Understanding pivot steering

[adouglas]

@Misti @csmith12

On a business trip and spending the flight doing something productive – reading TOTW II (hey, it beats revising a brand platform PowerPoint).

Have a question about pivot steering.

Keith’s choice of words here has always confused me. To me, “pivot” means a point that something rotates around. But that’s not what he’s describing. As I read it, he’s really talking about an anchor or foundation point that you can push off from, specifically the outside foot pressing on the peg.

(He further confuses the issue by referring to other reference points on the bike, such as arm on the tank, etc. But I digress.)

Here’s my mental image – I want to check with you folks to see if it’s on target.

Imagine yourself standing in front of a tree, or a wall, about arm’s reach away. Put your right hand on it and lean in. That represents you applying pressure to your right clip-on.

Now lift your right foot. All your weight is now supported entirely by your left foot on the ground (representing the peg) and your right hand. The forces are going in opposite directions. You’re pressing down with your foot and forward with your hand. Increase the force on your foot by moving farther away from the tree/wall, and you'll increase the force on your hand as well.

Is this mental image correct?

Taking it a step farther…

Sit in a chair facing the tree. Press against the tree with your hand. This represents sitting on the bike’s seat but not using your legs. You can’t apply that much force because you don’t have as much leverage.

Now stand on both feet. More force, but you’re still not concentrating your weight as much. When you lift that right foot, you get more force through both the foot and your hand.

Is this correct?

Thanks…..

[rojoracing53]

dude what are getting at? did you smoke something good?

[rojoracing53]

a racer with an aggressive style will heavily pivot their weight on their outside foot. that's why we wear holes in the bottom of our boots and why we sometime accidentally fall off our bike when we hit an unexpected bump and our outside foot slips. i don't read keith's stuff so i'm not sure what he's exactly describing.

[Sirref]

@rojoracing53 you say an aggressive rider will put their weight on their outside peg, what about balancing weight evenly or shifting weight more onto the inside peg?

I find myself naturally weighting the inside peg more than the outside peg, is this an issue I should address with the goal of increasing corner speeds?

[csmith12]

Originally Posted by adouglas

Taking it a step farther…

Sit in a chair facing the tree. Press against the tree with your hand. This represents sitting on the bike’s seat but not using your legs. You can’t apply that much force because you don’t have as much leverage.

Now stand on both feet. More force, but you’re still not concentrating your weight as much. When you lift that right foot, you get more force through both the foot and your hand.

Is this correct?

Thanks…..

Your standing wall example was pretty darn spot on. But the chair example has a fundamental flaw. While sitting in the chair, there is a possibility of 2 ergos. If you sit back in the seat, then your feet are more in a standard/cruiser style ergo. Now, if you sit on the VERY edge of the chair, your forced to put your feet under your bumm, more like your r6. At that point you will be able to replicate your wall example while sitting in the chair. AND... you can replicate it on the bike too. And yea... it's weird at first. We sometimes say to slide back in the seat. But the fact is, sliding back too far is almost as bad as sitting to far forward (ask Ant, that was one of his erog issues). Bottom line is, your ankles better be somewhere close to right under the base of your spine on the pegs. If not, generating power from the feet to help turn is very odd indeed.

Also, advanced steering skills is a progression. In the beginning the bike falling over faster than expect is scary enough and riders don't like to oversteer as much as they don't like to understeer and run wide. At some point during one's riding, turning by the same instinct when we first learned to ride is not good enough, so riders optimize how they are pushing the bars. At some point even that is not good enough either, so we try to find ways to generate more power, faster. And that is where pivot steering comes in. Anchoring off a leg comes natural to many riders and is a very subtle thing to many more. We hear it as weighting the pegs and the likes. All just variations of pivot steering.

And for completeness, let's look at why some riders can pull off a 20min track session with relative ease and others seem to work harder and tire out faster. Jay and I had this discussion about "using the larger muscles" to do the harder work. You can stand on your legs for hours... it's simply impractical to stand on your hands/arms for hours. We sometimes bluntly state that novice riders work harder to ride less effectively. Sad but true... Aside of your fingers on the levers, find ways to utilize more large muscles in your inputs and movements. (knee to knee is another example of this)

Pivot steering while riding is another matter altogether and takes some real effort to build the "power" part of muscle memory. And since your in "thinking" mode, lemme ask you what kinds of things prevent you from doing that while on the bike?

[csmith12]

Originally Posted by Sirref

I find myself naturally weighting the inside peg more than the outside peg, is this an issue I should address with the goal of increasing corner speeds?

No, it's a sign your hanging off more than you need too for the given corner speed and lean angle. DO NOT take that to a fault though, hanging off to lessen lean angle is a good thing, but hanging off too far often does more harm than good.

In general, too much localized weight/feedback/inputs is often a subtle sign of something that could be optimized. If you want weight on the inside/outside/front/rear, put it there for a reason that benefits you, not to hold yourself up or for show. Although sometimes "for show" has it's purposes, going fast isn't normally one of them. lol

One rider told me,

I weight the outside peg to hold the bike up on the larger contact patch mid corner.

What can that rider optimize?

[csmith12]

Originally Posted by rojoracing53

a racer with an aggressive style will heavily pivot their weight on their outside foot. that's why we wear holes in the bottom of our boots and why we sometime accidentally fall off our bike when we hit an unexpected bump and our outside foot slips. i don't read keith's stuff so i'm not sure what he's exactly describing.

K. Code is describing the exact same thing you are... minus the falling off part. It's why we like that new pegs are grippy when we need them and hate the very same grip when we don't.

