cornering good consistently i think is one of the hardest things about mountain biking
because things change like terrain changes the amount of grip
how wet it is all those things but here's a few tips on how to improve your corner
step one first take a look at what you're doing so if you can get a friend with a video
camera we've all got them on our phones just take some video of you riding and cornering
and put it in slow motion or even pause it and try and check out your technique
right so from the video you now know what to improve and just try and practice that over
and over and then video yourself again to make sure you're getting it right
next step i think it's a really important one it's repetition and i've seen this with quite
a few pros actually they've literally got cones out on the street from the house or on a fire
road and they're just carving slalom side to side and it's such a simple thing to do but
it's actually really hard especially to go left to right like you know just one way to the other
i think it's much easier to get one way better than the other so to improve one of them to get
them both up to equal level and then improve both of course i think is the key to repetition
all right hopefully you're feeling loose by now after all that slalom and hips are
loose you're ready to roll like the next thing to do is try and push your limit so by that
we try and push your lean angle over as much as you can until the bike starts to lose traction
i think this is like a really good uh fun way of improving your confidence it comes to
learning how to corner properly but how much grip you've got if your bike
sort of balances right front to back and obviously i find somewhere super soft so if i do fall off
it's going to be all right i would think it's yeah i can sort of roll around in this i'm not going to
get hurt and what i'm doing is trying to come in with a reasonable speed and then just lean the
bike over further and further and further so like i generally say we're like my corner and how to's
check those out already so keeping my body weight fairly upright to the outside of the
bike then angling the bike over and i'm trying to sort of get brave and push and push and push
elbow up on the outside hips the outside until i can just feel it start to drift
the good thing about angling over is then if i do feel that i can sort of pick the bike up
and it should save it if i've done it too much the bike starts to really slide out also i've got
my clips on today but i'm definitely unclipping i'm actually dragging my foot quite a lot because
that is the thing that's going to save me uh so i say find somewhere soft somewhere safe
and then learning how to push the bike a bit too far you'll then start to drift and
that is brilliant for knowing like i said body setup but also feeling confident both
ways again i've just done left pretty much but both ways get a good feeling for how to drift
i think the final piece of the puzzle for improving your cornering and mine is trying
to find the best grip from the conditions you're riding in and i think this is the hardest thing
i said before like conditions are always changing do it's different you know this is the the sort of
reason why i've crashed most i guess on a mountain bike it's sort of misjudging the amount of grip
i've got and crashing on a corner uh something i used to do when i raced downhill actually before
because sometimes you sit around for hours for your daniel race run what you'd often see people
doing i would do is kind of carving around at the top of the track so on a fire or whatever
just getting a feel for conditions if it's dry if it's wet just so you've got an idea
do a skid you'll haven't you know let off your break afterwards have a feel for how quickly
that rear tire grips again it's going to give you a good estimate of how much grip there is
but every corner is different so this is all about experimenting getting experience
trying to push the limits but also trying to find that limit of grip for every corner
all right hopefully something in this video at least one thing that you can look at i think
that's the thing i need to improve and for me i've just been sessioning these corners
over and over it's so much fun trying to get down like as smooth and as fast
as i can but like one in 10 times i get it right so obviously i'm not doing it enough
uh let me know in the comments down below for something that you're struggling with
the cornering wise and i'll try and jump in the comments for a while and help you out if i can
thumbs up if you love cornering and sliding your bike around