Different turningtechniques

December 8, 2015 SmartCyclist

Follow your head/horse and carriage
If you take a short turn at a low speed, for example, you turn on a bike path, you steer with your head and shoulders. You look behind you and pull your bike along through the bend. Like a horse and carriage. Body and bike are upright. In a sloping position you would fall aside, because of lack of speed.

At higher speeds, you can take a curve roughly in two different ways, with the classic turn and the skiturn.

Classic turns
Most people ride a curve with their body and bicycle in one line. Often with the head and shoulders pushed slightly into the turn. Body and bike are hanging diagonally in one plane in the corner. The sharper the curve, the sharper the banking. This is the classic turn.
You can drop your bike into a turn in the following way. For example, when you need to take a left turn, you steer first a little to the right and then fall to the left.

Skiturn
Another approach is the skiturn’. Then there is a kink, a V, between your abdomen plus bike, and your torso.

How to perform the skiturn?

• You press with the inside of the thigh the saddle in the direction of the curve
For some, it helps to focus on your obliques.

• Before you take the turn, you put pressure on the inside handle bars and you pull the outside bars
Bicycle and abdomen are being pushed into the curve, the torso is pushed out of the curve. This yields a V-like position like in skiing. The bike is banking more than in the classic turn, so the radius is smaller and you can take a sharper turn. The angle between the center of mass, the line between the two contact points of the wheels, and the ground determine how sharp the turn is.

Because your upper body is on the outside of the bike, outside of the wheels, as it were, you get an inwardly directed force on the front wheel so that there is less chance that the front wheel will break out.

A nice demonstration is:

• Inner arm and outer leg press down diagonally
If you pay attention it feels beautiful. It’s very different from a sprint, or climbing out of the saddle, where you just press on one side and pull on the other side.

Wringing bends
If you steer more from the shoulders than from the hips, the bike stays more upright. This makes the bend wider and it is wringing to get through the bend.

Roglic rides fast descents, but it is not very smooth and easy to control. Working more with the hip, pushing the saddle into the bend instead of the shoulders makes the bend easier.

Fine-tuning
Fine-tuning is done by compressing more or less in the V-position or by pushing your knee less or more into the curve.

Exercise
Riding corners is a matter of doing and practicing a lot. Many people deny themselves the opportunity to learn to make good turns because they take the turns too slow and square. Use every turn to ride it tight and smooth. Special exercises are for example: On a bike path with white lines in the middle or a place where you can place a number of water bottles you can practice well on the two styles. Not stopping with the paddling and hands closer to eachother on the steer make it even more difficult.