How to Corner & Descend On Your Gravel Bike | Unbound Gravel Prep | TPC

[Music] [Applause] do you have the skills to pay the bills gravel racing it can get pretty intense every time you go uphill you have to go downhill again too and if you're trying to go as fast as possible the worst thing is to be limited by your descending or cornering skills so that's what we're going to cover today how to quickly and safely conquer corners and descents on your gravel bike let's start with the six key tips that we're going to cover one look where you're trying to go two keep your chest low three relax your hands four lean the bike under you five drop your outside foot and six try to do all your braking before the turn we're going to break each of these tips down a little more but before we do don't forget that we have a special coupon code that is good until Unbound starts this year it'll be right here and it will get you $50 off in order of $200 or more at the pros causa.com so be sure to check that out number one look where you want to go the worst thing you can do is stare at the ground right in front of your wheel what you want to do is lift your head and look toward the exit of the corner or to the entry of the next Corner if you can lift your head and peek ahead it'll give your brain more data and the farther you can look ahead the slower things will seem which will make stuff seem less scary and let you go faster when we stare at stuff we tend to Target fixate so if it's a rock in the trail a rut or maybe it's the edge of the road where it drops off if you end up staring at that you're going to ride right into it so want to do is actually turn our head and look where we want to go and there's another aspect of this that's really important that's hard versus soft focus when we have hard Focus we're staring really intently at things what's better is actually soft focus where you stare at nothing but you see everything this lets you take in all the data from the road around you and process it and stay aware now if you're really worried about something that might be right in front of you what I suggest keep track of it with your peripheral vision if you really have to look at it do it quickly and then lift your head back up and scan ahead the more you can keep scanning ahead the better your cornering will be number two keep your chest low when Riders get nervous they tend to want to push their head away from danger and that puts you in an upright position or in a backseat position where you have less control over the bike what you want to do instead is actually focus on keeping your chest low and closer to the bars what this will do it'll also weight the front end of your bike which gives your front wheel more traction this will prevent it from washing out which will give you a lot more confidence and speed it also gives your upper body more room to move and react to the terrain changing beneath you which will also keep you in control now you don't want to just bend over and lean all your weight on your hands we're going to talk more about this in the next tip what you want to actually do is hinge at your hips you want to push your hips and butt back and lean your torso forward so it's flat that's how you keep your chest low and you're actually supporting most of your weight on your feet using your hamstrings and glutes this will actually keep your quads fresher too it'll keep you in a nice balanc and controlled position so this leads me into my next point three relax your hands you don't want to death grip your bars while you're descending not only does this waste energy but it also creates tension throughout your upper body now to go fast and be safe on Des sense you need to find like a level of flow and tension is the enemy of flow so what you want to do is try to consciously relax your hands and grip your bars lightly if you're a mountain biker you've probably heard heavy feet light hands and that's what we're trying to ad achieve keeping your hands light and your feet heavy actually centers your weight between the wheels too which is a safer position with more control four lean the bike under you when you're cornering on a road bike you generally try to lean with the bike to maximize traction but when you're on loose or sketchy off-road terrain what you actually want to do is try to lean the bike more than your body another way to say this is to lean the bike under you what this does is it pushes the cornering knobs on the edge of your tire harder into the ground increasing traction it also does another thing it keeps your upper body nice and loose which allows you to react terrain changing beneath you and it also makes it easier to save your bike if it starts to slide five drop your outside foot if you're trying to survive a loose or sketchy turn drop your outside foot and try to put as much weight into that outside foot as you can your skier it's a lot like waiting your outside ski to make a turn this not only lowers your center of gravity but it also weights the cornering knobs on your tire so you have more traction and also it puts you in a position where it's easier to pull your inside foot out and dab if you need to save a slide six do most of your braking before turns your tires only have so much traction to give when you start cornering you have less available grip to dedicate to break braking so you ideally want to do most of your braking or your bike is straight up and down then let go when you're entering the turn so that you have the most traction possible for cornering if you're learning the way to do this is to slow down before corner until there is no apprehension and you're confident that you can make it through the corner without touching your brakes if you do this you're less likely to need the Panic brake in the middle of a turn which is a great way to lose traction slide and crash if you do need to break or slow down in the middle of a corner I really suggest using your rear brake over your front brake because your rear wheel sliding losing traction is a lot easier to save than the front wheel now that we know these six top tips how do we actually practice them the best way to do this is to find a gravel descent with Corners where you can session these Corners over and over again and work on these skills until you have them mastered you can do this on a easy day a recovery day or or if you have some hill repeats that you can do do it on a hill repeat day and focus on descending every time you come back down now we talked about breaking before corners but another great thing we want to practice is just breaking as little as possible Riders who are really fast and competent descenders they're fast because they break less than other Riders and when they break they do it later and they do it harder so they're spending more time at speed now you can sort of practice this by just on descents trying to break less and less if you are spending every descent dragging your brakes the whole way down you're never going to learn how to let go of the brakes so what you want to do is consciously start letting them go and a great way to do this is just on a straight descent try to just go down with no brakes for as long as you can until you get comfortable just bombing down the whole thing completely off the brakes then you can start applying that to the sense with a few Corners breaking later and later until you gain more confidence if you want something super easy you can even try some simple parking lot drills maybe with some cones you can set these cones up as a slalom or you can make a situation where you have to make a figure eight now you don't even need a lot of speed to do drills really the main thing these can let you practice is leaning the bike under you and looking ahead to where you want to go and those two you can really hone in on these sort of easy parking lot drills and really create this sort of disconnection between your body and bike and get really loose and comfortable with cornering for me though the best way to get really confident handling your gravel bike is to ride single track Trails these are often more Technical and they force you to get really loose on the bike and really apply all of these tips and skills that we' talked about this also teaches you another really essential skill that is getting beat up if you can find single track trails that that are rough Rocky and Technical they can really Hammer your body and what it can teach you is how to relax over this sort of terrain Unbound has a lot of really rough terrain and if you're tense you're going to take a lot of that impact and it's going to really fatigue you so if you can learn to relax by riding rough terrain at home it can really pay dividends in a rough race like on Mountain gravel we've already talked about relaxing your hands but ultimately it's become really competent as a descender you just need to relax your entire body remember we said tension is the enemy of flow and if you can relax it's easier to find a flow state where you can go fast and be safe do you know what else helps you relax being prepared for any mechanical which is why next time we're going to go over the repair kit that I'm carrying on my bike plus all the tools and Spares that will be with my support crew at Unbound gravel hopefully you stick around please like And subscribe and I'll see you next time now if you excuse me I'm going to go keep testing my arrow bar setup for the race [Music]

Channel: The Pro's Closet

Views: 6,362

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Id: WVXgAqpjOAs

Length: 10min 19sec (619 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2024