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Body position is critical. You want to stand nice and tall,
and try not to crouch over the handlebars. This means you'll avoid the amount of
space that you have to move around on the bike. Also remember to look ahead,
so you can see in good time the next obstacle you're about to tackle.
Moving around the bike is essential to get your weight in the right place at the
right time. Think of your hips being your weight, going from in the middle of the
bike when you're in the ready position, to down and back, right down to the back
wheel, until you're almost touching your bum on the back tire,
and then up and forward a little bit in front of your seat. Obviously this is more
restricted when you've got your seat really high, so bear in mind that you
should not be able to move quite as far.
When you hit the brakes hard,
the weight is getting sent forward, towards the bars. Countering the braking
forces by dropping your weight back behind the pedals and the bars,
is essential to keep your weight going down into the bike, rather than up and
over. With any relatively new disc brake, you should be able to use just one finger.
Set your levers up so your one finger pulls right on the end of the lever.
This will give you maximum leverage. You can get your finger comfortable,
so you can cover them at all times.
Keeping your head up and scanning the trail is essential.
Looking through the turns is a big one. Try and look to the
exit of the turn. This is especially important when linking turns together
nicely, so therefore your exit becomes the entry of the next turn.
Try not to focus on the obstacle in front of you, but look past your front wheel,
and down the trail. Obviously this gets more difficult the harder,
or more scary the obstacle is in front of you. I make a big effort
to remind myself to keep looking up.
Moving on nicely from looking, let's have a look at line choice.
Experimental lines can make a big difference to how well that trail flows.
Here we've got a left hand corner with a well-worn outside line or an inside line.
The inside line is much shorter, but you've just got to be careful that when
you join the main trail again you don't slide. So, trying to find a smooth line is
going to help with traction, with braking and cornering, and also playing around
with the straighter, shorter line.
So I'm coming down a hill and I'm looking for trail
Looking like it's going up so I'm changing gear early. Get into a nice,
easy gear, smooth cadence on the pedals, I'm spinning nice and smooth,
getting really good traction on that rear tire.
Cornering. Think about lowering your weight to the outside of the bike.
The lower your center of gravity is, the more grip you'll find.
So if it's smooth, lower your chest to the bike and
think about dropping your outside foot and weighting that foot.
Also try and do your braking before the corner so that you can come off the brakes
and get maximum grip in the corner. You can't always do that on steep stuff,
so in that case, just think about coming off your front brake as much as you can.
Leaning the bike over and keeping your weight fairly upright is a great skill to
practice when you feel comfortable with the basics cornering. Think about bringing
your hips to the outside of the saddle.
Bike set-up can make a big difference to
how easy you find steep descents. Short stem, high bars, lower seat,
is all going to help get your weight behind the bike, essentially maintaining
the ready position. Because when you drop in to the steep stuff,
your center of gravity will head towards the front wheel. Think about a plumb line
from your hips, to maintain a balanced bike, you'll need to drop back on the
bike. Lastly, this one isn't really a bike handling skill, but more of a mental
approach to riding. Actually try and build confidence slowly. know your limits,
and actually know what to practice.
- [Rider] Yeah, confidence is really important with any type of riding.
So really look at obstacles that you know you can ride, build your confidence
slowly, because if you crash, you're going to have to start again and build that
whole process up.
- Cool. Really important, that. So if you want to check out our 10 tips for riding
single track better, click up here.
- And then also is our maintenance pre-ride checks, click down here.
- All right.
- And on that note, subscribe to us here at GMBN. See you later, Neil.
- [inaudible 00:04:31] - See ya, mate.