5 Skills Every Mountain Biker Needs To Know | ft. Bernard Kerr & Eliot Jackson

we're gonna get into body position and line selection we'll talk about breaking and cornering we're also going to talk about jumping [Music] so I want to start from the very Basics I'm going to ride down this fire Road right here and kind of show you one of the things that I see a lot of riders that are beginning but also all the way through intermediate advances is the separation of bike and body and so why we want to do that is really trying to always get traction where our ground contact is so if we're trying to turn you'll lean the bike but your body is straight up the other thing is noticing where my feet are on a flat turn you'll have your inside foot up and your outside foot down that way you can get traction if you are going a little bit faster can find some more support you can have those feet level so this first pass I'm gonna have my outside foot down notice my head stays in the same position bike leans getting traction to the outside separation with my bike and my body it's really all about this bike body separation see my feet are coming down head is staying level hips are kind of pointed to where I want to go but the chest stays up for this pass I'm gonna have my feet level kind of a more modern technique but on the flats you can see I can't get as much bike lean if I do have support this will be something I'll use a lot but again head stage level looking where I want to go all right so let's take some of the things that we learned from that flat fire out and apply them to Trail this is uh what you would normally not even think about when you're riding it's super easy pretty flat but this as eraser or trying to improve trying to go faster the easy sections are where you can do that and the fundamentals really come into play the thing I'm thinking about here and the thing I think you can think about when you're riding is where is the most important piece of this section and right here when you frame it like that you're saying well for sure it's that last left-hander because it's a long straight afterward here the amount of speed I take out of this slight left is only going to carry for a couple of feet then I gotta break again and then after that right only a couple feet until I left but the next spot I need to break is maybe 50 feet past there where are the lines that I need to take to maybe open up that last turn make it a little bit less tight so we can carry a lot of speed through it and I can actually see where the main line is is kind of inside you can see some breaking bumps right right there that's because people have left their braking really late and if we actually walk past you can see what kind of line that's going to give you people are going to be on that on that green grass on the inside which means they're going to be super slow coming out of that turn what if we were to break up a bit turn on this little Edge maybe two feet outside of that normal line then we can get way out here get on the right Edge and open up that left-hand turn that's going to make that flat left much easier we can probably get on the pedals afterward and carry a ton of speed on that next section coming in super fast but I'm braking late coming on the inside after one so it felt like I was going super fast but you can see how late I was breaking I'm braking all the way into this turn I'm locked up and then I'm right where we said that we didn't want to be on this inside and we didn't want to be there because look at where my tire tracks were going I'm leading right into this green grass not where we want to be it's making that left-hand turn so tight and that's the section that we wanted our speed for so I gave up a bunch of exit speed there trying to come in way too fast [Music] crazy how counter-intuitive it is but look where I start breaking you can see my breaking point is back here once you get to right here you can see the lines start to cross on the time where I did it correctly I start turning in all the way back here on the time when I started braking too late it's pushing me all the way to the right here here's the correct line all the way in the grass getting a nice support right here this actually isn't breaking at all I'm actually just on locked in right like we talked about on that flat locked in bike body separation making my turn right here looking to that next left-hander and look at how different these two lines are look at where they cross all the weight on that incorrect version is going outward where we don't want to be the correct version makes its turn and then I have a perfect angle for that next left-hander [Music] so this section is going to be all about wine Choice there is skills on the bike there's the bike set up and then it's where you're putting the bike so we're gonna go through a couple of different ways so you can tackle this section especially noticing kind of the differences between a trail bike and a downhill bike Bernard is gonna do some gnarly Gap and when you look at sections like this how do you kind of approach it like on the World Cups you would walk a section first and kind of check it out yeah like you say we've got two different bikes on a trail bike obviously you're not going to come in with as much speed it's actually probably a lot steeper that looks on camera it's a real steep section we're on the edge of a rock here and there's a million different ways to hit any line but yeah on a downhill bike you've got a lot more suspension the slacker head angle like we talked about earlier I'm gonna be able to pretty much Gap off this with a downhill bite you can slow down better with the extra suspension the braking is always better so I want to