What makes a good corner?

Lateral and Rotational movement discussed along with pressure control

Today, we’re going to understand why angulating and rotating are super important in creating traction in turns.

If these sound like fancy words, angulating essentially means tipping the bike as you’re turning. Rotating is the rotation of the hips on top of that.

Angulating, in this context of the video, is about pressure control. When we do actually lean the bike in, there’s going to be less pressure on the inside hand and there’s going to be a lot more pressure on the outside hand. What this does is it makes sure your tires are tracked all the way through the corner.

Just to show you as an example: if we’re not angulating the bike, and the bike is tipped over and the weight’s on the inside, the bike can slide very easily. If there’s pressure on the outside of the bike, it doesn’t matter what I do — even if I lean on it — it’s not going to slide.

So, it’s the weight distribution when we’re angulating that makes the entire difference when we’re trying to create traction in the turns.

Now, while angulating takes care of the handlebar side of things, rotating your hips towards the outside of your bike will take care of the center and the rear of your bike — giving you a full-circle traction around the turn.

To summarize this, I want to emphasize that angulating is really good when we want to change direction quickly or just initiate the turn, but it’s the rotation that really takes the cake when creating lasting traction in turns where the support isn’t inherently there.