Countersteering

Hi there.
I've read the Keith Code books, watched the videos, know the theory...
BUT I can not get my head around pushing on that bar to get my cornering speeds up and my lean angle over further. I KNOW I tense up and can not get my hand to push harder on that bar (or pull the other closer). It scares the hell out of me    but I want to do it. I have done a few track days and conering technique schools but it still won't happen for me.
Any suggestions?    

I csnt speak for any other riders, but for me , its a work in progress. Done plenty of track days and each track day, Im turning quicker, but still not as quick as I would like. Its a progression. Do it in small steps and each time your steering will get quicker. Just trust the bike.  

You are quite right saying small steps that's for sure. I started off at Phillip Island with a 2:43 but after 3 visits I'm looking at 2:11. I want to get that sub 2 min. I also know I can roll the throttle on much sooner and much quicker than I do now but that "what if" bug gets in my head and stuffs me up.  

I think the way you're looking at it is probably not helping. Simply pushing on the bar in the middle of the corner will not automatically make your corner speed go up and increase your lean angle. It really works the other way - as your corner speed goes up you need more lean angle to go with it. Ideally, you won't need to countersteer in the middle of a corner to hold a line, just to change your line.

It will probably help if you experiment with the countersteering but not in a corner when you're dealing with other things as well. On a straight stretch of road or racetrack, go at a steady speed and push gently on one side. What happens? For sure watch out for traffic and leave yourself lots of room. Next would be to experiment with it entering a turn, or going from side to side in a chicane.  

Simply pushing on the bar in the middle of the corner will not automatically make your corner speed go up and increase your lean angle.

I understand what you are saying, my issue is the fear factor of pushing on the bar 'at the higher speed' to get the lean angle. So it is a bit of a catch 22.

It's the psychology of it all. I know what I need to do. It's the doing that does my head in.  

I don't know where to post this - please help me.  This is in response to the article in the May issue about counterstering.  I agree 100% with your article, including the part about it being suble and usually subconscious - which sadly has led to generations of confusion - right up to place where you say why it works.  No one can argue that the gyroscopic force on a wheel does what you say, and therefore that will help counter steer to some small degree.  But try this instead - the math is simple, I promise.  Suppose you push on the left handlebar enough to move the grip 1/4".  The handlebar is about a foot long, so is the wheel radius, so you've moved the front of the front wheel about 1/4" to the right.  So every foot the wheel travels, it moves 1/4" to the right.  In 16', this is 4". Since the bike 'rolls' about it's horizontal axis, youu get about an 8" lean.  Say you are going 30 MPH, that's 45 feet per second. So this 8" lean happens in about 1/3 of a second.  That's a counter steer.  That'll take you around a corner.  Watch the bars when you counter steer and you will see this kind of movement. Obviously, you can push harder, or for longer, or go faster, and much more will happen.  The slower you go, the more handlebar turn you need because the wheel will take more time to move sideways.  If you think about it, I am hoping you will agree that this is how you balance any two-wheel vehicle at any speed.  At a crawl, you zig-zag the handlebars because you need to move the front wheel laterally quickly.  At speed, you have to be subtle. This is how you keep balance, and how you lose balance, such as when you want to lean over in preparation for a corner.  I've seen articles explaining that you 'steer' under 20MPH and counter steer above it.  What law of physics changes at 20MPH?  None.  

A two-wheeled single-track vehicle will balance itself at speed due to gyroscopic forces, not because there's any lateral movement in the front wheel. At much slower speeds where those gyroscopic forces don't influence steering (such as at a crawl), it's power/thrust that plays a bigger role in actual balance. It's the reason why a unicyclist can balance in one spot, or why you see road cyclists balancing at a stop with the wheel turned sideways, or why steering magically lightens up when you apply power in a parking lot, or why the pro stunters can do tight figure-8 wheelies in a 12-foot radius. The unicyclist/road cyclist at a standstill is rocking back and forth so that power is applied to pedals and then to the wheel (and thus thrust occurs) as much as possible. When you zig-zag the handlebars trying to balance the bike at a crawl, it's because in the instant when you turn the wheel into the direction of the lean, you're actually generating some thrust due to the tire profile, which helps balance the bike. This is also the reason why it's so much easier to do very tight maneuvers with the bike under power (try doing a very tight U-turn at a crawl while dragging the rear brake under power versus just using momentum).

At very slow speeds, take a look at the bars as you lean into a turn (or just look at any photo of a bike turning at parking lot speeds). The bars turn into the direction of the turn, not the opposite. Counter-steering works at speed because gyroscopic effect takes over; as stated in the article, the effect of turning the wheel in one direction results in the wheel leaning in the opposite direction. And once that lean is generated, lateral thrust generated by tire profile and weight distribution is what actually gets the bike to turn. If leaning is the only thing that gets a bike to turn, then you wouldn't see photos of off-road bikes going into turns at speed with the front wheel pointing into the direction of the turn. Because off-road tires don't have the traction of road tires/pavement, they need to generate lateral thrust by turning the tire into the turn and scrubbing off speed, weighting the front tire to generate traction (and thrust). Or they spin the rear tire to pivot the bike in the direction of the turn.  

