- Welcome back you beautiful people,
today I'm going to bring it down a level all the way down
to the basic skills that you need to know
on how to ride a mountain bike or any bicycle out there.
Now you can learn these tricks anywhere on the flat ground.
Now I'm going to strip it down to the bare bones,
but I'm out here in the woods, in the Surrey Hills
on a beautiful sunny day.
I want to move here.
Let's get started on the first one.
All right this first round I'm going to show you,
is just basically stood up when your bike.
It's quite intimidating being stood up
on your bike because you probably find yourself,
your body weight is too far forward
and you're on your toes or you're leaning too back,
which is all your body weight on your rear wheel.
You want to keep your body weight quite central to your bike.
You want to have your knees bent and elbows bent
and you'll be looking ahead as well
and get used to just moving back and forward on your bike
just so you can find a perfect limitations
and balance on your bike out there.
Little recap on out the saddle movement.
Super important to be comfortable standing up on your bike.
Make sure you keep your knees bent and elbows bent.
Get comfortable moving forward and back in front
and behind your saddle, over your bars.
Get to know your balance on your bike.
(epic music)
Whilst we're here and we are all about standing up,
on our bike, I'm going to to talk about using your body
as suspension on your bike.
Now, a lot of people just rely on a full suspension bike,
but the most important thing is
is you've got to use your body as well as suspension,
not just your bike.
You want to get used to using your body as suspension,
so the best thing is it stand up on your bike
again, after finding your movement,
finding your balance on your bike
while stood up ride along and just bounce around
on your bike, bend your elbows, bend your knees.
You just feel like you're going down a trail
that's quite rough with a little bit of a drop,
a little bit of a descent.
Just bend your knees, just over exaggerate
using your body as suspension.
Okay this is a perfect example for using your body
as a suspension, not just your mountain bike.
When you're going down the trail,
this little drop right here, you want to drop off
and let you body work as well,
but you want to bend your knees
and bend your elbows when landing,
just to absorb that impact a lot more
and keep you a little bit more smoothly on the trail
is because when it gets a little bit bigger,
if you don't use your body as suspension
and just your bike, it's going to be a rough landing
and it's going to be harsh on your bike.
(epic music)
You might as often, avoid the front brake,
but it's not your enemy.
Get used to using both brakes.
Now when you get to using this front brake,
just be riding along on the flat ground.
Make sure you body weight's quite central
and when you press it, just lean back a bit.
You don't want to give it a jolt
because it's going to give you that horrible feeling
of going over the bars.
You want to feather that break,
you want to use it with ease,
don't grab a handful of brake
cause it is going to shift your body weight forward
and feel like you're going to get thrown over the bar.
So when you're doing it, when you brake,
you just lean back a little bit, straighten up your arms
and just look forward but lean back.
And also when you're doing front braking
and you're turning, you don't want to do that
because it's got a tendency to stop you or to break grip,
to break loose on the ground and tend to slide away
and have a front wheel wash up.
So keep it straight, get used to braking
with that front brake because it does help
when you're out on the trail.
Skidding is not just for kids.
All of us love to do it out there,
it's super Fun and it just feels amazing
locking up that back wheel
and losing grip and getting sideways.
Now it's all well and good, but it's all good.
You want to learn how to use that brake
in a situation where you don't want to skid.
So it's all about running along, feathering that break
and modulating that breaking so you don't lose grip
when you're out on the trail.
The tracks stand.
Now this can show you how to use slow speed control
on the trail and it teaches you how to use small movements
on your bike effectively.
And that is with steering, pedalling and braking.
You want to stand up, weight central with a touch forward,
turn your bars, a bit, 45 degrees,
whatever feels right with you
and if you're struggling with then lean your front wheel
against the ledge or a curb just to help you
get that balancing points so you can understand
where you are on your bike.
You're in a car park just before going for a ride,
or if you're feeling too energetic to get off your bike,
to get back in your car, to go home.
This is a perfect place to start learning this basic skill
and that is riding along with your hands off your bike.
