Can someone explain what the fuck cyclists mean when they say "countersteering"?I understand it as either>initiating/assisting a lean into a corner by turning the wheel to the outside of the corner, necessary on particularly heavy motorcycles >leaning into the corner only a little but turning the wheel to the outside slightly, keeping your contact patches aligned to to the direction of travel but the bike not, used for bowing over or other high-speed constant rate long turns or fine adjustment on straightsboth of these apply really only to motorcycles and even trying it on a bike makes no damn sense since you can literally just lean with your bodyweight and turn the wheel where you want it to point. wtf are these 10kmh fixie riders talking about when they insist on namedropping "countersteering" every five seconds?
>>2070403
Why don't you try it instead of making this dumb thread
>>2071088Yeah you're understanding countersteering correctly, sure you can lean the bike to turn but that's slow, countersteering allows the rider to whip the bike and make really fast switchbacks and bikes can whip so much harder than motorcycles, motorcycles have speed on their side but all that weight slows the steering a lot, even the lightest motorcycle can't whip as hard as a bicycle. I ride both btw, 20 years of riding motorcycles and 30 years of bicyclesSo counter steering is a phenomena first before a technique. It happens because when a turn is first initiated, the upper part of the bike will want to counter act the movement by rotating outward, which is then used to whip the momentum towards the inside of the turn. The phenomena is similar to balancing a broom vertically in the palm, the top of the broom will counter act movement from the bottom.Now, a lot of resources say push left go left is the only correct way and pull style is wrong but I'm a big advocate for learning pull style riding (pull right go left). I was like 4 years old when I self realized the bike counter steers but I didn't learn about push style counter steering until I got my motorcycle license at 18, I say both push and pull style are correct. Pull style let's one hang off the bars during really hard cornering, it's fun
>>2071214are you sure you're not talking about counterleaning, a low speed (or high speed if you are cop who needs to look out for things other than physics) maneuver because>pull right handle/push left handlethe bike would simply tip to the left while turning to the right, for the brief moment it can until it hits the ground (or you use your bodyweight to lean back upright or into the turn, or you be not a moron and turn normally by leaning in with your body weight and pointing the front wheel where you want the bike to go)
>>2071215Counter leaning is a completely different thing, it's a technique first before a physical phenomena. Yes it's used for low speed handling but the deeper reason for counter leaning is for smooth momentum shifting, hold the body where the momentum needs to go on order to lean the bike harder. So a bike turns using the same principle as a cone rolling, counter leaning helps point the bike for the next turn and so that transition from shifting past the balance point to turn the opposite way. Anyways, now that I'm thinking about it, initiating a turn using counter steering does indeed induce a counter lean but only so that momentum can be shifted into the turn if going fast enough. Singletrack dynamics of very dynamic compared to dual track for wheeled vehicle, a single track vehicle is basically an oscillating wave where the body naturally counter leans against the direction of the tire tracking
>>2071221>the body naturally counter leans against the direction of the tire trackingso you lean to the left when you're in a right turn, while pulling your left handlebar and pushing the right? this is how you are saying bikes turn now?
>>2071222Let's say you're turning right, when you push the right side of the handlebar (or pull the left side), the steering will point left, this will cause a momentary counter lean before the balance point shifts and the handle bars point right, turning that initial counter lean onto a lean in turn, it's up to the right when to shift that weight center to straighten out and exit, or counter lean again for a switchback.
>>2071223>it's up to the right>It's up to the rider*
>>2071223use case for doing this on a vehicle you weigh five times more than where you can skip that whole process by bending your waist a little? on motorcycles that is essential but that is because they weigh like 500 pounds and the rider can't heave the bike over easily, compared to a bike that weighs maybe 15 that you can waggle around willy nilly without steering at all
>>2071225I would argue it's the opposite, because a motorcycle weighs so much the center of gravity starts within the bike where on a bicycle the human mass plays a much much larger role in the vehicle dynamics and so the human needs to really understand how to whip their weight around. Anyways, in both cases, riding either requires the human to be part of the handling dynamics, there's a reason it's called riding instead of driving.
>>2071226>center of gravity stays within the bikeI fucking hate autocorrect now, even since ai enhanced auto correction came around my swipe texting got fucked
>>2071226thanks chatgpt but you are wrong and inertia exists
>>2071228By saying inertia exists you're supporting my argument because the inertia of a motorcycle outweighs the bicycle by like 100x making the human dynamic even more important on a bicycle. You basically just said you don't understand the physics of bikes
>>2071229you are literally saying that it is faster to turn your bike and wait for it to fall than it is to shift your center of gravity with your body, and now you're renegging on it saying no totally it's possible and advisable to shift your cog even on a heavy motorbike by just bending at the waist
>>2071242Imagine being so dumb you have to resort to misunderstanding everything I said and asserting your wrong assumptions onto my words. You're not worth interacting anymore because you misunderstood everything I said and fail to understand bike handling. Stay slow scrub
>>2071088It is literally impossible to ride a two wheeled machine without counter steering Every single time you turn the bars to the left, you do that by first trying to turn the bar to the right Get on your bicycle, start riding, and consciously and deliberately try to turn the bars to the right by pushing forward on the left bar and pulling back on the right bar. You will find you are going left.
>>2071258You can’t turn a bike with body weight. You can initiate a steering input using your body weight, and that steering input will first be in the opposite direction of the way you are trying to turn. This is more difficult to demonstrate to yourself, but you can do it by totally fixing your bars in place. You will find that you can only very very subtly move the bike left or right if the bars can’t move. There is plenty of slow motion video on YouTube of this effect.https://youtu.be/llRkf1fnNDM?si=GSbZ1qMw6iIbT4A-
>>2071214Phenomena is plural. You want "a phenomenon".
>>2071258This. If you turn the wheel to point to your right, your bike will go left. This is SIMPLE PHYSICS.
>>2071258to balance it in a straight line maybe but to actually steer you can just move your body and turn the wheel towards where you want to go.
