- Your riding skills are likely to improve at a steady rate
just with riding experience.
However, I think there's a few little cheats and hacks,
things to concentrate on
to make your riding improve super quickly.
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Climbing is always going to be a physical, hard thing to do,
of course, but when you find a bit of climbing flow,
you'll find things become definitely easier,
definitely less tiring,
and actually a bit more satisfying.
So I'm riding here out in Squamish in British Columbia.
It's almost a bit like a British trail center as well.
Up this really nice, flowy climb.
But it's fairly technical,
and you've got lots of switchbacks
with things like this stone in the middle,
so it's really an exercise in changing gear all the time,
nice and early, trying to keep a consistent power cadence,
so you don't slide,
but also trying to work your way around these stones.
Sometimes you actually have to get your front wheel
round the edge of it,
and then your back wheel come up the inside of it.
Just to try and keep that flow
and get up the hill as flowy, as smooth,
and with as least amount of effort as possible.
Okay, so how do you improve those things quickly?
First one is to really make sure you are looking up
and around the corners to plan your line,
especially for those rocky situations.
Number two, now you're looking further ahead,
that's going to help you change gear nice and early as well.
You'll also need to learn how quickly your bike shifts
so you can ease off the power to do it,
then get back on,
and it becomes very automatic.
Number three, a nice little hack,
especially on steep uphill switchbacks,
is to drag your rear brake, just to help you keep balance,
and almost meter the power you're putting into the bike,
almost like a clutch on a motorbike.
Makes it super stable to power in
and then drag in a bit of back brake as well.
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It's wet, but it's good.
I think, to learn the fastest,
you need to take yourself into
a nice, fun, relaxing environment,
so that's going to be different for everybody,
but make sure you're having lots of fun.
It might mean going away from intimidating situations,
maybe you're riding with other groups
that really like pushing themselves on,
but you could crash and lose some confidence,
so make sure you're having lots of fun, riding a lot,
and that's when you're going to improve the fastest.
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Pump tracks are downright fun to ride.
The smooth flow and rollers
can take riding a bike back to the basics.
Without a rock or root in sight to ruin your flow,
you can concentrate on the fundamental skills
of pumping the bike to make speed
and keeping your momentum with good flow.
A fast, smooth rider on a pump track
is likely to translate that to the trails.
Just look at how the top racers pump their bikes
as well as pedaling hard.
Why not try it out?
Add a pump track ride to your weekly riding schedule
and see how quickly you improve all round.
A great way of riding your bike more
is to pack your bike in a bag,
jet off somewhere nice,
and go for a riding holiday.
Even if you take some time off work
and ride your local trails for maybe a week or something,
it's not as good as going somewhere new,
and riding fresh trails you've never ridden before,
gets you out of that rut
of maybe riding the same trails like clockwork every time.
Riding your bike on days back to back
is a really cool and fun way
of getting better fast on your bike.
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♪ Monday at work my head's in a mess ♪
♪ I'm keeping the smile but I'm in distress ♪
♪ But what you need is ♪
- I think there's a couple of really important things
for when you're descending
that'll really help you improve nice and quickly.
The first one is bit like that uphill flow
is making sure that you're looking way ahead
and looking where the trail goes.
Now this section looks quite intimidating,
so it's really easy to look down at the floor,
but actually, it's probably easier than it looks,
but you need to be looking up there at where you need to be,
because it's really easy to concentrate on this bit
and then go over the edge there
and actually the trail goes that way
and it's quite easy, like I said.
The other one is to really think about your body positions,
so on the bike, in a place like this,
I want to be relatively heel down.
That's going to bring my hips towards the back of the bike,
and really all that's doing
is keeping my weight central on the bike,
'cause obviously the front wheel's dropping.
If I stay flat on my feet and in the middle of the bike,
my weight's going forward,
and that's not a good place to be,
so think about where your feet are on the pedals
and dropping your heels slightly
when the trails start going downhill.
Well, I definitely recommend coming to Squamish
if you want to learn how to ride rocky, rooty, amazing trails
as quick as possible.
It's really, really good.
If you want to see a video that goes more into depth
about descending skills, over there for that one.
If you want to see Martyn race his bike at Whistler,
just up the road from here, click down there (mumbles).
Thumbs up if you want to get better quickly,
and subscribe.
Loads of videos on there,
GMBN, if you not seen 'em already.
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