(energetic rock music)
- Pumping is a key skill for making speed on the trail,
but I see an awful lot of people pump using their arms
off the handle bars, it does actually work,
it makes a little bit of speed.
But there aren't many occasions where you want
to stick all that weight onto the bars,
so if you hit an obstacle, it's the perfect recipe
for going over the bars.
So if you start bringing it a bit further back on the bike,
using your hips to do it, that's a lot better
and a lot safer, then bring it even further back
behind the seat, it's a really safe position to be in
as I'm driving the bike forward, but also I can use
all that space to give it a really big pump.
Foot position on the pedal, sounds a really simple one
but if you get this wrong, it's really gonna hinder
your ride on technical stuff.
I see an awful lot of people ride too far forward
on their toes on the pedals.
That tips all your weight a little bit flatter,
like that on the pedals, which means that when you ride
in something rough, it's that easy for your weight
to start going forward towards the bars.
If you slide your foot a little bit further up,
you start riding more heel down, and that's what I call
being in the pedals, you'll just drive the bike forward.
So get that foot a bit further up, it's almost like
the ball on my foot is actually getting towards
the front of the pedal, that's gonna tip everything
a little bit further down and help out
on the technical stuff.
As you see I'm in clips today, if you look at the bottom
of my shoe, I have the cleat all the way back
towards the heel.
There's a bit of an argument about whether that's
better for pedalling, but it's definitely better
for riding technical stuff when you can move your weight
nicely through your feet.
Pulling on the handle bars to lift the front wheel.
This is by far and away the most common mistake
that I see people do.
What you need to do is use your weight to lift
the front wheel.
The biggest reason why you don't want to be pulling,
is if you pull on the bars to lift the front wheel,
to maybe get over an obstacle like this rock,
and then you get the timing wrong and drop it early,
your weight is still on the bars cuz you've pulled
the bars towards you, so now it's gonna send weight forward.
If you've used the correct technique of lifting
your front wheel using your weight, if you drop it early
you're still behind the bar cuz there's not much weight
on that front wheel, so you've got a good chance
of getting up and over that obstacle.
This really makes a big difference for jumps and drops
as well, cuz if you pull on the bars, the bars tend to go
a little bit sideways one way or the other,
and that's a massive reason why people hit jumps
and go sideways when they don't want to.
Almost the same as using your arms to lift the front wheel,
is using too much of your feet to lift the back wheel.
So something that people who ride clipped in can do,
okay it's easier to do it just picking your feet up
to lift up the back wheel, but there's a couple of reasons
why you don't wanna do that.
For jumps, you wanna get using your weight to do
a nice bunny hop so you can fire the front wheel
up into the air, and then use your weight
to lift the back wheel.
If you rely on pulling on your pedal to lift the back wheel,
you'd only ever be able to pick up your back wheel
as much space as you've got before you run out
of bend in your knees, and also on technical stuff,
if you pick your back wheel up with the feet,
your weight is still over that back wheel.
So if you drop that back wheel early onto a root
or a rock, you're gonna slam down onto that.
Cuz if you're using your weight properly,
your weight will be up and forward so that rear wheel
will land much lighter.
A common mistake I see an awful lot is having the bike
set up a little bit wrong.
I quite often see people ride with long stems
which are great if you're going up climbs,
but they say that they're struggling with drop offs
and steep downhills, and that is gonna make it harder
to get the weight back.
Things like tyres as well make a massive difference.
Not to say a bike is right or wrong, but you might
be able to set that bike up a little bit better
to help with your weaknesses.
This section is quite narrow, rooty, lumpy,
and there are tree stumps around, so if I'm spinning
a really fast RPM on the pedals, I'm getting my feet
closer to these obstacles all the time.
So I want to push a harder gear so I can predict
where my pedal's gonna be and try to miss these obstacles.
An awful lot of people turn in, lean the bike over,
but they stay in line with the bike with their body.
But a really good base technique for cornering
is to try and stay upright with your body
and get used to leaning the bike over underneath you.
You wanna keep your weight to the outside of the bike
and nice and low, it's a much more stable position
to be in, it should help with confidence in the turns.
Dropping the pedals early for cornering.
While dropping your outside foot is a really good
cornering technique, it's gonna get your weight
nice and low to find grip, an awful lot of people
will sit up really early and ride towards that corner
with their foot down.
That's not a stable position to be in, in these bumps here,
where your weight is then on one foot, it's harder
to control the bike, so stay up with flat pedals,
and dropping your outside foot should actually
start the corner.
Also some turns I do stay flat, if I corner one way
then the other really quick, which is really rough,
I'd stay up on flat pedals.
Braking in the corners.
Many people charge in way too hard, and then realise
that they then gotta break in the middle of turns,
causing you to either lose all your speed or slide out,
meaning then you gotta battle the bike back up to speed.
The art of flow really comes down to predicting
how much grip you've got, trying to break hard and early,
and then come off the breaks so you can flow through
that corner, giving you back that grip,
and you'll roll out with a good speed as well.
Being too mellow.
Occasionally you need a bit of aggression
to get through obstacles.
This is a big one for climbing when momentum is your friend
and you need to get up a tricky bit of trail.
Rather than coming too slow, then struggle for grip,
attack the section, but obviously if it's a long section
you may run out of steam, so measure your attacks.
So that is our top 10 most common riding mistakes,
things I've seen a lot of in the six years
I've been coaching, so a really good idea is to film
yourself riding, and have a look if you're doing
any of these little mistakes.
Or if you've got any mistakes you're making
and you need help with, leave us a comment down below.
Okay, for more skills videos from GMBN,
you can click up here for how to manual, by myself,
or for how to ride technical cross country trails
with Cy Richardson, click down here.
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