- Cornering mistakes can really rob you of your flow
but it's also super easy to actually fall off in corners.
Whoa, Rich! - Hiya, Neil.
- New presenter.
- I thought I was doing this one.
- All right, I'll leave it to you.
- I got it from here, buddy, don't worry.
So, yeah, cornering, we all make mistakes.
They're all part of mountain biking; we can't avoid corners.
But we're going to have a little look today
at what we can do to improve them.
(dramatic music)
So, whether you're a racer looking
to save those milliseconds or just a weekend warrior
looking to improve your technique,
today we're going to look at some basic types of corners
and what we can do in those corners to improve our technique
and make our riding a little bit more fun.
Generally, Neil, there's no turns
the same in mountain biking, they've all got
a bit of different variation in them.
- That is true.
We're at Bike Park though; there's lots of berms here today.
- We are and we're going to look, try and look
at three main types of turn that you might find.
So we're going to look at berms, switchbacks...
- Ooh the nasty switchbacks.
- Yeah, and some flat turns.
- Okay, right, I'll handle the berms, shall I?
- You do that and then let's see how you get on.
(bouncy electronic music)
- Berms, the mainstay of the bike park
and we're here at Rogate Bike Park today.
Loads of beautiful berms although even with berms,
no two are ever the same.
Depends on their size, their shape, how tight they are.
Also, the type of dirt.
Now, it's winter in the UK,
which normally means it's super wet but this place
is really sandy so you can see how well it drains
and it's just like sandpaper today.
Just a little bit of fluffy dirt on top, super grippy.
Now one thing to think about with berms,
if you can, is trying to get nice and high into them.
You're using that camber,
that's going to give you loads of grip.
If you can get nice and high and then drop down out of it
you've got that extra bit of momentum
coming from gravity, of course.
The worst thing you can do with a berm
is stick your front wheel over the top,
there's no coming back from that.
That's virtually a guaranteed crash.
Also, difference to a lot of other corners ,
with berms, if you hit them really hard, press into them,
you actually want to keep your feet fairly level
so without dropping the outside foot.
Stay up on two feet, just lower your body,
try and find all the grip in that berm.
(bouncy electronic music) - Cool, thanks for that Neil.
That's some good tips there on berms.
But now we're going to move onto flat turns.
And they are a favorite of mine, you find them all the time
back in old school world cups and we're here
and we're going to look at some.
So we've got a nice classic flat turn
where we're going to set up high, above these trees,
taking a wide line, come behind me, onto this flat area,
where we're then going to sprint out, down the trail.
There's a few tips and tricks to look at
on this one, so let's take a look.
Alright, so what are common mistakes
made in these flat turns?
Well let's break it down and look at this one first.
Our entrance, we got a couple of slippy routes,
so we're going to have to really think about how we set up
to enter this turn.
We're going to hop these to then bring us up nice and high.
Couple of mistakes that people will make here
is they'll be dropping down too low,
it'll put them at an awkward angle into the turn
and really sort of make things difficult
from the very beginning.
So we've had a look at the mistakes
at the beginning of the turn,
now let's take a look at the middle part of the turn.
Here, we've kind of got two sides of this stump behind me
that we can go, so we really want to either try and go
very high or straight through the middle here.
Personally, I would say the middle is a better line,
as I think too high is harder to come up onto.
The middle line will also give us nice arc in the turn
and carry us some nice speed through.
Okay, so this is it, the final part of our turn
and the flattest part.
We've already decided, we're going to set up
nice and wide out here
on the far right but what kind of mistakes do people make
when hitting these turns?
Now often you'll see people with
their pedals in the wrong position,
their body weight will be unevenly distributed.
And also braking, poor braking can massively effect
the amount of grip you have on these turns,
Especially on something a bit slicker.
So let's take a quick look
at what you can do to improve that.
Let's start with body position.
Keeping yourself low in the turn is key
as grip can be a lot less in this kind of turn.
Keeping our center of gravity as low as possible
will help you keep all the grip you can.
Outside pedal should also be dropped to support this
and keep yourself planted, with as much weight as possible
forced down through the suspension and into the tires.
(upbeat pop music)
Right so finally we've got a switchback or switchbacks.
Now these are generally a series or singular tight turns
where you're going to change direction really quickly.
Again, like with a lot of other turns,
line choice is really key.
As you can see here, this is quite a tight turn.
We've got an inside line
and we've also got a nice high line
which I'm going to have a go at and we'll see if Neil
can have a go at this lower line
and see what the differences is, is is is.
- I like Rich's line but what I'm going to try and do
is stick to this sort of rut.
It's kind of bermed up anyway on the inside
and that root is going to be pretty slick.
It's a little bit wet, so what I'm trying to do
is rail round the outside.
The big difference here will be how much speed
can I carry on the outside?
'Cause that's another big mistake with switchback corners
is sort of stuttering and losing your flow.
You want to carry your momentum all the way round
and I can really mess that up by going wide here.
So will it be as fast as Rich's?
There's only one way to find out.
(gravel crunches)
(upbeat pop music)
- [Rich Voiceover] Same as any corner,
try and come off the brakes.
This is especially important with really tight switchbacks,
where if you touch the brake mid-corner,
it's super easy to lose your balance.
(brakes squeal)
(upbeat pop music)
- Right Neil, so what have learnt today?
Well there's a lot of different corners
and looking at each one and assessing it
you can really ride each one differently.
- Absolutely; my biggest mistake is always
forgetting to look round corners.
I know I say it all the time, but if I don't ride very often
I realize that's what messing me up all the time.
Er, Rich, your first ever GMRV.
You didn't fall off like Doddy.
(shouting)
- I didn't, no, I've stayed rubber-side down the whole time!
- So far, so good.
It'll happen, it'll happen!
(laughing)
It you want to see some more skills videos,
down there's how to ride berms,
up there for flat corners.
- Yep and don't forget to give us a thumbs up
and hit the subscribe button.