there are u-turns and there are being able to turn around everywhere and anywhere kind
of u-turns welcome back to mini-tip monday when it comes to u-turns there's a couple of schools
of thought now as an off-road adventure kind of rider i like my bike skills to work for me
regardless of the situation i'm in the kind of u-turn where you need a lot of commitment
and a little bit of speed and a fair amount of lean angle the kind of high grip u-turn
it's not a u-turn for me it doesn't work in every situation so the u-turn that we're gonna break
down today is one where your slow speed in control and it'll work in pretty much every environment
when it comes to performing great u-turns in my mind at least there's four requisite skill sets
that you need to develop and work towards mastering to perform a great comfortable
u-turn in pretty much every scenario the first one of those skill sets is your vision when it
comes to your vision where you look when you look and how you look are very important to
being able to make a motorcycle turn in a tight confined space and doing so in a comfortable way
the first part of this is always to survey all of the terrain in front of you you need to see
where you're going to turn and pick your spot to start your turn and have some idea of what's in
between bumps holes mud etc once i've surveyed the whole turn area and i've got a general
idea of where i'm going to do my u-turn i then pick a spot depending on my speed between one
and two meters in front of the front wheel in the direction i want to go quite a common tip
is that you should always look up look round the corner but when we're doing a u-turn at slow speed
if you blindly look at the horizon you ignore the ground under your front wheel
and if your gaze drops too far you blindly ignore what's coming it becomes too rushed for your
brain to deal with so we're looking for a nice middle ground where we can take in the terrain
but not ignore the bigger picture once my gaze is set i want it to be going in the direction that
i'm going and the main reason for this is it lets your upper body follow your head naturally when
we turn our head in one direction our upper body follows and that lets the handlebars
of the bike turn the handlebars turn in one direction the bike will go in that direction
what happens when we're trying to do a u-turn in a tight place in first gear the minimum radius of
your turn is set by the speed of the gear and the only way to tighten that radius is to lean over
now if you're in a tight space and you're trying to do it like that essentially you're a bit of a
passenger if your judgment is off slightly you don't really have much of an option but to ride
into the obstacle in front of you so i believe being able to control the speed of the bike by
using the clutch and determining the amount of drive at the rear wheel is a huge skill to have
if i want to slow my u-turn down and tighten my radius up i'm going to bring the clutch in
slightly and slip it if i need to pick the bike back up or i have room to expand my u-turn again
i'm gonna feed that clutch back out with a little bit of revs so that it stands the bike up now a
really big part of this is understanding that you don't have to bring the clutch
all the way in to the handlebars to completely disengage it and likewise i don't have to let
the clutch all the way out to engage it there's a nice middle ground there where a small amount of
movement does a lot and if we work in this window of operation you learn to have more control more
finesse and slipping the clutch becomes less of a risky thing you'll also notice in the video that
i don't use four fingers on the clutch for a lot of road riders this is going to be controversial
but there's some really good theory with your slow speed writing as to why using less fingers
on the control is important primarily it's about a primal response that we have when we're panicked
naturally when we panic we grab and unfortunately if you lose your balance a little bit and you have
four fingers over the lever and you grab the clutch you pull the clutch in you lose your
balance and you fall over the idea with using two or one finger on the clutch is that it gives
us a little bit of separation so i can use the clutch independent of my balance or my fear level
if i panic i make a mistake i can still feed the clutch back out and pick myself up without
committing to just having the clutch in all the way to the ground the key to a good u-turn and
being able to control your speed is purely about clutch modulation if you can determine the exact
speed you need be able to take drive away and add drive in at will with precision you're going to
find your u-turns dramatically easier now learning to do this it's complicated so i really recommend
finding a nice gentle uphill to do this on so that you can feed the clutch out bring it in a
little bit and just slowly learn to control your speed with a little bit of precision and without
feeling like you need to bring the clutch all the way to the handlebars or all the way out again
now that you know where to look and you know how to control the speed of your bike the next part
is learning to make the bike turn now whenever we turn a motorcycle in any regards the handlebars
have to turn a little bit and the bike has to lean over that's how they go around corners
when we start to slow things down gravity comes into play in a big way if we go slow
and gravity overpowers a forward motion the bike's going to fall over simple physics that doesn't
change we can't fight physics but what we can do is work with it so the goal of being balanced when
you turn the bike at slow speed is about using our body weight as a counterbalance so our body
position is going to change a lot from normal street riding firstly my butt is going to come
up off the seat and to the outside of the seat when my butt comes to the outside
of the seat my hips are also going to turn slightly inward so that my knees my hips my
upper body and my shoulders are all facing in the direction i want to go the more you
exaggerate this the more extreme you can make your u-turns and the more you can lean the bike over
now at the risk of adding more controversy to this video i think being able to break
and slow down and control your speed mid-turn is a really useful skill to have in the toolbox now
by braking i don't mean just grabbing a handful of front brake and expecting that to be okay it
won't you will topple over you will lose your balance because you've surprised the bike when i
say braking i mean a gentle progressive squeeze of one of the brakes to control your speed and
slow the bike down without causing a problem now there's a lot of school of thought about
which brake is better for this and honestly they both work if you use them well there's
a little bit of learning you've got to do about how they affect the bike and what the end result
of pulling one of those brakes is going to be so i suggest it's something you practice in a straight
line the front brake will operate differently from the back brake and which brake you choose
to use will ultimately be determined by the position you're in and which one you can get to
now it's time to do the actual u-turn i don't want it fast committed or sketchy i don't want
to take any unnecessary risks and i also want to give myself as much room as i possibly can
when i go to do my u-turn i'm going to pull over to the side of the track as far as possible
there's a little bit of extra i can take there maybe a bit of grass or something
i'm going to take it the more space you've got the easier your u-turn is going to be
now when it comes to initiating the term the first step is to lift your bum off the seat and move it
to the outside that process is going to give you that counterbalance you need but also as we move
our bum to the outside if our feet are still on the foot pegs our hips and our knees are going
to turn in and that'll let the bike turn once the bike leans over as long as we don't fight
it with the handlebars it will start to tip into the corner once it's tipped in we need to control
our speed with the clutch find that point where you have the nice amount of constant drive that
makes you feel comfortable and as you come around the corner and you get to the point where you're
comfortable and you've done your u-turn feed the clutch back out the bike will stand up again
and you can ride off into the sunset feeling pretty good about yourself now if you mess it up
don't worry it's not a big deal pull the clutch in squeeze one of the brakes nice and gently
and come to a stop because we haven't approached any of this in an overly enthusiastic way because
our balance is already set if you need to stop it's just a case of stopping gently and calmly
so that's how you do a basic u-turn being able to control your bike in this way in
slow speed with good balance and good clutch control lets you have a skill set that work in
a huge amount of variables it's like having a full tool box rather than just a single spanner
now you can take that and do it pretty much anywhere i hope you've enjoyed this video
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