Cornering is inherently tricky because you are taking a motorcycle out of its natural stable state. Ever watched a race where the rider gets thrown off and the bike continues to travel straight and upright? That is what the motorcycle wants to do - with the wheels as twin gyroscopes, it just keeps going.
Once you’ve countersteered a motorbike into a turn, you need to achieve stability. The bike won’t do it on its own: what you do makes it stable. So, once you’ve turned in, here’s what you need to do with your body:
Nothing.
Don’t move around on the bike once in a corner, because it will unsettle it. You need to be like the world’s best pillion - stable and predictable, as though you are part of the bike. There is only one exception to this, dealt with in the next section.
Top racers drop as much bodyweight as possible into the inside of a corner. Knee out, bum halfway across the seat, upper body and elbows hanging way down - especially in the tightest part of the turn. The precise reasons and techniques you can learn at race school, but such extreme use of bodyweight isn’t what you need on the road.
For a start, the lower you are the less you can see ahead. Also, it’s designed for maximum commitment to a corner. On the road you don’t know what’s around the bend, so you need a margin to stop in.
Bodyweight counts, though. Your weight is key to maintaining the line and lean angle through the corner. And shifting across the seat a little prior to a turn keeps your weight to the inside, so you don’t have to lean the bike as far: helpful for ground clearance or in the wet.
There’s another trick, too. Pushing your upper body further into the corner and down can help tighten your line slightly without further steering input. Useful in a decreasing radius corner, or when a bend tightens up unexpectedly.
