welcome back to Berm Peak i'm Seth and today we're going to be doing something a little different
but kind of the same because we're continuing our mountain biking 101 series last time I answered
the questions that many of you were too afraid to ask so we mainly went over terminology things that
are said in these videos over and over again and for many of you who don't mountain bike this gave
you a base level of understanding sufficient to enjoy these videos today we're going to take it
a step further and go into the things that I think are next on the list of importance and
that is very basic mountain biking techniques and how to not piss people off let's start with that
let's start with bike park etiquette now at a bike park the cardinal rule the one thing that
you need to know is that you can't block the trail don't stand on the trail even if your bike brakes
even if you fall get off the trail if you have to stop next to the trail get as far to the side
as you can because people are not expecting to see somebody on the trail at a bike park
they're expecting to ride very fast so if they come around a corner and you're standing there
at best they're gonna get very angry at you at worst you're gonna cause a crash
i'm sorry man my bad dude that was a dick moving me now we've all heard it said that if somebody
gets injured it's best not to move them I would say the exception to that would be on
an active path at a bike park if your friend is laying there injured around a blind turn
things are going to go from bad to worse if you let them get run over by another mountain bike
so if you're out of the way of active trail corridors you are way ahead of the game at a
bike park bike parks are designed for mountain bikers so there's not a whole lot you can do
to piss people off as long as you're using basic courtesies that you would anywhere else
you're going to be a good citizen of a bike park but a lot of times you're going to be going to
a bike park with your friends now especially if you're with more experienced people they're
probably going to be prepared they're going to arrive there with their bike in working order
with all their gear on and they're going to want to get out of the car and start riding
don't be that guy that has to make a repair to their bike
or has to put on all their gear after they arrive 10 minutes late this is gonna make
your friends hate you and it's gonna make them not want to come to a bike park with you
another fine point at bike parks comes down to skidding skidding is the one trick that
everybody knows how to do somebody gets a bicycle they lock up the rear brake they skid it's fun
but it's also the thing that destroys trails most a properly built trail won't even really
get damaged by water but skidding is going to dig your tire knobs into the tread and tear it
up then that loose dirt is going to get muddy and those holes are going to get deeper and deeper and
somebody's going to have to come fix it so when you skid you kind of ruin things for everyone
at bike parks you will find areas where people congregate and wait to drop into trails
and sometimes it might seem like they're in line like they're waiting their turn to drop in
they're not you can drop in whenever you want as long as there's space to do so you can
just scoot past the crowd and drop in those people congregating or just taking a break
one thing I would say about dropping in is for your own sake if you're a beginner
wait for other more experienced riders to drop in before you if you drop in before
them chances are they're going to catch up to you and then you're going to have to experience
the anxiety of them creeping up on your tail if you give them space let them go in before you
then you're not going to have to deal with any of that and you can have the trail all to yourself
multi-use trail systems come with their own set of additional considerations because there are other
trail users on them multi-use trails like this one allow hikers and horseback riders in both
directions unfortunately for us mountain bikers we have to yield to everyone you have to yield to
hikers you have to yield to horseback riders and you have to yield to other mountain bikers who
are going uphill but the main thing is you don't want to create problems for other mountain bikers
some trails in this area have actually been closed down to mountain bikers because they just became
too much of a problem even if you don't care about being rude to people it reflects badly on
all of us and so when you are out on the trails on a mountain bike you have to represent us all
so the type of riding that you do on multi-use trails is going to be a little bit different than
what you do at a bike park a bike park is for partying and a multi-use trail is for exploring
whether you're on multi-use trails or a bike park you should mine the trail conditions
and by that I mean is the trail really wet is it really dusty what is the condition the actual
surface now you can find this out through local facebook groups talk to people who ride there
or go into a bike shop buy an energy bar and tap into their knowledge the reason this is important
is because if the conditions are bad you might actually be destroying the trail by riding it
another place you can check on trail conditions is trail forks trail forks is a mapping app that has
pretty much every mountain bike trail in it and it makes it really easy to find your way around
sometimes you can look there and on the actual trailer you want to ride
it'll give you an update on the conditions it'll say updated two days ago four days ago a week ago
that can give you an idea of what's going on also common sense if it rained like four inches
yesterday chances are today is not a good time to go for a ride now occasionally you'll find a day
like today where trail conditions are otherwise perfect but as you make your way into the trails
you find one or two trouble spots the question is what do you do the answer ride right through
the mud puddle right in the center if you do that you're destroying something that
was already destroyed now if you try to go around it you're going to widen the trail by
encroaching on habitat that wasn't trail before you're going to widen the trail and
you're going to make the repair efforts much more difficult so ride through the puddle not around it
so now that you know how to not piss people off and just be a good citizen of the trails
