands, there's two more things to try...

First, try to steer it to the right AND lean it to the right at the same time. Get's pretty unruly, huh? That's we do as kids learning to ride, right before we pick ourselves up off of the ground...

And second, just to drive the point of precession home, give the wheel a good backwards spin and go through the above motions. Now you'll see that it does just the opposite as before.

I have one more way for you to prove to yourselves that countersteering is what initiates a turn (and, by the way, straightens the bike out of a turn...)

Put your wheel back on the bike and go for ride down the street. You don't need to go very fast. Stop pedaling and glide to help take leaning your body out of the equation. (If you ride a fixie, don't worry, this experiment will still work.)

Now place your domiinant hand on the stem and take the other hand off of the bar. (This will prevent your years of "learned instincts" from taking over and coloring this test.) Turn the stem to the left. The bike tried to go right awfully quick, didn't it? PLEASE be careful doing this! It takes suprising little effort for the bike to steer from under you!

Now that your getting a feel for this, with your hand still only holding the stem, try progressively sharper steering inputs. Do this just to get a feel for counter steering and to imprint it into your mind. Now place your hands back on the handlebars and practice it. You'll feel it even less because you have more leverage on the bars, and with this leverage your counter steering input doesn't need to be as strong. But I'll bet you're now aware of it nonetheless...

"But when I look down at my bars and wheel in the middle of a turn, I can SEE that they're pointed in the same direction of the turn, and not counter steered!"

Yup. Like I said, counter steering is how a two-wheeled vehicle initiates a turn. But yes, they do track through a turn the way you'd expect.

When the wheel leans into the turn (a result of the counter steering input) it partially neutralizes the original input. That's where the turning energy goes. But since the act of leaning equates to another input on the wheel, it precesses again. This time it does so into the direction of the turn.

Take that wheel off your bike again. Get it spinning in a forward direction. This time, don't steer it. Instead, lean it to right. It steers right.

Have fun with this! And learn to trust it without doubt. Many accidents can be avoided by reacting with counter steering (like while in the middle of a peloton).

If you don't respond with counter steering in a panic situation, what usually happens is this: Riders, bikes, debris, etc. in front of you. You see an escape path to the right. Wanting really, really bad to go to the right, you lean hard to right while also trying muscle the bars to the right. Input #1 tries to take you right. Input #2 tries to take you to the left! Result: You go either straight, or lord knows where and with little control...

Give it a try!

-Erik
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Old 02-10-04, 08:55 AM
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There was a rather long disscussion here about the same thing a few months back.
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Old 02-10-04, 12:45 PM
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All that about gyroscopic moment is correct, but it is only one of the things that initiates a turn. When you turn the handle bars to the left, it moves the bottom of the wheel, where it touches the road, to the left. Since this point is way below the centre of gravity of the bike + rider it makes the whole mass rotate to the right.
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Old 02-10-04, 03:45 PM
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Forget all that stuff. This is all you need to know:

LOOK WHERE YOU WANT TO GO. Think about it because when you're racing, that's all you have time to do.
Don't look at other bikes, wheels or accidents. Look at where you want to go.
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Old 02-10-04, 04:17 PM
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. . . and get there I might add.
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Old 02-10-04, 08:50 PM
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A lot of people, including myself, discount the gyroscopic affect as how one maintains stability on a bike or motorcycle. It's more in turning the front wheel, ever so slightly and often imperceptibly, to maintain balance. The slower you go, the more you turn the wheel, depending on how smooth you are in maintaining a neutral balance position. If you think about stability that way, it's very simple to understand counter-steering. I have some experience with counter-steering with 40,000 high speed motorcycle miles; mostly on very twisty roads.

Take your bike and pull the wheel to the left. What happens? You fall to the right much more quickly than if you had attempted to lean to the right. The reason is that the front wheel is going left, pulling the whole bike to the left. It's that translation of the front wheel, not some mysterious force countering the gyroscopic affect, that pulls the bike left and puts you and the bike at a steep lean to the right. Makes sense if the bike jumps left, you're going to fall to the right. Now as you are 'thrown" to the rightward lean, snap the wheel to the right the correct the amount to establish the correct line to make the right hand turn. The faster your going and the tighter the radius of the turn, the harder you have to haul on the handle bar (more force) to turn the wheel, but the less amount you have to actually turn the wheel. The extra effort at speed is due to the gyroscopic force that tries to keep the weel in the original plane (inertia) and partly because you need to accelerate the wheel more (force is mass times acceleration) because you have less time to initiate the turn (because you're going faster).

Unfortunately, few motorcyclists know about counter-steering. It's a life-saver technique on the road. At higher speeds like 80 or when riding double, you really have to pull hard on the bars to run twisties. After a day of that, you feel really tired in the arms and shoulders. I mostly forget to do it on an ATB as the speeds are so much lower. Ned Overend mentions it (his book) as one tool in his kit for running turns.

