Quote:
Originally Posted by choneofakind
^yeah.
I mean, I rode a bicycle long before motorcycles. I think we all did. I was riding roads on my roadie regularly at 14. Countersteering never came to my mind. I just... turned. couldn't explain it.
We all obsess about countersteering because it's a process with an input and an output and it's how you control it. And most of us had an Ah-Ha! moment when we figured it out.
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Agreed. Most of us do it without realizing exactly what we are doing, we just...turn. However, when you increase your understanding of how to effectively and efficiently accomplish this TURN then you will be able to do it better, and you won't run into problems in emergency situations.
We have so many students that come to the Superbike school that counter-steer the bike without realizing how they are doing it. When we SHOW them (and we prefer to SHOW them over verbally explaining it to them) then suddenly they can get the steering action done quicker, safer and with more overall understanding. Many times, the steering drill exercise done in the parking lot is the most life changing, ah ha moment they have had motorcycling.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ninjinsky
Some things are beyond words, balancing and steering a bicycle is one of them.
I remember a tennis coaching technique that dumped verbal critisism, you just keep doing serves and don't worry about the bad shots let your body find it's way to optimise.
You learn best when you are not consciously trying.
Countersteering is counterintuitive to the verbal reasoning mind but the body goes straight to it because physical feedback trains faster than mental modelling.
I remember wayback giving a girl her first driving lesson and before we started she said "How do you know how much to turn the steering wheel coming into a bend"?
And that is the problem, we live in a verbal world and people think everything has verbal solutions. Nope.
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I agree that people can get very caught up in the verbal explanation of something and it becomes quite confusing. I for example have very little understanding of the physics of how a bike counter-steers, but what I do know is how to do it.
For people that have a mind to understand the physics or mechanics of how things work it can be interesting to have these discussions to further your understanding. For people like me, I focus solely on the process of doing over talking about it, and I try to do that with my students. When I teach people how to counter-steer it is done almost without words. I have them do it.