Turning

[Adolf Ahlstorm]

Once you can ride for a good distance. it's time to begin turning. Turning isn't as easy as it looks, but, it's not as tough as it could be. begin by learning to go straight or close to it. Once you have atleast a little bit of a feel of controling your direction, find a building or something that you can do slow wide turns around. Try to go around it. Since there are walls to guide you your body will help you to make the turn. After you become comfortable with this find something that will allow you turn sharper and turn around that. eventually you won't need to have something to go around to turn and you will be able to turn very sharply. I hope this has been useful. If you have anyother tips please put a reply.

[hugah]

bit of a complicated tip, and im not going to pretend im good at turning becasue im not yet, but i practise on a basketball court and going in a figure of 8 round all corners helps a lot as your have to turn both ways and fairly sharply but not too much. Also i find that you should put a lot of pressure to the inside pedal (to the turn) and then as soon as the other pedal comes down put slightly more pressure onto it than you normaly do, its what got me to where i am with turning, i cant turn amazingly sharply yet, but im nearly there.

[Geo_120]

I started to learn how to do turns my holding on to a lamp post and just went round and round.

[Unibugg]

Originally Posted by Adolf Ahlstorm

Once you have atleast a little bit of a feel of controling your direction, find a building or something that you can do slow wide turns around. Try to go around it. Since there are walls to guide you your body will help you to make the turn.

I would agree with this if you have maybe a little more than a "little" control. Sure there is the incentive to make the turn because if you don't you'll hit the building, but I think setting up a simple obstacle coarse would be safer and also keep you from putting your hands out to use the building in case you didn't make the turn. Put cones or plastic bottles up to ride around in a smooth lot. Draw wide double lines with chalk in the pavement (if you go out of the lines there is not drop ) etc.. Gradually make the lines more curvy or narrower.

Then progress to going around obstacles that could hurt you or sharper turns on pavement. Turning comes with practice.. just ride and take it in steps. Often you'll find yourself easily making a turn that was once hard. Or surprising yourself that you successfully made it around an unexpected turn/ obstacle. (like that kid who stands in the middle of a path defying you! )

[banjo_gun_snake_wheels]

if you are new, you are probably going to want to look at the wheel or your feet, but don't. It helps to look where you want to go.

[mill_mobile]

Turn with your hips... If you try and turn like you do on a bike (leaning) you will UPD.
Ride along, swing your hips round and the uni will follow (think of it as a front wheel of a bike, to turn sharp you must 'swing' it round.
EDIT: I know turning on a bike requires both leaning and turning the bars, just think of it as 2 different actions.
Make sense?
J

[bad310]

I have been riding well for three days now, I have had the uni for five days. I learnt in the wrong order going by what a lot of people on this site say, but I learnt to freemount first and then to ride along (I learnt to do them before I found this site), now I find myself needing to turn.
I can kind of turn left a bit, but it looks like i am trying to swim through the air (arms going everywhere) and then I lose my balance and, hello UPD. Is this normal to be like this while learning or should I try to focus on doing something differently?
Thanks in advance, Mitchell

[vanpaun]

to turn (learn) just think where you are, where you want to be, and do it

[Young at heart]

Ah..the Zen of turning. Or, beam me around the corner, Scottie!

[skilewis74]

Another old thread

Originally Posted by mill_mobile

Turn with your hips... If you try and turn like you do on a bike (leaning) you will UPD.

+1
It's more like turning on skiis. You initiate w/ your hips but how you pressurize you feet makes a difference. put a bit more pressure on the downward leg of the direction you want to turn in. Also you can "pull" your feet to the side (they don't actually move on the pedal.

Also leaning can get you turning. Normally I always do some of the above, but then I put on a wider tire on my Muni which had a rounder profile than before. At slow speeds I had to pedal more smothly when trying to go streight or else it would zig zag. And since it was heavier, once going at a moderate pace, it had more inertia and didn't want to turn by the above methods, but did respond well to leaning.