Level 3 and level 4 says to make a 180 and a 360 sharp turn to the left
and to the right. Do you bike slow and twist hard or do you bike fast
and twist hard. I guess it is not allowed to jump around, cause that
would have been easy.
Rusty
If you are going fast and you make a sharp 180 deg turn you will most likely end up on the floor. I’d say ride slowly, turn fast.
“Sharp” means you must to the turn within a 1mx1m square, you don’t have to turn on a dime.
A comfortable riding speed is all you should need.
I’d count a ‘sharp’ turn as one where the tyre scrubs round, as opposed to a more gentle turn which uses the circumference of the wheel to define the curve.
Do these sharp turns at low speed - indeed, usually from a standstill. Time it so that you turn rigth as the right foot goes down, or left as the left foot goes down. It is possible to do it in time with the opposite foot, but it’s a bit harder.
It’s not a case of throwing your upper body weight one way to tunr the uni the opposite way. Turn your upper body comfortably towards the way you want to turn, and let the uni turn under you.
It’s tempting to develop this as a one-sided skill. For 15 years, I was 10 times better at turning right than turning left.
A good practice is to ride up to a wall and then turn. Really good practice is to ride into a corner, then turn back out of the corner.
It’s more to do with control and timing than brute force and Newton’s 3rd law.
An important point about a sharp turn is that it is more of an over-reaction, recovery operation than a smooth turn. When you ride in a circle of any diameter, the objective it to maintain constant speed and constant distance from a fixed point. You should with good skill be able to maintain this speed and distance indefinitely. If you do that in a sharp turn, you will end up on the ground.
What you are looking for here is a full recovery to straight line riding. You need to ride straight out of the square, even if the line is a little more than 90, 180 or 360 degrees.
I think you can also do several of these operations to get around the correct number of degrees. Does anyone know for sure if this is the case?
Although the skill levels don’t require it, sharp turns backward are very helpful for developing your backward turning skills, and one foot sharp turns are fun too. 