- Off-camber trails like this can be really tricky.
- But you're going to find them absolutely everywhere,
no matter what kind of trails you're riding.
- So these are our tips to master
in the off-camber sections.
(mellow music)
- So what is off-camber?
Basically, it's where the hill is falling away,
and you're trying to ride across it.
Almost the opposite to a berm, where you've got
a banked corner to give you more grip,
here you're going to find less grip,
because you're much more likely to fall off
down the hill.
There's a few really important things to master
in these off-cambers, and the first one is line choice.
- Line choice is absolutely key when you're riding
these off-cambers sections.
You can see, just after a couple of runs,
this little rut has started to form.
And by turning into it, and actually getting the turning
done early, and looking straight ahead,
that is where I want to be going.
The bike is going to follow that path,
and it's the smoothest.
If we take those two examples that you can actually see
on the screen now, you can see that in the first one,
I actually start to drop away.
I didn't hold my line, and the bike was fighting the grip,
almost being pushed down.
So I didn't carry that momentum,
and it forced me to drop off the trail.
In the second attempt, I really pushed into the rut
at the top, followed the straight line,
looked straight ahead, and I was looking for points
where I could grip, where the tyres were going
to dig in, that is going to allow me to keep my momentum,
move forward with speed, and in complete control
of the bike.
- Okay, so here we've got an off-camber turn.
So, not only is our off-camber going to make you slide,
you're now trying to turn across it.
There's two lines here, the main line is down at the bottom,
where you've got a rut, it's almost acting like a berm.
So there's loads of support there, where you go up
and on this off-camber line.
And that's good because it cuts off that big corner.
The trail goes like this, and then left.
So if you take the main easy line,
it's going to be grippy,
but it's going to be a lot slower.
Cut up on this inside off-camber line,
and you'll be really fast out of it.
- And the key to this is really setting up early.
You need to turn harder here to get on
that off-camber line if you want to do it.
There's no point in rolling down here
and then deciding, oh I fancy going on the off-camber,
because you'll never find the grip there.
Also, it's worth bearing in mind
that in different conditions, say if this was wet,
this might not even be possible to stay on the inside line.
- You may have noticed in that last video
that in this part of the off-camber,
I actually seemed to push really hard into the ground.
So I did that because it's a bit of a compression here,
and if I try to make myself really heavy,
it's going to force my tyres into the ground,
and give them more grip.
So while I was pushing down and in,
I'm turning as well, trying to pop myself
off the bank a little bit.
And then I'm going light on this section,
because it's really off-camber, it's loose,
and I don't think I'm going to grip on that.
So I'm almost actually bunny-hopping this section,
to take it out of the equation.
- This off-camber section right here is a bit more
of an extreme example, and you're really fighting for grip.
But to find that grip, we're going to talk about
a technique called unweighting and weighting.
When you're weighting the bike,
it's when you know that you have grip.
You can push the bike in,
almost pretty low to dig those tyres in,
and then over an obstacle like this,
a slight rise or a root, for example,
you're gonna unweight the bike.
You're gonna go lighter on it,
so it just kind of lifts up,
and then back again when you know you've got grip,
you put your weight into it, dig those tyres
into the ground so the bike accelerates,
keep this momentum, and then coming into
the next section right here, I don't have grip.
So that is when I unweight, lift my weight up,
rise over the bike, and then dig in again,
hoping to keep as much momentum flowing through
this section so I get through it as clean as possible,
and into the next part.
- So, body position for off-cambers,
it's really important to try and get your
centre of gravity as low as possible.
So drop your outside foot, just as you would with a corner,
and try to get your weight down to that.
So actually crouch on the bike quite a lot as well.
Front to back, you want to be fairly equal,
but actually, I will drop a bit more weight onto the bars,
keep that front wheel gripping,
because you can allow the back wheel to step out
a little bit, but if that front wheel slides out,
then you're crashing.
I'm also playing around with the angle
of the bike underneath me, dipping the bike over,
trying to keep my weight to the outside,
depending on how much grip I've got on the floor.
- One point that is often overlooked when you're riding
off-camber is your braking.
And what I mean by this, is normally when you're braking,
what you use to slow down is these centre knobs.
They really dig into the ground and slow you down.
But in this off-camber section, they're not really working
in the same sense.
It's the edge knobs that are digging into the ground,
giving that grip to try to make you keep moving forward.
If you actually brake, then what's going to happen,
because the ground is moving away from you,
when you brake harshly, especially in the rear,
the back tyre could step out,
making you lose that grip.
You won't have the traction.
And you could actually find that that's what is going
to run you off down the hill,
and not keep in a straight line.
If you do want to do braking while you're in an off-camber,
you feel that you're going too fast,
then make sure you modulate on the brake.
And what I really mean by that
is that you feather the brake.
You don't have to do a harsh pull of it,
pulling it right in towards the bars,
because that is when you're going to skid
the back tyre out.
By locking that rear end up, you're gonna lose the grip,
and you're not gonna be able to keep moving forward.
Looking ahead is going to make it a lot easier
for you to identify those points where
you can unweight the bike, where the grip is gonna be,
and where you need to do your braking.
Speed also has a big effect on this,
if you're going faster, you want to be looking
further ahead.
If you're going a little bit slower,
then you want to be looking closer.
But you do not want to be looking at that front tyre.
If you're looking at your front tyre,
you can't identify those key features ahead of you.
And the chances are you're going to lose traction,
lose grip, and you're not gonna get through the section.
- So that is off-cambers.
They're pretty tricky.
Don't forget, you can always take your inside foot off
the dab if you feel like you need to.
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- Click over here for a comprehensive guide to cornering.
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off-camber straights and corners.