when he says " However, next time you're travelling at speed (over about 30 MPH on a motorcycle, or as fast as you can get going on a bicycle) and traffic around you is very sparse -- ideally on a completely deserted road -- try pushing on one side of the handlebars. Just a slight and even pressure on one side. The bike will immediately start leaning toward the side you were pushing on. Now, try pushing on the other side. The bike stands right back up. That's the essence of countersteering.
Now, this is the part where many people call "bullfeathers!" on the whole countersteering thing. Most experts explain countersteering as if it were the only thing in the world you needed to know about steering a bike. It's not. You use countersteering to lean over, and then, most of the time, you steer into the turn! Countersteering is mostly useful for getting you leaned over, a great deal of the time. (Note that at high enough speeds, you actually countersteer all the way through a turn, because the higher the speed, the stronger those upright-pulling forces are. But that's a different thing, I'm writing for street riders, not racers; go away kid, you bother me.)"
Sevulturus wrote:Countersteer is the action of pushing out on the inside handlebar to create a turn.
Which is to say you push out on the left handlebar turning the wheel to the right which makes you go left. It has nothing to do with body position.
It is called COUNTERSTEERING because by basic logic with the front wheel pointing right you should be going RIGHT.
What you are thinking of is counterweighting or counter balancing, where you put pressure on the outside peg of the bike to make sure that you don't tip over in a slow speed turn. Which isn't really something that you need to do in the first place, more of a crutch then anything else.