we can talk about techniques actually riding your bike now we're not going to talk about hitting
jumps or doing tricks we're going to talk about the very most basic things about mountain biking
starting with saddle height now you probably already know that to pedal a bike you should
have the seat up so that your leg is more or less straight you don't want to pedal with your seat
down because it's really bad for your knees and it's really inefficient but what you might not
know is that if you're going downhill for a long period of time you should probably have your seat
down also you should be standing up this is called an attack position
in an attack position you're going to have your body weight centered over the
bike you're going to have your arms bent and you're going to be ready to absorb impacts
so you may have seen more advanced riders riding on their back wheel with their
front wheel in the air you may think this is a wheelie but oftentimes it's actually a manual
a manual is when you bring your weight back and go up on your rear wheel without pedaling you're just
balancing there and you're not using the pedals to keep yourself up now whether we're talking about
wheelies or manuals this is not that important as a basic mountain bike technique however
it is important for you to be able to unweight your front wheel and get it up in the air a little
bit now sometimes where this might be important or if you're going into a whole bunch of chunk and
you don't want your front wheel to plow head first into it for instance if I were to go off of one of
these wooden drops I should pull back before I go off the drop so that my nose is up in the air and
my bike lands flat were I not to unweight my front wheel the front of my bike would dip down as soon
as it went off the end and I would not have a good time that's not fun so the key to unweighting your
front wheel is to first of all move your weight backwards as far as possible you want to make the
front of your bike very light so it's easy to pull up so what you want to do is before you go back
push down and snap your whole body back now this can feel a little bit unsettling at first you're
afraid you're going to go off the back of the bike or flip over so try it on a flat surface first and
get comfortable with it so when you encounter some kind of a drop on the trail you know what to do
so one of the most important techniques you need to learn to keep your bike in control is proper
braking now you have a brake lever on the right side of your bike and the left and depending on
what part of the world you're in these are going to control either the front or rear brakes pretty
much always you're going to want to use both of them at the same time now if your brakes are set
up properly you can do what's called feathering your brakes that is only applying them a little
bit if you lock them up you're going to lock up your front wheel and go over the handlebars or
you're going to skid your back wheel when your wheels are not spinning you can't keep your
bike under control and so you want to feather your brakes so that they continue to spin but also slow
down the bike now if you were to inspect the brake pads of an experienced mountain biker you would
notice that the front brake is worn down more than the rear that's because when you're slowing down
your weight is being shifted towards the front of the bike and more of the weight is on the
front wheel so your front wheel should actually be taking up more of the braking than your back wheel
beginners often just use their back wheel because they're afraid to squeeze the front too hard and
go over the handlebars if you learn how to feather your brakes and learn how to control them properly
that won't be a problem if you've been riding your new bike around you probably realize by now that
it has gears in one direction the bike goes faster and in the other direction it has more torque and
is easier to pedal but you also might realize that sometimes your gears make terrible clanging noises
a lot of the time this is caused by shifting under load
shifting under load happens when you are climbing a hill or putting down power on the pedals
and then you realize you have to be in a lower gear and so you start shifting while you're
putting tons of stress on the drivetrain at best you're going to hear loud terrible clanging noises
and at worst you're actually going to damage your drivetrain so the solution is don't shift
under load try to plan ahead always look in front of you and if you see you're going to
have to be downshifting soon do it while you're soft pedaling instead of when you get to the hill
and need to get into a low gear in an emergency you know you're soft pedaling when you're really
not putting that much pressure on the pedals at all in a perfect world that's always going to be
how you're going to shift now speaking of looking ahead that's a really important technique a lot
of new mountain bikers look down at their tire and when you look down at your tire you just
see what's right in front of you and it passes really quickly when you look out ahead you're
essentially slowing everything down you can see more of the trail try it if you look about let's
say 10 yards ahead of you you're going to be able to ride everything much better just imagine if you
were driving your car and looking at just the line right in front of you somebody would come
out into the middle of the road and you would hit into them so don't do the same thing on your bike
so that concludes the second episode of mountain biking 101 just like the first episode we went
over basic concepts so that you could take the next step from just learning terminology
now you know your way around your bike just a little bit and you can go out to a trail system
or bike park without pissing people off as always I didn't even come close to going over everything
and so there will be future episodes of this series and a place down in the comments for
you to ask questions there's no such thing as a stupid question probably more stupid to not ask
now that you know how to be a good citizen of the trails look like one get yourself a Berm Peak
jersey they're comfortable they wick moisture well they're lightweight and you're going to want to
wear them every day we have these new retro colors with the sunset pattern and they're available on
cognativemtb.com in the link below thanks for riding with me today and i'll see you next time