Pdf motorcycle cornering skills

The toughest part is already done. To do this, you are going to use counter steering. Counter steering is when you are traveling around 15mph and up, you need to turn the handlebars left to go right.

Chances are if you know how to ride a bicycle you already know how to do this. If you are already riding a motorcycle, you are doing this without even knowing.

Now what? You gotta exit the turn and straighten the bike up. This is probably the easiest part of the whole process. Just watch for the turn to open up and the road start to straighten. This is also the right time if you want to increase your throttle. To straighten up and cancel out your lean, press or apply pressure on the grip furthest away from the ground. So if you are leaned over turning right, press on the left side grip. Try to plan your exit point so you are ready for any turns that might be next.

There are a few, all of them can cause you to crash. So never do these:. Not looking through the turn. This is a big mistake many riders make when taking a corner, they neglect to look through the turn.

Not only does it prevent you from scanning ahead for hazards and changing road conditions, you also run the risk of falling victim to target fixation. Target fixation is a phenomenon that causes riders to become so focused on a hazard or object that they actually increase the risk of colliding with it.

Basically, you go where you look. You can easily avoid this if you look through the turn. Try turning your head and pointing your nose where you want to turn, your eyes will follow. Chop the throttle. The last thing you want to do is upset the balance of a motorcycle when you are leaned over or in mid-turn.

There is a very good chance it will cause you to crash. Change gears. Again just like with chopping the throttle, you need to avoid upsetting the balance of the bike. Changing gears mid-corner will do this. You should already have selected the correct gear before you entered the turn. Grab front brakes. If you need to slow down in a turn, grabbing the front brakes is not the way to do this. There is a pretty good chance it will cause you to crash. Instead, first straighten up the bike and then apply gradual and continuous pressure to both brakes.

There are times mid-turn when something is going to go wrong. Maybe you messed up your entry speed or your line is all wrong. Remain calm. Most of the time a simple adjustment, like a bit more lean to sharpen your turn will get you through it. On a public road with a cruiser it will be much less. The amount of lean you can realistically get depends on a few factors. Tires, ground clearance and road surface being some of them.

Ground clearance is usually the main deciding factor for the amount of lean you are going to get out of a motorcycle. Cruisers and touring bikes are the worst for this. Sport bikes being the best. You can lean a motorcycle over until you start to scrape pegs or floorboards, at this point you run the risk of the pegs acting as a pivot point causing the tires to lose contact with the road. Tires, different tires are designed for different riding styles.

If you have a sport bike, chances are your tires are better equipped to maintain grip at higher lean angles than tires designed to cruise down the highway in a straight line. Road surface also plays a factor. A road with sand, dirt, leaves etc.

Even a road that is too smooth will cause you to lose traction sooner than you would think. So when it comes to how far you can lean a motorcycle, the answer really is it depends on lots of factors.

The best would be to find an empty parking lot and get some practice time under your belt. I wrote a helpful guide all about parking lot practising, there are around 12 drills with diagrams and tips to help you improve.

A few of them specifically deal with working on cornering. If you are in a turn and you start to run wide or feel like you are going to run wide, you need to either correct your line by introducing more lean and sharpening up your turn, or you need to slow down or stop quickly. To sharpen up the turn is pretty straightforward and is the easiest way to solve the problem. This is what I have usually done when I have messed up a turn.

Just apply a little more pressure to the handlebars and get the bike leaned over. If you are not scraping pegs , this is usually the best course of action. If this is not going to work. You are going to have to slow down and or probably stop. First thing you need to do is straighten up the bike, this can feel strange and counter productive.

But, you cannot apply brakes when you are mid-turn and leaned over. Once you have straightened up, start to squeeze on the brakes. Use both brakes. When you have slowed down enough, you can either stop to fully stop. Or you can lean the bike back into the turn and continue to finish the turn. This all depends on the situation. When your brain panics, it reacts with primal and involuntary survival reactions.

The angle is the same. Colin Edwards is a master of looking through the turn. Instead of replying here, would creating a new thread be more useful? The survival reactions have been triggered and your concentration has been compromised. Every time you enter a curve, imagine there is a fish hook in your nose, pulling hard towards the exit of the curve.

Electronic Aids, Not Band-Aids…. The Joy of Cornering. If you are sitting upright on your horsey, your brain will not be able to concentrate on the riddle because your body will feel off-balance and your brain will only be focused on surviving. I need to learn how to shift my butt to the inside without destabilising the bike prior to the corner. The first time I cornfring pressure on the left handlebar making the handlebars point right slightly and ended up going left, it was a revelation!

Moving around on the bike, as appropriate, is essential and while it may be a bit much to add to basic courses, is truly worthy of a skill all motorcyclists need to master. Anthony R Gray To move around your seat without destabilizing your bike, I recommend you use your legs, always supporting your body on the balls of hike feet. Tips on knowing when to react and feeling how to ride your motorcycle. That is a very watered down version, but really all you need to know, and tbh, all i can be bothered typing.

Above cormering relatively slow speed it is the only way to steer a bike. Lean angle is lean angle regardless of rider position. I will apply these theories and hopefully my cornering skills will improve as my problems are exactly like you stated with the panicking and target fixation.

When you turn centrifugal forces acts outwards during the turn. Tips and exercises that will help strengthen your back for a less painful ride. You must cornerinv logged in to rate posts. Resend my activation email: The only muscles that need to be really engaged are your torso ones -to keep you from tightening your arms on the bars- everything else should be loose and happy.

If you look either down or right in front of you, your brain will think that you are going way faster than you really are and automatically enter into panic mode. If you allow your body out of the balance of these two combined forces your brain will automatically feel in danger and go into panic mode.