yaw

Would that guy keep up with Pidcock in the video I posted?

More upright bike? Yes please.

merlinextraligh

The point is that you want the bike to lean into the turn more than you do, counter rotating your hips allows this, Orpington you hips fights against it.

merlinextraligh

So Phinney the elder ( as distinguished from Tayler) was winning in the 70’s and 80’s so no YouTube videos, and a lot of what he wrote about cornering and descending can no longer be easily found on the internet, so I can’t match you post for post.

But you don’t win TDF stages as a non climber, and 200 plus crits if you can’t corner and descend.


and Pidcok in that video is not holding his hips open or the bike more up right than his body. In fact at one point where he is about to lose it, he corrects by pressing the bike down more.

following the counter steering approach allows mid turn corrections like Pidcock used. Opening your hips and keeping the bike more upright than your body makes such corrections much harder.

To paraphrase Yusuf Islam, you’re young that’s your fault.

merlinextraligh

And do we have a source for the quote rotate your hips into the corner?

merlinextraligh

And if we’re looking at scoreboard, Pidcock is still a TDF stage, 21 pro tour wins, and a couple hundred crit wins behind Phinney.

yaw

Source for the crotch pointing quote is Petersen, Grant. Just Ride: A Radically Practical Guide to Riding Your Bike (p. 13). Workman Publishing Company. Kindle Edition.

Worth noting that the same book mentions:

And this I agree with - try what works best, use what works for the specific corner and riding condition it works in.
There are a ton of factors that could warrant one over the other. Holding one technique above all others is a foolish artificial cage to put oneself in, but some techniques may be more accessible than others.

Let's not forget that I said that this initial tip I quoted is one that "I felt helped me most with cornering at speed".

I ride a few km of fast hilly descents every other day and the three things of note in my technique for fast corners that are too angled to pedal through are 1. knee out 2. hip open 3. countersteering pressure.

I am sure it can be done differently, but twisting myself any other way does not feel natural and any sort of perceived incongruence is what can really trip up cornering. I gave that hip advice to two people who were new to riding and it improved their confidence significantly. So that means it's an approachable and applicable technique. So in my personal context it is not so important that some vintage winner dude did things differently.

Troul 

The tires I roll on & braking setup I slap on determines how aggressive I can get. A worn set of tires or not ideal PSI along with pads/rotors that could be easily overran is a recipe for darwin soup.

merlinextraligh

Grant Peterson is probably the last guy I would look to for advice on how to go fast. He pretty much made a career railing against going fast.

merlinextraligh

So you can quote a mantra, that makes you feel good, but it doesn’t overcome physics. You say you open you knee, open your hip, and apply countersteering pressure. Yet one and two are fighting, rather than enabling 3.

Tp to extent the opening the hips thing helps it’s likely because turning your hips,and therefore your body, turns your head and eyes toward the direction you want to to go.

one of the most basic pieces of advice is that your body and bike will go where your eyes lead. So turning your body into the turn may be working for you because it’s leading your eyes into the turn.

However, it doesn’t counter the fact that hip angulation and the counter steering it encourages helps to corner faster,and with the ability,to modulate your line mid turn.

a more upright position, which the open hip encourages, works until it doesn’t. Overcook a turn, and need to adjust, or need to adjust a line mid turn because of a road hazard, an unanticipated vehicle, an unseen decreasing radius turn etc, and the bike more pushed over works much better than a more upright posture. The upright position tends to make it much harder to make mid turn corrections.

look at your own Pidcok video and you can se him adjusting his line by pushing the bike down to correct when he’s starting to lose it.

so net net you’re likely succeeding in spite of your mantra not because of it.

Perhaps switch the mantra to eyes up, look where you want to go.

yaw

Maybe you are taking it to some comical extremes for the sake of argument. There is only countersteering at work at speed, and at no point do I ever feel like I am hindering steering input. The only perceived steering related effect is that it is actually easier to confidently tighten the turn when needed because the body is more committed, typically this is the type of correction required to avoid running wide into traffic. Deviating from a line calls for positional changes in any event, and that is not precluded or difficult, unless...comical extremes.

Not really interested in contrasting this further, do what works for you. Those who don't know what gets them down the mountain safest and/or fastest, based on preferences and risk profile, experiment under benign conditions.

Other than that, a good tyre/wheel combo, strong brakes, precisely counterweight balanced wheels, and of course immersion waxed chains, are crucial, in ascending order of importance, of course.

roadcrankr

At first, I thought Yaw quoted from Phinney's technique. lol
I followed Phinney's method over the past twenty years and improved my cornering dramatically.
My three takeaways:
One, lean the bike more than the body.
Two, keep the knee tucked in - often times hugging the top tube.
And, three, pivot the hips slightly.
From my experience, leaning the bike puts more tire patch on the pavement.
Also, the tucked in knee places me in better position for that important first pedal stroke.

merlinextraligh

^ good taste in bikes