HOWTO STEERAMOTORCYCLE
Counter steering vs body steering; which technique works best?
WORDS: KEITH CODE
RIDING
THE CALIFORNIA SUPERBIKE SCHOOL
Founded by the legendary Keith Code in 1980, the California Superbike School offers a step-by-step method of technique oriented rider training in the art of cornering motorcycles. Over the past 30 years hundreds of thousands of students have improved their riding skills and cornering capabilities at CSS and their team of professional coaches are dedicated to your improvement.
Body position is a crucial element to cornering.
Most barstool debates tend to devolve into generalities, opinions, and hearsay, in the absence of defined terms. Debating generalities just gives me a headache. The age-old counter steering versus body-steering argument – one of the oldest motorcycle-related barstool debates – is one that could especially benefit from some solid definition. Let’s forget the ‘body’ and ‘counter’ qualifiers for a moment and just focus on the simple question of how to steer a motorcycle.
Steering a motorcycle is the act of accurately and predictably guiding and directing an object toward or away from a known location in space. With that definition of steering in mind, let’s investigate the common claim that bikes will ‘steer’ with footpeg pressure alone, which is the basis of the body-steering claim.