Cornering: weighting front wheel?
 

For the cornering guru and racers out there, do you weight the front wheel while cornering? I know that technically, the front wheel is weighted witht the rider on it but I feel that I have better control of the bike if push down on the handle bar a little. If I keep my hands very light on the handle bar, it feels there is less traction as if the wheel can easily loose contact with the ground from the road surface irregularity. Or maybe it's all in my head.

My bike is heavily weighted on the front wheel.

Part of it is the stem - a longer stem puts you further forward, putting weight on the front wheel. I feel less secure on stems 11cm and shorter. 12cm seems fine. On a bike with a 9cm stem I thought something was wrong with the frame/fork.

Lowering your bars helps too. I keep mine at their height primarily for sprinting out of the saddle (i.e. bar height relative to the cranks, not necessarily to the saddle), but a lower bar stabilizes the front end. If too low then I find it's not more stable.

Another is sliding forward on the saddle. I slide way forward when diving into a turn.

For me, with a long torso and short legs, I also got a longer frame (about 5-6 cm longer in the top tube based on seat tube angle and top tube length). This allowed me to reach normally to the bars instead of my arms dropping straight down.

All this front weight emphasis means the rear can get skittish. On a normal chainstay (40.5cm) I found my rear wheel skittering out if cornering moderately hard under pressure (pedaling or if coasting, pedaling early). I spec'ed a 39 cm stay on an otherwise same-geometry frame and now the bike corners like it's on rails.

Copied from http://myworldfromabicycle.blogspot....april2010.html there is a video in the link to watch.


Good form involves pushing down on the outer leg, pointing your inside knee toward the corner, and leaning the bike while keeping your body mass more vertical over the bike. Probably the most important thing is lowering your center of gravity and transferring your weight to your outer leg by pushing down on the pedal. Stay light on your handlebars and saddle. Forget "counter-steering" (it's stupid and quite possibly BS). Generally this is instinctive, and is experienced by "the lean". Just lean the bike into the turn and it will follow. Look up ahead (not short-sighted) to where you plan to go. Straighten out the turn by starting as wide as possible then aiming the bike to the edge of the inside corner. Try to do most of the turn early for the following reasons: One, if you don't, you can run out of room and hit the curb and crash, and, two, the physics of a rotating wheel is such that when it is suddenly or quickly leaned, it physically causes the wheel to WANT to go in that direction. To be sure: Spin a wheel (held at the axle) in your hands and lean or tilt it and see what naturally happens. The wheel will try to force itself to turn in the direction it is leaned. It's like friggin' magic! Now listen carefully, because I am only going to type this once........ Don't think too much, just do the exact thing as what the dude (or dudette) is doing in front of you through the corner. Do not think..... "I could crash. I might crash". (Self-fulfilling prophesy!) Think...... "If that person in front of me can do it, I can do it!" That's the racing attitude.


Holy Cow! I just watched that video again and I realized the Hermann Criterium was in Hermann, Missouri. I've been there many, many times, mostly to visit the wineries. At 3 min. into the video, they climb past the Stone Hill Winery. That's a steep little bugger of a hill. Hermann is on the Missouri River and the Katy Trail is on the opposite bank.

Hate to disagree with you here, but it is not stupid, or BS, and has been proven scientifically and in real world tests over and over and over and over. Jut because you don't believe in it does not mean you don't do it every time you turn at any speed over 5mph. If you don't believe me, tie a string to each of your handlebar ends, ride hands-free down the street, pull on the string on one side and watch as the bike (magically and without any trace of stupidity or BS) turns to that side.

Sorry, but I have spent years teaching people to go faster on their roadracing motorcyles, and have seen every single person who didn't "believe in" countersteering, have an epiphany and changed their minds to accept the facts.

My apologies for being pedantic, but this minor rant does resolve into a relevant point for the OP...if "weight" the bars by tightening your grip too much, you can disrupt the ability of the front end to track smoothly through a turn. A death grip on the bars can make the bike run wider than it would otherwise, by your preventing the front wheel from making minor corrections in response to the profile of the pavement in the turn. This tracking wider is obviously much more severe at higher speeds (like motorcycles), but the principle is the same.

bbattle is right on everything else, don't turn in too early, apex the turn as much as possible, and look where you want to go.

On the website, the sentence about counter-steer has a line drawn through it but that didn't survive the cut and paste.

Just to clarify, I'm fine with apex, weighting the outside foot, counter steeing, leaning, light grip, etc. I'm asking about weighting the front wheel.

CPR - Thanks for the response. It seems like there is a optimal front/back wheel weight distribution for cornering. I guess that weight distribution is prob different depending on the road gradient too.

makes sense...thanks for the correction.

