Dual Sport Motorcycle Skills - Counter-Balancing

Many riding skills can be learned well in a parking lot, before they are needed on the trail. Information on such skills is to be found in Skills documents like this one. These articles present more detailed breakdowns of specific skills mentioned in the Challenges document, along with thoughts on how to teach yourself those skills. For more information on why / when this skill is required, see the Challenges post.

Remember to check the "Links: Riding Technique" section in the sidebar for more thoughts on how to handle your motorcycle off pavement. As I find pertinent links or they are sent to me, I will add them there.

Keep in mind that however definitive the text may come across, this is just some blog and I am just some guy. Neither of us knows all there is to know about riding motorcycles, and some or all of what we know may be dangerously wrong.

Last Update: 12/08/06

Counter-balancing is a term that gets used for a couple different things, which is nice because that makes learning how to do it that much more challenging. For the purposes of this blog, counter-balancing involves leaning the bike into the turn (what you are used to doing), and your body out of the turn (what sounds crazy if you have yet to try it).

This is not an exclusively off-road skill. I practice it all the time on pavement, seated. In fact, I think that in most cases, it is a more valuable turning technique than the usual leaning into the turn thing. Here is my line of thinking:

Leaning into a turn with your bike:

• Puts your body weight low and inside, allowing you to lean the bike less in the turn
• Puts the bike further to the outside of the turn than your body
• Puts your head closer to the apex of the turn

The results, in relative order, are:

• Your inside peg is slightly less likely to get ripped off by a passing Bott’s Dot
• If the tires start to slip then the bike, already out from directly under you, will slip further out from under you
• Your eyes, being nearer the apex of the turn, cannot see very far into / around the turn
• Your head is slightly more likely to get lopped clean off by oncoming traffic

Leaning away from the turn (counter-balancing):

• Requires that you lean the bike slightly more than usual
• Puts your body weight higher and outside, over or even outside, relative to the bike
• Puts your head further to the outside of the turn

The results, in relative order, are:

• You are slightly more likely to knick that Bott’s Dot
• If you lose traction the bike will slide under, instead of out from under, you
• You can see significantly further into / around the turn
• As an added bonus, counter-steering seems to make it much easier to control the bike while turning very slowly.

Question: How often are you ripping pegs off on Bott’s Dots*?

A lot of the twisty roads I ride have a little gravel kicked up in the turns, from cagers dragging their tires through the gravel shoulder on the inside edges of turns. These windy roads – generally winding along one side of a canyon – often have a fairly steep uphill slope on one side, limiting visibility. Further, although the old Shadow was a different story, I have yet to drag a peg on my GS. Do the math: Do I need to worry about scraping my bike in a turn, or visibility and traction?

This is how you ease into it: Start by riding in a straight line. Now shift your hips side to side, without changing where you are in the seat (in other words, the seat moves with your hips). You want your hips – and the bike with them – to shift side to side, while for the most part, your head, and the tires, continue traveling in a straight line. Imagine looking down at yourself from above as you ride: A line tracing the path of your hips curves side to side noticeably. Lines tracing the path of your head, and the point of contact between your rear tire and the road, curve markedly less.

You will have noticed by now that if you hold the lean too long the bike starts to turn. Go find a curvy road and let it. Start off slow of course, until you develop a feel for the maneouver. Shift your hips into the turn, and keep your shoulders out of it – NOW – here is where your average description of this trick gets confusing. Actually, you don’t want your hips toward the inside of the turn, really. You want the bike to lean toward the apex of the turn, but when counter-steering, your body needs to stay outside, counter-balancing the bike. What ends up happening as you try to increase the lean of the bike is you will gravitate toward the outside edge of the seat -- that is, now you are changing where you sit on the bike. It is as if you are shifting your buttocks so you are always sitting on the portion of the seat that is furthest from the ground. You may feel as if you are leaning to the outside of the turn, while you may actually be seated not quite straight up and down.

Watching from behind as a rider in front of you counter-steers through a sharp left turn may look a bit like this: Staying in a mostly seated position, the rider nevertheless shifts his butt to the right edge of the seat – the side that will be on top, when the bike is leaning. The rider’s arms both move to his left as the bars, seat, the entire upper portion of the bike, drops closer to the ground as the bike leans left. The rider’s body, if not completely upright, is much more upright than the bike is. The rider’s sight line, normally between the handlebars, may even be around the outside of the right handlebar, or his eyes may be vertically above the right bar end. The rider’s left arm will be nearly straight, and his right crossed close in front of him such that his right hand is more or less in line with his chest. His left knee might be out or in, but his right knee is likely pressing against the right side of the tank, helping to push the bike into the turn.

It may help to also read the sections on standing on the pegs, and steering with feet and knees, before working on this section. You will see a repeated theme.


* I did that once. A fellow who was reroofing his house pointed my peg out to me when I turned back to look for it: It had lodged itself in the crook of two branches, 20 feet up a redwood tree.

Add your knowledge to this article, or ask questions, using the "Post a Comment" link below. Want to share a descriptive picture of the terrain / techniques under discussion? Just email it to me!