- We all love going fast on our E-bikes
but are you actually getting the most
out of the trails that you ride?
Here's my top tips to ride faster for free.
(chill music)
Increasing your tire pressure is gonna give you
a faster rolling tire, great if you're riding
fire roads and things like that,
but if you are riding proper off road terrain
it's going to be a lot less grip and a lot harsher ride.
Saddle height is really important on your E-bike too,
you wanna make sure there's a slight dip
in your leg at the bottom of the stroke
when the saddle's at it's highest point,
any lower than that and you won't be getting
the maximum power from your body.
Pumping can actually give you a lot of extra speed
out on the trail, just make sure you're putting in
a lot of effort on every single feature out on the trail.
Corners can make or break your speed
out on the trail so it's really important to get them right,
I really favor slow in, fast out technique,
meaning that you can get your line,
your footwork, look around the corner
and exit that corner as fast as possible.
If you're coming in hot, chances are your lines
gonna be all over the place, your feet
are gonna be in bad positions too,
it's just gonna make a real mess of the corner.
When it comes to carrying speed and jumps,
you really need to try and squash those jumps
to keep the bike low, if you're popping the jumps up
really high it means you're wasting valuable seconds
whilst your wheels aren't in contact with the ground.
Keep it low, keep those wheels driving,
it's gonna carry a lot more speed.
Riding with riders that are better than you
is a really great way of increasing
your speed out on the trails.
When you first see those guys ride,
you'll be absolutely blown away by their skills,
the lines they take, how they jump,
the way they corner, but that will soon be you,
if you ride with those guys.
You really need to look ahead when it comes
to riding the trails, that way you can anticipate
the terrain that's coming a lot quicker
allowing you to select what power mode you need to be in,
what gear you need to be in, where you're gonna have
your seat post dropper and what line you're gonna choose.
If you looking down at your front wheel
you're gonna make a load of mistakes
and the flow simply isn't gonna happen.
Lookin' at the lines that you use
out on the trail can actually increase your speed
massively, especially on tear or downhill sections.
Here we've got a typical section,
we've got a hairpin, switch right hander,
but when I was riding this trail,
there's a route behind me here which actually pushes you
across to the right hand side of the trail as you enter,
but there's a sneaky line where you can hop
the big tree route to my left and open up that corner,
meaning the entry speed into the corner
is going to be a lot faster
and your gonna be able to power up that climb,
rather than this right hand line
you're gonna come in, you're gonna almost come
to a stand still, then have to maintain
that momentum up the hill.
Any feature that's out on the trail that disturbs your flow
is in turn gonna be taking speed away from you,
in front of me is a rock garden with some roots,
if I simply roll across this, my suspension,
my wheels are going to be slowed down a lot by it.
But I've actually noticed a nice root in front of it,
meaning that if I hit that with enough commitment
I can actually bump jump off of that root
and clear this whole section, in turn
the exit speed is gonna be almost doubled.
When things get crazy fast out on the trails,
it's time to get aero, you might have seen
the Tour De France riders descending,
tucks up into tiny little balls on their bikes,
that way they're maximizing the air flow over them,
getting aero, the same applies to your mountain bike,
if you're coming down the hill bot upright
with your dropper upright, you're gonna be acting
like a big sail, it's time to get down and get aero
and gain a few miles per hour.
Braking less is obviously gonna increase your speed
on the trail a lot more, were all guilty of this thing
called comfort braking, sections where we just
slightly break and drag our brakes a little bit
is actually not doing a lot to slow you down,
it's just your brain getting scared
and pulling those brakes on, you're fine if you just
release the brakes the bikes actually gonna
flow through that section a lot faster,
it's gonna increase the speed a lot more too.
Making two trail features into one
can increase your speed massively out on the trail,
in front of me here I've got two rollers,
meaning that if you ride it at a mediums pace,
you're probably gonna roll through those tow rollers,
but if you come in committed you can actually make that
one double style jump, increasing your speed probably
on the landing by up to about twice.
So come in committed, pick up, big jump,
linking the two, you'll be flying down the trail.
So there you go, I really hope you've enjoyed today's video
on how to ride your trails faster for free,
if you wanna see a master at work,
I really suggest you check out Fabien Barel
finding flow out on the trail,
that's a really cool video up here,
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