[Toshihiro Wakayama’s Column] Eliminating Stereotype Riding Techniques “Chapter 3 Leaning motorcycle downward with applying force”

[Toshihiro Wakayama: Motorcycle Journalist]

How does a rider lean a motorcycle downward?

On riding, a trigger is necessary to change the state of the motorcycle. Counter steering is one of such triggers.
About the negative effect of relying on this technique, please see “Chapter 1” in this series.

Mistake to turn with rider’s “applying force to motorcycle”

In addition to the counter steering, what is widely spread as a stereotype riding technique is that a rider applies force to a motorcycle and leans the vehicle downward.

Concretely speaking, it may include pushing the tank inward with the outside knee, pulling the handle grip inward with the arm, and pushing the footpeg downward with the inside foot.
Quite honestly, they are wrong. They are physically impossible before discussing riding technique.

Let’s think about a rowboat as an example. Imagine that you pull the boat to a bank and jump off the boat.
You kick the boat and jump off it, then move yourself onto the bank. Your body moves as a reaction to an action of kicking.
But, even if you successfully land on the bank, the boat is subjected to the action of being kicked and goes away from the bank if you do not secure the boat with a rope.

Suppose that you try to advance the boat toward a goal using this mechanism.
When a person on the boat does a standing broad jump on the boat alone, the boat moves backward at that moment by the action of the kick.
However, as soon as the person gets back to the boat, the boat receives the energy that the person lands on, then the boat returns to the initial position. The energy exchange between the boat and the person is completed and the boat can not move in the end.

What is “force” that encumbers turning performance?

The stereotype riding technique “applying force to a motorcycle to lean it downward” that I previously explained is very much like doing the same thing as this on a motorcycle.
For applying force in order to lean the vehicle downward, a rider has to move itself to the direction that the machine leans, then the vehicle is subjected to the action in the opposite direction the motorcycle leans.

Naturally, the machine doesn’t lean. So, the rider needs to make the vehicle lean downward using counter steering. This means that the motorcycle doesn’t turn and a risk of falling increases. If the rider applies force to the machine, a natural weight shift stops at that moment and the turning performance doesn’t rise.

Of course, when you move to the next corner with making your body go ahead using heavy steering, you should deeply apply force to the machine. Yet, by applying force to the vehicle at a quite normal corner, you can not get turning performance that the machine essentially has.

Let me add one thing. Leaning with pushing a handle inward is out of question because you can not respond to a slip and fall. You might think it better to apply force to push a tank inward with the outside knee.

But, it is nothing more than a feeling of force and it does not influence a movement of the motorcycle. Rotating the hip to the inside allows the body trunk to shift inward easily and, as a result, it becomes a sense like pushing the tank. This leads to holding the machine.
At this time, it is like holding your body so as to widen the gap between the outer footpeg and the tank; yet, because the force is balanced in the machine or in the rider’s body, the force is absolutely a feeling of force but isn’t applied to the machine to lean it downward.

I would like to add one more, about a weight shift toward the inner footpeg. This includes other stuff, so let me postpone to the next column.