Now this will help you steer you, bike,
sat on your saddle with your saddle
and with your legs and this is super fun.
It's challenging as well,
especially when the car parks not very flat.
So, just take hands off slowly like this,
keep them above the bars so you can get back to them quick
if you are right at the beginning of learning the no hander.
Now the perfect point where I found was sat straight up
on your saddle and you feel like your body weight
is quite far back, but you'll find that the balancing point
is right there on that point of uneasiness.
Now the best thing about it is you can use your saddle
and your legs and your hips to move your bike around
without even turning your handlebars
with your hands on your bike.
You just want to find the perfect balance
between body central on your bike and you're going along.
Now you can experiment and you can fly
like a bird (mumbles) and just show off
and set a challenge to see how far you can actually go.
(epic music)
Okay, slow speed cornering.
Now I'm going to combine all of these techniques
that I've showed you throughout this video
into this one section that's going to help you out,
especially when you're out on the trail.
You're not going to be going that fast as a beginner.
So you want to know how to do slow speed cornering
and I didn't set up the being here,
but I'm going to use this area to use those techniques
on slow speed corners.
So I'm going to bring in the tracks done,
I'm going to bring in the braking,
I'm going to bring in that body movement
and I'm going to bring in a dog as well to help me this.
This is going to help spice up the whole thing.
(epic music)
Right, this next step now is leaning the bike over.
So depending on what size you want to lean it over,
you drop your outside foot.
Look I'm dropping my outside foot
and I'm leaning the bike over trying to keep my body
quite central still to the bike,
keeping it stood upright.
As well try it both sides, lean it over, bend your knees,
bend your elbows, just lean your bike over,
get used to doing this because this will help you
on the trail, especially when the trail
gets a bit off camber.
Also, it can help you in turns as well.
I'm going to draw a line in the dirt, like this.
You can make it as long as you want,
but try and make it as straight as possible
and what we're going to do is we're going to work on balance
cause that's key when it comes to riding a mountain bike
or any bicycle as such.
No matter what size wheels you have,
balance is key when you're out on your bike.
(epic music)
All right, this next technique is pretty key
when you're out there, probably in an urban environment,
but it's going to help you out in the woods as well
when you're on your bike and that's getting that front wheel
off the ground, especially in the urban environment,
you can lift that front wheel
and you can just get it up on top of a curb
and then bump your back wheel up.
As well as if there's an obstacle in the trail
you can lift your front wheel up to get off of over it
and let your back, we'll bump over it.
Now, let me explain how to do that.
Bend your knees, but bend your elbows as well
so you body weight's over the front
and then explode back.
Like that, just to lift up your front wheel,
you're not using your arms to bring up the bike.
You're using the body weight, pushing backwards
and letting your arms extend out and jolt
and bring up your front wheel.
Now keep practicing that technique
and you'll get that front wheel up in the air.
Just to make sure if you do pull too hard,
you find yourself about to loop out.
So just cover that rear brake.
(epic music)
So this next technique is now we want to get that rear wheel
off the ground to never get over an obstacle
that you've lifted your front wheel over.
Now, the best way to do this is you want to preload this,
and what I mean by preload is you want to lean back,
get your body weight over the back of the bike,
heels down, knees bent, and then when you do it,
you want to explode upwards,
but not bending your knees
and putting all your weight onto the front.
You want to curl your feet on your pedals
to bring up that rear wheel.
The best way to do this is with flat pedals First.
You don't want to rely on this clipped pedals
even though it's easier,
but you don't want to get into that bad habit.
And then you have a 10 basic skills for beginners
to learn out there, you can do them in a car park.
Now, if you are a beginner and this is your first time
on the channel, then you missing out some great content.
Don't forget to hit that globe to subscribe
cause you are missing out.
And if you want to see a really good video on basic skills
that myself and Leigh Donovan,
a professional mountain biker did click just up here.
Don't forget to give us a thumbs up like,
and I'll see you at the next one.
See yah!