Al
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Old 02-11-04, 08:28 AM
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https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...=counter+steer

https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...=counter+steer
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Old 02-26-04, 08:38 PM
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I think cornering is almost a religious topic. Everyone has their beliefs. Don't get me wrong. I'm not good enough to pass judgement, and am a lot less interested in theory than execution.

Anyhow, here's an interesting article on cornering. One interesting point, he mentions pulling up on the inside h-bar and pushing down on the outside h-bar to force the front tire hard against the ground. And if you start to loose it in a corner, set the bike up in a straight line by kicking "your hips to your outside in one quick move. This stops the cornering by straightening the bike up and brings you back on top of your bike with your wheels down."

https://www.coachcarl.com/training_ar.../cornering.htm
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Old 02-26-04, 11:49 PM
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I ride a motorcycle and use and understand countersteering when riding it but it's just not the same on the bicycle. I think maybe the speed and weight make it not as noticable. I've been known to scrape a peg every now and then on the motorcycle! (Yamaha Vstar 1100 custom with roadhouse 2in1 pipes with the fin tip!)
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Old 02-27-04, 12:56 AM
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Originally Posted by margoC
I ride a motorcycle and use and understand countersteering when riding it but it's just not the same on the bicycle. I think maybe the speed and weight make it not as noticable. I've been known to scrape a peg every now and then on the motorcycle! (Yamaha Vstar 1100 custom with roadhouse 2in1 pipes with the fin tip!)
I might be wrong (having never really ridden a motorcycle) but I always thought the fact that you could use the throttle to balance the bike through a corner meant that the same rules didn't apply to bicycles.

This is purely IMO...

I've been playing with the "counter-steering" thing this week and I've come to a conclusion. Pushing down on the inside bar simply makes the wheel turn a slightly tighter arc, that forces you to lean slightly more and (you have to) go faster through the corner so you don't fall. The push/lean cycle continues in imperceptible amounts until you find the desired turning radius.
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Old 02-28-04, 03:50 AM
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Originally Posted by F1_Fan
I might be wrong (having never really ridden a motorcycle) but I always thought the fact that you could use the throttle to balance the bike through a corner meant that the same rules didn't apply to bicycles.
The mid-corner dynamics are different. But initiating a turn is the same between the two. Counter-steering is more apparent on a motorcycle because you have have more bike weight and more rotational mass to influence when changing directions. margoC is really going to notice it on his Vstar because it's a big, heavy bike with a long wheelbase and relaxed steering geometry. Sportbike riders will notice it less because they're lighter, shorter, and steeper in the geometry department. (It's like comparing a Rivendell touring bike to a Biachi EV4...)

But two fundamental differences make motorcycles behave differently mid-corner: Weight distribution and unequal tire sizes (between front and rear).

To get a motorcycle to continue to steer from the apex you need to roll-on the throttle. It's less about actually balancing the bike and more about controlling turning rate and regulating traction.

Originally Posted by F1_Fan
I've been playing with the "counter-steering" thing this week and I've come to a conclusion. Pushing down on the inside bar simply makes the wheel turn a slightly tighter arc, that forces you to lean slightly more and (you have to) go faster through the corner so you don't fall. The push/lean cycle continues in imperceptible amounts until you find the desired turning radius.
Pushing down on the inside bar to tighten-up your turning radius is actually a counter-steering input. Once you're in a turn and the bike is at neutral (going in a circle) it takes an additional counter-steering input to make the bike do something different, in this case, to turn tighter. (To return to straight line travel, you push down on the outside bar... Which is still a counter-steering action.)

If you stand over your bike with your feet on the ground and your hands on the bar, push down with your right hand as you would while riding. You'll see that the wheel went to the left.

The mechanics of this is that while your arm is pushing down, it's also extending. Since you're situated behind the bar (and its steering axis), this arm extension pushes the inside bar away from you. Voila, counter-steering.

And just to tie this discussion into the other one about fork rate and bike geometry, a moving bicycle wants to go straight really, really badly! It's the monkee that's squirming around in the seat that throws everything off!

-Erik
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Old 02-28-04, 07:46 AM
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gazedrop- excellent analysis...though i was laughing in my beavis & butthead voices when you mentioned...hahaha....input #2.....huhuuhh

anyway, one more thing i should add if juno is going to do a cat5 or citizen race.... and that is -->see if a buddy can ride alongside you and lean against you as you ride. most crashes happen out there, not because of contact but because the rider tenses up and fights the contact instead of rolling with it.

**i am no expert, but i am told this is a common problem in turns**
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