I appreciate your response.  Thank you.  Please tell me to shut up whenever I've overstayed my welcome.  That said, I would like to make my case again.

You made this complicated.  Let me try to focus on something easier, like a bicycle; i.e, light-weight wheels, small contact patch, upright steering, comparatively heavy rider, ridden at medium speeds.  And also focus on balance.

My main theme is that gravity is always trying to pull us over, and we stay upright by keeping the wheels underneath us so it can't.  In my opinion, this is the thing that "once you learn, you never forget."  In a turn, we have gravity trying to pull us down (in), and centrifugal force trying pull us over (out).  These forces have a combined effect (down and out), and we need to keep the wheels in its way.  I am not saying that the leaning causes the turning.  Clearly, in a turn, it is the tire force doing the work of turning, but we are still doing the balancing.  This argument has to be a given.  If it isn't, there is no sense going beyond this.

If we are going to turn left, we all know we need to lean left.  How is this done?  Here is a way that is so simple that, had I not read it in a (bicycle) book years ago, it would have eluded me.  It went something like this: "On a bicycle, we are always falling one way or the other, and always steering to keep our balance.  So, if we want to turn left, one choice is to wait until we are falling left, and then just not correct it."  In other words, wait until you are falling left, and then steer left.  You (and others) say that at low speeds, we don't counter-steer, we just turn the way we want to go.  I say, you better not ever turn left, hoping to go left, unless you are already falling left!  I'm serious.  That same author went on to say that counter-steering would be a more deliberate way to initiate a turn.

You-Tube has lots of videos that show very clearly that counter-steering works by means of steering the front wheel out from under the bike.  All of us can easily come up with examples where it is less noticeable or more contrived, but here is one example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C848R9xWrjc.

This has nothing to do with gyroscopic force.  The bike leans because the front wheel has moved out from under it.  The bike had no choice.  More precisely, it rolls about its horizontal center of gravity.  Gyroscopic force may have added a little bit to this and, of course, once it starts to lean, gravity is happy to help keep it going.  But you can see the wheel move and the bike roll.

This has to be true.  You put pressure on the bars, they have to move.  They may resist, but they have to move.  The front wheel has to go in a new direction.  I, and others, always teach counter-steering in terms of putting 'pressure' on the bars.  Telling people to actually turn the handlebars is pretty scary.  But, the next time you ride, try watching the actual movement of the handlebar (1/4", 1/2"…), and watch where the front wheel goes.  The handgrip does move.  The 'simple math' (from the previous post) applies, just like the video shows.

I'll take it to an extreme.  Consider the 250 lb man riding a racing bicycle, whose wheel and tires weigh next to nothing.  The amount of gyroscopic force produced by those wheels/tires will never keep him up or lean him over.  The lighter the wheels and tires are, the more responsive the bike will be.  At speed, this will be a scary ride because the lack of gyroscopic force will allow the front wheel to be turned too easily and counter-steering will be hyper-effective.  In other words, gyroscopic force might actually be an impediment to responsive steering.

If you want, I'll give you my opinion on unicycles and pogo sticks next time.

If you have read this far, I offer sincere thanks.  

I have not actually researched this subject in quite a number of years (like about a decade) and so I was very surprised today to see that there has been some excellent published material on the subject.  The first article I found was actually by Andrew Trevitt (see bikeforums, search for trevitt), which is an excellent discussion of countersteering (not that he needs to hear this from me).  The second article I found is simply the main Wikipedia page on Countersteering.  This appears to be a well-researched and comprehensive treatise on the subject.  This page needs to get some recognition and I, for one, wish the magazines would do it.  Or did I miss it?

In Trevitt's article, he acknowledges that countersteering has both gyroscopic and 'steering' components, but is not specific about how much of the countersteering effect comes from each.  In the Wikipedia article, there is a comment that the gyroscopic effects are only about 10% of the total.  Wikipedia's explanation of body-steering (as a way to countersteer) is to throw your hips right to go left.  Trevitt's article gives a more motorcycle-friendly explanation of leaning your body left (for every action there is a reaction, so your hips go right).  I think it is time to stop talking about gyroscopes; to say that we all counter-steer and we do it in a combination of ways; and you need it at all speeds.  

I don't believe you have a problem -- you just aren't riding fast enough.  As your speed increases you will counter steer whether you know it or not.

I rode for 2 years and never conscientiously knew I was counter steering.  Then someone told me I was and I started thinking about it in turns and I realized I did, especially in a decreasing radius corner and you're hot.  

You write way too much for me to read it but-- think about this.  If you are holding a bicycle and you turn the wheel to the right, and let go -- which way does the bike fall over, left or right?

That is about all you need to know about counter steering.