[Sirref]

for that goal a weight shift towards the rear and the inside would be optimal. Towards the inside to stand the bike up a bit and rearwards to place more weight onto the rear tire to assist proper throttle control in increasing the contact patch of the rear tire. Pushing off of the outside peg to force the bike to stand up a bit more does make sense in addition to this.

[csmith12]

Originally Posted by Sirref

Pushing off of the outside peg to force the bike to stand up a bit more does make sense in addition to this.

Do you think this vaguely supports body steering? What brings the bike back up on corner exit? Weighting the peg or something else?

[rojoracing53]

Well I never said I weighted the outside more then the inside. What I was talking about was we pivot quite heavily on that outside peg when moving our body to initiate a turn. I don't think average riders pivot so much with their lower body thus they chance doing to much with their arms.

I just ride faster then most, I never asked who or why

[Sirref]

Body steering does exist, though it is very minimal. Adding throttle naturally causes the bike to straighten out a bit as well but the main force that allows the bike to straighten out is the bar input.

on a superbike I would shift the weight more forward to help keep the front end on the ground, other than that all body positioning approach would be the same as on other bikes

[csmith12]

I really, really, really don't want this to become a body steering or nah thread. I am trying to get you to think in terms of effort vs result. A near effortless bump of the bar brings the bike up soooooooo much more easily vs putting all that weight on the peg.

Work smarter, not harder. You should know better than average rider after your endurance races. Feel me?

EDIT: Ben, remember turn 1? Read the corners... "drive out hard" when you can, hold back when you need and link em up when you see the lines connect. For you sir... don't be lazy on corner exit, a consistent pick-up on corner exit can take off a second on your lap time. Weighting the outside peg takes an amount of effort, pushing the bar takes some effort, the end result is the same yet one way vs the other keeps you out there riding a few more laps.

[rojoracing53]

Originally Posted by csmith12

Do you think this vaguely supports body steering? What brings the bike back up on corner exit? Weighting the peg or something else?

If we're talking racing I don't think a bike is ever 100% neutral in a corner, it always want to stand up to some degree under acceleration. I've always felt I was letting the bike stand up on corner exit vs me standing the bike up. The only time I would force(steer) the bike up out of a corner is during chicane transitions in which case it's a combo of bar and body input. Depending on how hard your pushing you may not be able to do most of it with the bars alone as you may not have the front wheel grip(wheelies).

I think talk about chicanes is off topic maybe but when going through turn one at Fontana raceway you are going through a minimal but very fast chicane. You have swap the bike left and right at over 100mph and you are wrenching on the bars so hard you sometime twist the wheel off the ground causing quite the rodeo. Some bike handle it better then others but everyone is forcing it through that are no matter how well their setup is.

[csmith12]

I feel you Jason, soooo many riders just "let it happen" on exit. And I do feel chicanes are very relevant to Andrew's question. After all, this is where I would use pivot steering the most, as you said, bar & body. Maybe the difference is in not trying to push the bike down via weight, especially when on the gas in a fast chicane. Hence working smarter, not harder.

Pivot steering and counter steering share many of the same flaws in perception. Part of me says don't force it, while the other part sees riders come off the track 2-3 laps early because they are tired for no other reason than wresting the bike unnecessarily.

[adouglas]

Originally Posted by csmith12

And since your in "thinking" mode, lemme ask you what kinds of things prevent you from doing that while on the bike?

I'm always in thinking mode....

I'd say that there's more than one possible answer:

- Improper body position that prevents you from getting leverage (i.e. sitting up too high with straight arms so you're not applying force to the bars effectively, not locking knee into the tank, sitting too close to the tank so you can't apply force with your leg, etc.).

- Tenseness -- working against yourself

- Mental overload -- too much to process so you can't focus on developing that muscle memory

PS re the chair thing... I hear you but my intent was to show that if you're spreading your weight out too much you don't have a point of focus to assertively push off from.

PPS My mental image (and you know I'm all about visualization) has been to think of steering as something done with the arms. Get the body into position to keep the bike vertical, and apply force with the hands. I had not really thought about the lower body, other than to get a butt cheek off, position my feet and get my knee out.

This new image also involves pushing off the foot, not just pressing forward with the hand.

[csmith12]

Originally Posted by adouglas

PS re the chair thing... I hear you but my intent was to show that if you're spreading your weight out too much you don't have a point of focus to assertively push off from.

PPS My mental image (and you know I'm all about visualization) has been to think of steering as something done with the arms. Get the body into position to keep the bike vertical, and apply force with the hands. I had not really thought about the lower body, other than to get a butt cheek off, position my feet and get my knee out.

This new image also involves pushing off the foot, not just pressing forward with the hand.

Awesome, being able to self identifying areas where you can "do it better or easier" is darn important. I feel you are starting to understand the "spread effect" thing I was talking about in another post. I know we didn't cover that specifically at Mid-O, this is another one of those areas where you can spread yourself thin by movements or seating position and I believe you are figuring that out all on your own.

Also, you answered the question very well.

Let's up the ante a bit, how can you tell if you execute a well done pivot steer? Any clues that the bike will tell ya?

[adouglas]

Originally Posted by csmith12

Let's up the ante a bit, how can you tell if you execute a well done pivot steer? Any clues that the bike will tell ya?

I'd say that initially, it'll scare the crap out of you because there will be less perceived effort and you'll oversteer the bike. I believe Keith calls the "power steering." To specifically answer, the bike will "tell ya" that you don't need as much muscle to make it move.

[csmith12]

Sent from the paddock of mid-o