- Today, we're gonna dive deep into
one of the least talked about aspects of mountain biking.
Something so obvious and mundane that it's overlooked
by nearly everyone.
That's right folks, it's time to learn how to brake.
Huh. Okay.
(upbeat music)
(tires scratching)
(upbeat music)
(pleasant music)
Wait, what's that you say?
You just brake when you want to slow down
and then let go when you want to go fast.
That's it.
Actually.
Yeah, they're right.
Thanks so much for watching.
Don't forget the face plant that like button.
Wait wait wait it's not that simple. It never is with me.
Turns out there's actually so much involved
to maximize your trail braking,
to increase control and speed.
That's right, braking properly makes you faster.
But what should the ratio of front to back brake be?
Is it bad to lock up the brakes? How should I set them?
Where should you be braking?
Where should you not be braking?
How do you do stoppies like Bernard Kerr?
That last one is a little bit tricky.
But something I think most people don't know
is that the fastest and best riders in the world
are actually the best at slowing down.
Seems crazy until you realize that being able to brake
with great technique, gives you the confidence to go faster
because you know you can scrub that speed off
in a heartbeat.
First of all, let's make sure
your brakes are setup correctly.
We covered brake types, sizes, setup,
and why all the different things work the way they do
in detail in the Bike Setup vid, so go watch that
if you wanna learn more.
My recommended setup is to use one finger braking,
if you can, with the lever set up
so your finger is at the end of the lever
and the lever pulls to the inside of your middle finger
with the bite point, close to the bars. But not touching.
Lever and angle is a personal preference,
but for mountain biking, you should keep it
somewhere between parallel to the ground
and at a 45 degree downward angle.
Braking is super variable thing
and I'm going to separate into two different types
to simplify some explanations in the video.
The first type is speed control or comfort braking,
which is used to battle against gravity
to stop you from going faster.
You don't really slow down,
you're just maintaining a comfortable speed
and it's difficult to tell if someone's doing it
unless they've got a couple of right honkers in their bike.
The second type is aggressive deceleration,
which I call race braking.
This is much more focused type of braking
that is used to decelerate and prepare for features
on trail and it's much more obvious to our casual observer.
In the previous body positioning video,
I talked about the default boss stance
and how important it was to stay centered in the bike
unless you're riding through rough sections
or performing certain maneuvers.
The other situation is when braking. Kind of.
If you don't slide your weight back,
when you hit the brakes,
your upper body will try to keep going forwards
and will lever the bike around the front wheel
in a beautiful arc and deposit you out the front door.
(laughs)
So, when braking you have to push the bike forwards,
which pushes your weight back to stop this from happening.
The harder you decelerate,
the more you need to shift your weight back
to combat these forces.
The further back you go, the lower you will naturally get,
which also helps in these situations.
So if you're delicately comfort braking,
you don't need to move far,
but if you've just watched your mate have a yard sale
right in front of you and you need to stop ASAP,
big push back and a haul in those anchors.
Not only does this weight shift help to stop you
from potentially having a terrible time,
it also helps get the maximum amount of stopping power
out of your tires.
There's two main forces on display
during a braking maneuver,
gravity acting vertically downwards,
and the mass of your bike and body
decelerating horizontally forwards.
When you add these two forces together,
you get a diagonal force moving down and forwards
from your center of mass.
If the forward force is high enough from braking hard
and your position is peer enough,
standing up tall and forward, that means the diagonal force
points in front of your front wheels
and that will rotate you forwards.
Obviously, this is bad news in terms of crash potential,
but it also means the back wheel has no weight in it
and is not able to contribute to slowing you down.
When you shift your weight back,
it pushes the bike forwards,
that means when you draw the same diagonal line
from the center of your mass,
it actually falls between the two tires,
meaning they are more evenly weighted.
This means you can use the shifting of your body weight
to control the grip between the two wheels.
And that's pretty cool.
When braking, I find it's good to have the arms
almost straight as there will be a lot of force
going through those arms and you don't want to be
dealing with all that force with bent arms.
