Well, I’m sure that it is something like the way you turn right, but for some reason I have the hardest time turning left. I have been riding for about a month now and all seems to be going well except for the darn left turns. I can turn nice and gently to the right, but my left turn is chaotic and over worked. Going straight is fine. Free mounting is reliable.
I have searched through the forums for anything turn related and I found a couple of good things like this article by Ken Fuchs.
Forgive me if my searching is just terrible, and this has been beaten to death; but, I would appreciate any tips or insights about how to turn with more control.
Well, you’re not the only one. Right turns were just always easier for me to do. All I can tell you is, keep riding, it’ll get better. It’s one of those things that sometimes works better when you don’t think about it.
My son could always turn a whole lot easier than I could- don’t know if it was because he was half my weight or what.
Both left and right. As the circle gets smaller, you have to throw in some tire twisting. It’s just like turning right, only you haven’t practiced as much so that way feels weird.
try the leaning / correcting method and try to go left more than right, plan out your route so that you turn left a lot… you should be able to master this in about a 1 hour ride.
if you follow a path and you can’t make a turn, go back and try again several times … then do an easier turn and go back to it later for another shot.
I guess it’s just gonna be a lot of practice. It is weird how hard it is to turn left though. When I turn left I do a crazy hip twist like I’m correcting my balance. Right turns feel much more natural, and there is no real twist to initiate them.
Anyway thanks for the help, and I will keep at it. I hope to be able to hit the trails before long.
are you riding on the road with the cars, or on sidewalks/pavements?
presuming you’re riding on the sidewalk or somewhere else roughly flat, without a camber, then it’s just practice. If you have a surface with a road crown, try riding the other direction and see if that makes a difference.
Best place to practice this is somewhere completely flat like a car park. Just try and turn without twisting too much, just lean your body over to the side and let the unicycle turn itself.
I still find it far easier to turn left than right on a unicycle, after five or so years of riding. I can turn sharp right if I have to, but it takes a bit more effort and concentration than the same turn to the left.
I think it’s partly a psychological thing, because I have a similar feeling on a bike (which I’ve been riding for as long as I can remember). I feel much safer taking a fast left bend than one to the right, for some reason.
So I figured it out today. I was just cruising along and I turned right. I know that was easy already, but I figured out that I was leaning my body to the left, and the cycle was leaning to the right. So, I decided to lean to the right, and the cycle went left!
I know that people are talking about “counter steering,” but this confused me a little because you don’t really counter steer a bicycle. Maybe it is called that, but if you have ever ridden a motorcycle then you know what real counter steering is. On a motorcycle in order to turn at high speed you actually push the right grip hard to turn right. In other words you steer left, but go right. This is counter steering the way I learned it, and so you can see why I was a little confused about the way the term was being used. In truth I’m sure that it is achieving the same effect of getting the bike to lean in the right direction.
I still have a lot of practice ahead of me before I will feel comfortable on a lot of the trails here, but for now I think I’m ready to hit some easy XC terrain.
Yes it does. Ride your bike w/ no hands and turn. You’ll notice at first the bars turn the other way.
Speed has nothing to do w/ it. How sharply or efficiently you want to make the turn does. Say you are road racing a bike and want to go faster. If you learn to counter-steer well you can cut at least a second off your lap times (or so I’ve heard from expert instructors and pro racers).
You may be right, I haven’t ever looked at my handlebars when I was riding sans hands. I will pay attention to this the next time I ride a two wheeler.
