Riding Tips: Body Steering
Feb 4th, 2009 by Leo
What is body steering? No you can’t actually steer with your body, you need to steer with the bars (if you don’t believe me take a look at this video, Keith Code’s No BS Bike). But how you position your body has an impact on how you steer… How can you make tight fast turns without slowing down to a walking pace? It takes practice…but this practice mainly involves your body position before and during a turn.
When you’re driving in a car going straight, your torso is facing forward. When you turn in a car, your torso remains pointed to the front of the car…and it should. But on a bike, the “proper” position during a turn is for your head and torso (and hips) to be faced in the direction of the turn, and not straight ahead. Duh! That sounds obvious, but it doesn’t seem to come naturally to anybody…
Here’s a crappy freehand (or shall I say freemouse?) drawing to try to illustrate.
Figure A
Figure B
Notice I drew a scooter? This isn’t just a sportbike concept, it’s for any type of ride (except maybe dirt riding). When you watch MotoGP races, the riders will often come down a straight and then set up for a turn by getting in position. What most people notice is that they stick one knee out (on the inside of the turn); but what’s a little harder to notice is that in doing so, they’re usually pointing the torso into the turn… (The first part of the turn the torso is pointed into the turn, the latter part of the turn it’s usually pointed the other way) I tried to find a good still shot, but couldn’t find one on Google Images, but youcan take a look at the video: at around 1:18 you can see Nicky Hayden set up for the turn…
The natural inclination for most people is to want to stay straight with the bike and just turn your head…But you need to turn your torso, hips and head and line all these up with the direction of the turn (shoulders usually need to stay lined up with the bike in order to steer). Imagine if you had a laser pointer coming out of your stomach, this pointer should point in the direction of the turn. Now when you look at photos of professional riders turning, it doesn’t look like they’re turning their body very much, but if you were to mimic their movement, it *feels* like you’re turning a great deal.
So there you have it. The benefit of good body position is that you’ll be able to lean the bike over farther, faster, and make tighter turns. But don’t take my word for it, give it a try and tell me what you think.
Related Posts:
- Finding the Right Position
- Body Positions: Hanging Off
- Things to Remember: Keeping it Light
- Riding Skills: Keep your Head Up
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An observation I had this morning on my ride in, as I pondered your post:
1. At HIGH speed, leaning INTO the turn with your body helps.
2. At LOW speed, leaning OUT of the turn (counter-balancing) helps.
Really, the position of your COG over the bike permits you to change the lean angle of the bike for a given turn/speed. I suppose you could counter-balance when turning at speed, but that would mean that the bike would have to be leaned over even more to make the turn.
Vise-versa, you could lean INTO a slow turn, but the bike would be nearly (if not) upright, and you’d be feeling pretty unstable, should you have any fluxuations in throttle or road surface.
I did observe that I have a tendancy to keep my body upright, even at highway speeds, letting the bike lean under me. Today I tried actively leaning into turns (just a bit — not knee-dragging, just getting my sholders in line with the tank, or slightly into the turn) and I did notice a difference in the position of the bike.
Jesse
Hey Jesse thanks for you input!
If I were to rewrite this post, I would write it from the angle: “how to overcome the fear of leaning it over.” It’s not natural to lean over sideways, all our natural (walking) instincts force us to try to stay upright as much as possible… on a motorcycle that leads us to push the bike down under us (counter-balancing) dirt bike style. But in order to make good tight turns you need to lean it over…with your body leaning over, head first.
How can you get over the natural survival reaction of not wanting to lean sideways into a turn? The answer is: our brains don’t want to let us lean sideways – but it will let us lean forward…
By turning the torso and leaning forward into a turn (rather than trying to lean further sideways), and putting your weight on the outside peg, and rolling on the throttle – you’ll be able to lean it over further than you have before…
Give it a try and let me know if it gives a different perspective on lean angle.
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