Also, the harder you brake,
the more you should dip your heels and wrists
so that they're perpendicular to the forces acting on them.
One more thing to add to the basic principles
is that before you release the brakes,
you need to come back forward to that centered boss stance.
If you don't and release the brakes anyway,
the bike will try to get away from you.
Engaging the weight back, passenger mode,
which is never ideal.
(laughter)
Brakes should only be fully released
just as you settle back into that center position.
(pleasant music)
You can practice this weight shift,
cruising down a road to keep things simple.
Okay, I can sense some extra wrinkles
forming on your brains now.
Let's start applying the above, to some trails.
I like to start with the number one mistake
that I see most people making,
and it's not utilizing the front brake enough
on steep tracks.
Everyone has done this.
It's the default thing to do and some uninformed people
even teach others to do it.
Because, I mean it seems safe.
It's the OG bro tip, scream through the forest
as you see your bud dropping into some gnarly section.
"You just lean back. Back brake only."
- [Cameraman] Lean back.
Lean back.
- [Biker] Whoa.
- [Cameraman] Lean back.
- Hopefully we learned earlier that a lot of the forces
when braking go into the front wheel, helping it to grip.
So you're actually throwing most of your braking power
out the window by not trusting it and utilizing it.
Best way to practice this, is to find a nice steep
consistent slope or bit of trail
that you can comfortably ride down,
then challenge yourself to ride down on it
with only your rear brake on or only your front brake.
Use your body weight to help shift over the wheel
you're braking with to try and get the most grip
out of it with a goal to getting down the section,
smooth and controlled.
Shifting your weight over the back wheel
is a piece of cake, but getting your weight over the front
can be scary.
I find the best way to adjust the pressure
is to have straight arms and then use my legs
to push my weight forward and back
to adjust the pressure in my hands.
You should feel like you're up on top of the bars
and not hiding behind them.
You will find that points, you will lock up your wheel
and skid.
The challenge is to learn to smoothly modulate
your braking power.
Squeeze firmer to slow down more
but if you feel it slipping, ease off the power.
Get traction again.
Once you get a hang of this drill,
I bet it's easier to control your speed
with your front brake.
Trust it, because it is key to riding steep trails
like a boss.
So, where should you brake on the trail?
The disappointing answer to that question is,
wherever you want and
wherever there is grip to do so.
But I think there's a better question to ask
and that's, where should you not be braking?
Simple answer is anywhere you need directional grip,
which includes corners,
(ground rumbling)
off-cambres,
slippy roots, that kind of thing.
Anywhere there's nothing to slow down for,
and anywhere you need your suspension to work at its best.
In an ideal world, you should only brake
before any high energy features like turns
that can't be taken at the speed you're going
or huge compressions.
That's really hard to picture and implement,
so let's give you something to actually apply on the trail.
I'd start with reducing comfort braking.
To do this, pick a section of trail
that's mostly straight but littered with little obstacles,
like rocks and roots and maybe it's just got
a few wiggles in it.
Something that would make you want to drag your brakes.
Pick an entrance point to the section
and a target that you want to try
and stay off your brakes until.
There's two things that you then have to do
to make this happen.
When you get to your chosen section,
you need to get your weight centered.
Boss stance. Get in charge.
When the speed picks up, the temptation is to lean back
and it feels safe, but it can cause you to go off line
and get in trouble.
Number two is to look ahead at where you are going.
If you do it normally, try this staying off the brakes,
you'll be going faster than usual.
So you need to give this extra speed a direction
by looking where you want to go.
Don't focus on the specifics,
just look at the shape of the trail.
If that worked, then brilliant that's progress.
If you didn't manage it, no stress. You are making progress.
Keep setting yourself little challenges like this
to encourage you to not comfort brake,
and you'll find yourself doing it naturally.
Once you start reducing the comfort braking,
you'll find you start coming into
the high energy features and turns way quicker,
and that's where race braking comes in.
You want to do this late, hard,
and do it where there's plenty of grip.
