ok, i have mastered rideing strait for as long as i want, free mounting, but now i half to learn how to turn. i have tryed just takeing my whole upper body and turing it i do not know how to turn yet so can someone please help me?
Look in the direction you want to go. The head leads the body. Don’t think too much about technique, just get it to go where you want. Later on you can make it pretty. Try riding on sidewalks that have curves or right-angle turns to force you to make it. Or otherwise try following lines on the ground.
you will probably find that gong one way is uch easier than the other. After six years of riding I will still always turn right if given the choice.
Think left…
try turning your hips, unlike on a bike where you lean to the side. it is one of those things that basially everyone struggles with when learning to ride. i used charlie dancys book to help me, but im at school and cannot quote anything.
a trick to learn: if you want to turn right raise your left arm as if waving good bye, bend your forearm and point slightly to the right in the direction where you want to go, have your right arm in your back trying to point where you come from. That may oblige you to bend and twist your torso in a way that will facilitate turning.
the other point is about handling an unequal pedaling.
for sure we do not do that when we turn it’s just to “dance” and exagerate the movement.
In addition to the other good advice, if you want to go left, push harder on the left pedal.
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Turning
i am getting better at turning. i am makeing turns at streets but i can not go in a complete circle
I learned to turn at a school playground. I sarted w/ VERY wide turns, like 50+ ft diameter. The painted lines on the asphalt were good things to focus on for where I wanted to go and to measure my progress in turn tightness.
Edit
(I’m not sure if that’s what you meant, but that’s what I did, and it worked well.)
One suggestion I’ve heard for learning better turning is to hold on to a pole (like a netball goal post or something similar) and just practice going round and round in circles. Making sure to go in both directions of course. I haven’t tried it myself but have been meaning to give it a go to improve my small turning ability.
A mushy trials tire or a knobby MUni tire both make turning difficult - and mushy knobby is the worst combination. If you max out the air pressure, turning should be a lot easier.
When I’m going fast, turning on one wheel feels almost like turning on 2 - you just fall into it and then keep yourself from falling. At lower speeds, it feels a lot more forced - it feels like it requires a conscious twist.
Sometimes at really slow speeds I’ll let the uni tilt toward the turn and then I compensate by leaning a little to the outside. It’s gotta be horrible technique but it feels interesting to do it that way.
A skinny 20 tire is easier
But not by enough to bother with IMHO. So I have been practicing my circles with a 19 knobby. Not ideal, but that’s the uni I’m riding and I want to learn to turn it. Plus the tire has seen better days already so this is giving it a nice send off.
I did some of this practicing today. Basically I just ride in a circle in a parking lot.
There is 2 different ways I turn. The lean and fall into the turn tech, and the twist.
I am not trying to pretend I am good here, just sharing my beginner process.
I turn better right circles then left. I am sure that this is because I have done more right turns, and that practice left will smooth this out.
A fun way to practice is to try to ride a small circle without twisting. The whole arch is smooth, the pedaling constant, no black marks on the ground.
Then I try to ride a very small circle. This involves a lot of tire scuffing sort of twists. I can ride around in a meter circle. But it’s not smooth. It’s like a half pedal and a sharp wheel twist, then a pause as I rebalance and reset my body for the next twist. Almost like riding around a man hole cover using 4 turns.
So I would try riding around in small circles. As the arch gets slow enough you can pedal sharply and turn 90 with a twist. This will leave a tire mark. Basically, you can turn on a dime, but it’s done more by twisting the tire with body torque, then by riding through an arch.
Just riding down the road will teach you a lot about turning. But riding in circles is something I’m still getting better at very rapidly. It’s helped my turning a lot in just the past few weeks.
If your uni has a knobby, it’ll be easier to initiate the turns on smooth dirt, like a baseball diamond. Also the tire will las longer. Getting a road tire (like the Hookworm) would be good if it’s not a trials uni (only knobbies available for those rims).
practice.