Gap off this go as fast as I can break as late as possible and then for me on a trail bike and maybe you you might try and roll it even though you're gonna rolling super fast still it isn't a downhill bike at the end of the day so you're gonna have to be a bit more controlled you've got less travel [Music] one of the big points of confusion I feel like is what is the purpose of choosing a line are you trying to choose the shortest distance or the smoothest or kind of the fastest or the funnest then I always kind of approach it as what am I trying to get out of that section am I trying to Gap it I'm trying to have fun you know sometimes the fastest line is the roughest line and sometimes the fastest line is the longest line yeah it's always super different I know at World Cups people try and avoid bumps and they can get confused when they're trying to pick lines be like right I'm just going to go around all the bumps just to smoothing it out whatever you're adding five feet of Trail so often even though it's smoother just hit the bumps and go through it but yeah depending on what your bike is and how capable your setup and everything is also affects what line you want to be on but yeah and I think that that is a good kind of thing to think about back to the bike setup is there needs to be some exploration if you just ride the exact same line uh then you're not going to get those extra skills so on your local Trail one of the things you can do is say like hey I've done this corner a thousand times let me try to set up super far inside even though it might not be the fastest you can get some practice on like a tighter turn or something like that so this is a section that really highlights the difference between a downhill Bike Line and an Enduro line where on an Enduro bike I'm gonna try to come over here keep my wheels on the ground as much as I can it's going to allow me to take a little bit more speed and not have to worry about this hard impact and we mentioned the braking differences between a Enduro bike and a downhill bike this is where that comes into play I really need contact with the ground whereas Bernard is gonna try to Gap this pretty much yeah you've got bigger bigger travel a slacker head angle I'm going to come off the rock here just behind me and land just down probably five feet to my right here because as soon as I land I can get on the brakes there and carry a lot more speed down further down [Music] so I found this little piece of trail that shows off the intricacies of Vine choice right here so there's a jump into a berm and when you look at it you can see where the main line is but one of the things that I always think about is the trail is a lot wider than a lot of us really think about so typically people will go off the Jump straight land and then make a turn back up to this berm to get set up wide but what if we made our turn over the jump set up right here and this is still pieces a part of the trail widens out the turn we don't have to turn nearly as tight you can kind of see where everyone's been pushing into it because they're turning back out [Music] all right [Music] [Music] on that first one I came out here still felt good but once I set up a little bit wider here's that tire track I was actually able to unweight from right here so my tire track ends and then I was able to almost use it like a pump track where I got some extra speed [Music] brakes are a huge part of downhill and Enduro riding so one way you can kind of fight hand pump is winding them in a little bit you need them to bite really quickly because you don't want to be coming down a steep section have them pull into the bar not have any bite and you blow off the trail I like them to bite a little bit further out just because I run my hands a little bit further in the next piece is the breaking points a lot of the time I kind of picked my breaking points strategically so thinking about it like a an F1 car almost right getting a Breaking Point picking a rock if you're racing or flag or some roots to say like this is where I'm gonna be on the brakes this is where I'm going to be off and as you get faster and faster it's not about shortening your breaking point if this is my turn not about shortening it from this side it's really about shorting it from this side letting off the brakes earlier instead of getting on the brakes later that's going to allow you to carry more speed through the turn more speed in the X exits and more speed overall average speed is what we're always looking for the last thing I want to think about is really just the balance how much am I using my front brake versus my back brake if it's a really steep section I'm going to favor my back brake and use my front brake as much as I can that braking really hard braking position is going to be kind of lean back arms almost straight a little bit lower on the bike that way I can have some control the other thing there just another little Pro tip is suspension is not going to work as good if I'm on the brakes so if you see some pros they'll actually break when it's good to break you know you have some dirt and then they'll let off the brakes even in the middle of a Breaking Point over a rock to get their suspension to work and then break right again so they're actually going through modulating which is really insane but it's one of those things that you're kind of thinking about your bike and all of this stuff working in tandem [Music] thank you

Channel: Crux Academy Bike

Views: 237,783

Keywords: climbing, rockclimbing, bouldering, mountain biking, fly fishing, backpacking, thru-hiking, outdoor course, adventure course, MTB, camping

Id: hzPoYHJbTMc

Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 10 2023