No point trying to brake just before a feature
if it's covered in loads of slippy roots.
Choose a spot where there's good traction
and you can usually use a bit of lane choice
to find grippier, smoother ground
to allow you to brake even later.
The way to practice this is to pick a corner
with a nice fast run in, on not too steep a trail
and set up a braking zone.
Make the start of the braking zone early to begin with
and you can move it around
as you get a little bit better with this.
The X of the braking zone should be just at the turn.
Come in with no braking
so that's reducing your comfort braking in the way in,
then brake hard at the marker to scrub your speed off fast.
Then get back in charge of the bike and then off the brakes
for the feature.
Like all conscious trails, start slow and build up a speed.
This takes a lot of practice to get right
and it's really good once you get it.
It's one of my favorite feelings in a bike
to come proper, flatter, get hard on the brake's heels,
then dig in the tires into the ground
and just get cleanly off of them and rail the turn.
So hard to be at path like every time,
but so good when you get it right.
So this section here is absolutely perfect
for looking at the different kinds of brake in.
So this is a comfort brake in section
over the bottom up there, coming pretty quick
and then it gets real narrow down here.
There's a big stump, narrow trees and a blind crest.
It's the kind of things that you just,
you wanna slow down for.
But really, it's straight line.
You don't need to slow down, but you want to.
So this would be a perfect example
of somewhere you could try and set an in point,
coming out of the bottom, set an end point
just down here by the camera, and try and not brake.
I'm gonna focus on looking ahead, staying off the brakes,
keeping that weight centered.
But then it leads you into a race brake in situation,
which is just after this.
So I've come through the gap in the trees, just up there,
over that crest.
I've not looked at the trees. I've not looked at the stump.
I've looked through to the exit, stop comfort braking.
You hit this road crossing and then down here,
bug tree with some juicy roots coming out of it
and then a really tight turn.
And the ground here is a bit off camera.
If I was to stay off of the brakes, into this section,
do not gonna get enough traction there
to be able to slow down for the turn.
And it's gonna be
exciting.
(ground rumbling)
Not gonna get riding that.
So what I'm gonna need to do is, do my hard race braking
scrubbing off the speed here on the road.
There is a nice flat bit of road
and you're gonna be compressing into it
making those tires grip into the ground,
scrub the speed off here.
But then I'm not gonna immediately let go of the brakes
because I still need to control the speed.
So I'm gonna do a little bit of speed control braking,
bit of comfort braking just here,
off as I go over the roots,
back on, on the firm ground in the other side of the roots
and then finally off of the turn.
So I'm not braking where our wheels could slip.
I'm trying to do it where there's grip.
A lot of people coming into this, would see these roots
and maybe it get pushed low down into the corner,
but really with a better lane choice, set up a bit higher,
you're gonna make this turn go a lot nicer.
So, looking ahead, staying off the brakes,
no comfort braking,
hard race braking, lay as possible, scrubbing the speed off.
Little bit of delicacy coming through all these roots,
control the speed and finally,
rule that turn.
Sounds so simple.
It's not.
(laughs)
It's really hard.
But this is the kind of thing that you got to practice.
Braking, once you start getting it right,
really really just helps things flow.
Hopefully you learned something today and if you did,
I love a nice big juicy thumbs up on the vid.
It's free to do and I'll put a big smile on my face.
(laughs)
If you've got any questions I'm gonna be hanging around
in the comments for an hour after this goes live
to try and answer them all.
But now, it's all up to you.
Get out there. Pack a braking mistake you always make.
Use my teachings, eradicate that error,
subscribe to the channel and I'll see you in the next video.
It's all about pumping and it's gonna be fantastic.
(fun music)
All right, are you still rolling?
Is it?
Are we done? Is it? Are we done?
(sighs)
- [Cameraman] Where is he? Where is he?
- [Ben] Guys.
- [Cameraman] Where is he?
- [Ben] Over here.
- [Cameraman] Oh there he is. I got him.
(ground rumbling)
(cameraman laughing)