I found that I was a bit low on one bike for super steep downhill switchbacks. I had slightly deeper drop bars (i.e. they reached down more - they were my "training" bars). On the 35 min descent off of Palomar I started getting uncomfortable with that set up. This was in 2007 or 2006.

On my bike now it's much better. Similar drop but with the longer reach, now I feel fine all the way down the descent. I'm disappointed when I finish.

On more regular roads (virtually anything for a turn or three, even steep downhills, so basically all riding except descending off of mountains like Palomar) I tend to weight the front heavily and I've never had any issues with comfort. There are pictures of me in crits where even I can't believe I can stay upright. Hm must not be online, prob on my own computer, so I can't link, but I'm way forward on saddle.

your front wheel should be sufficiently weighted if you're in an aggressive riding posture. if you sit more upright, the need to consciously shift weight forward increases.

the weighting the front wheel goes along with the counter steering.

You're pressing down on the inside handlebar to iniate the turn, and you control your line by how much you press down on the inside bar, harder to tighten the arc, less pressure to widen the arc.

I've always been taught, and it seems to work well, corner in the drops, weight on the inside handlebar, and outside pedal.

All very interesting. I prefer shifting my weight back a bit to prevent the front end from "tucking" or "pushing". Perhaps I'm transferring this from mtbing and off-road motorcycling?

on the road if you weight the back then you will have a better chance of sliding out the rear wheel (which works on dirt, but not so well on pavement)

Weight in the rear of a dirtbike is useful in loose conditions, muddy or sandy. Otherwise the correct technique is weight forward while braking-- slide forward on the seat and lean forward slightly-- then slide back and sit upright at the corner exit to get better traction.

Rear wheel traction is not an issue on a road bicycle unless it's raining. Then you have traction problems front and rear.

But counter steering doesn't require pressing on the handle bar, a slight push forward would do the job as well. I am always in the drop when going fast (for me). I'm too weak to waste energy sitting up.

Counter-steering works for all motorcycles and for all bicycles that weight 300+ pounds.

1+

As a self-taught racer getting into the sport relatively late (in my late 20s; not as a junior), my cornering skills were absolute crap until I learned that part about weighting the inside handlebar. Such a little thing, but all important, and at least for me, not at all obvious. Also important is learning to ride a line while cornering. Things are a lot more stable once you stop making gross corrections to your trajectory.

FIFY

Two wheeled vehicles can't turn unless a counter-steer is initiated. You have to get your center of gravity inside the arc of the wheels somehow, and the only way to do that is to steer your bike out from under you slightly, which is the counter-steer.

I think it's time to drop my stem down another spacer.

There's a constant debate here on BF on differing definitions of countersteering, with one person arguing in favor of one concept, the other saying it's impossible to do without the other concept. Problem is that these are two different things. One is the action necessary to initiate a turn ("push right side forward to turn right"). The other is the idea of leaning the bike more or less than the body.

With cycling there usually isn't an issue with traction under power. I watch motocross or GP type motorcycle racing and it's amazing how much the back end of the bike moves under acceleration.

With cycling it's not like that. We're wimpy :) Only rain really affects power traction, that and loose surfaces (sand, dirt, snow, ice, etc).

I was under the impression that this was what was being talked about when talking "counter-steering". Regardless of how you position the bike frame relative to the body, your center of gravity must be to the inside of the wheels if you are going to turn that direction. How you lean the bike affects your steering while in the turn and the tire contact patch (leaning the bike more than your body gives your tires better "bite" at the expense of your ability to make corrections to your trajectory and vice verse), but the basic physics of where your CG has to be relative to your wheels doesn't change.

I've heard this before about pointing the knee but I've never understood how it's supposed to help.... anybody care to elaborate?

I've heard it all ways. Overleaning the bike vs. keeping your body in line. Sticking the knee out or pushing it into the top tube. Aside from weighting the outside pedal and inside bar, I don't think there is one "right" way of taking every corner.

you'll get a fairly big debate about this. Davis, "the Cash Register" Phinney says to do the opposite and put your knee in toward the frame. The thought behind this is that it creates hip angulation that helps carve the turn.

More traditional approach is inside knee into the turn.

Personally I don't think where you put your knee has a big an effect, one way or the other, as the basic concept of counter steering.

But given that Phinney won more crits than any American Bike racer I tend to credit his advice on cornering.

Exactly, the purpose of moving the knee is to be able to swivel your hips to lean the bike. Do whichever works better for you.

is swiveling your hips really how you lean a bike?