How to Corner Stupid Fast on your MTB (with NO fear)

i'm a little miffed... no i'm i'm a little angry  and that's because i have read countless articles   on how to corner online and i have watched endless  number of hours of how to corner videos here on   youtube and none of them helped and in fact i  think i was more confused by the end of it than   i was at the beginning point your knees aim your  belly button drop your foot here but not there   point your pecker bend your arms now i'm not  saying any of that advice is wrong per se but with   all those suggestions nobody ever seems to explain  why you would do any of those things and without   the why we're all just out in the woods making  weird shapes for no reason and the funny thing is   the thing that actually had me break through that  learning curve and it has me now riding my bike   faster through corners than i ever have before in  my life and actually enjoying loose corners which   would have sounded crazy to me before pretty much  all of it came from me watching one of my friends   pov videos but i'll get to that in a second  so from here on out this video is going to be   pretty fast paced i'm going to cover the things  that we need to cover but there's no need to do   a deep dive because this is all very simple and  it basically comes down to two things that you   have to keep in mind while cornering so the last  thing anybody wants when they're going through any   corner is to wipe out and crash now wiping out  and crashing is caused by one thing in a corner   and that's losing grip so if grip between our  tires in the ground is what we need there is quite   literally only one way to get that and that's  by applying pressure into your tire and the tire   into the ground between the tire and the ground  there must be pressure applied i don't care if   you just spent a bunch of money on your favorite  racer's favorite tire none of that matters if   you're not weighting your tires properly think  of f1 racing cars those vehicles have spoilers   covering them front to back and their main purpose  is to create enough down force when going really   fast so that the tires can actually have enough  pressure on them to grip while going around those   super fast super sharp corners on the race track  but spoiler alert we don't have spoilers to   generate that downforce we have to use our body  weight in order to do the very same thing and   so on this tire you can see the center tread in  the center of the tire and it is made to help you   with acceleration and with breaking that's it and  then on the sides we have our cornering lugs the   cornering lugs are 100 specifically designed to  be awesome at keeping grip while you're cornering   they're not made to do anything else this is  their life song this is what they were born to do   don't deny them their life's mission and you know  what the difference is between an amateur rider   who's struggling in the corners and a pro rider  who's flying through them the pro riders are using   these side knobs to really dig into the surface  of that soil and from here on out you're going to   be doing that as well everything's making sense  so far okay good and i know you probably have   heard some of these things before but now we're  going to get into where everything changed for me   okay so a couple of years ago i watched my first  jeff kendall weed video on youtube if you haven't   heard of him he's an ex-pro racer he's got a  great channel here on youtube go and check him   out so i stumbled upon one of his videos when i  was doing a little bit of trail reconnaissance   work and i saw this guy jeff riding really really  loose trails that i had actually ridden before   very terrifyingly ridden through before and yet  he was absolutely blasting these corners and i   remember running over to my wife beth and showing  her this person cornering so fast through this and   being like look at this freak of nature and if  there's one thing that really stands out about   jeff's riding style is that he leans his bike  over so so hard through just normal corners   it was crazy his bike was so leaned over that on  camera his pov camera i could practically read the   letters on his crank arms and watching him lean  his bike so far over it really struck me that   maybe i should be trying to lean my bike some more  through the corners so i went out i rode my local   trails slowly and i leaned my bike over an absurd  amount it felt strange it felt unnatural i felt   ridiculous but while i had that bike leaned over a  bunch of very interesting things happen just sort   of automatically i realized that if i wanted my  bike to be leaned over while i was still upright   i had to make space for the top tube of my frame  between my legs which meant i had to point both of   my knees in the direction of the corner to allow  for that space and all of a sudden like a light   bulb the whole point your knees in the direction  of the corner thing made complete sense but it was   never actually explained to me in the right way  just riding down the trail pointing your knees   in the directions of corners never helped anybody  but making space for your bike frame so you can   lean it way the crap over now that actually moves  the needle in the right direction the other big   thing that i realized while out on that ride was  that when i lean the whole bike over it means that   my inside arm is now extended like it has to be  if i'm staying up here but my bike is sideways   that arm is now extended it sort of automatically  brought some of my weight a little bit more   forward than i was used to but once my bike was in  that position and my weight was a little bit more   evenly distributed between my front and back wheel  all of a sudden just magically my front tire had   way more grip than it's ever had before so by just  leaning my bike into the corner by what felt like   a completely absurd amount all of a sudden i was  completely engaging my side knobs and my tires   and letting them do what they were designed  to do and i was all of a sudden putting   more weight on the front of my bike on my front  tire getting that weight into the side knobs so   now the likelihood of my front tire washing  out or slipping out was almost zero so this   whole video really comes down to one lean your  bike over a lot and two adjust your body so you   can lean that bike over while keeping yourself  pretty upright that's it but wait there's more so how did this change everything for me why  does this make someone corner faster and better   and with more confidence when you have your  bike leaned way more than you are there's a   line going straight down and all that weight  and pressure from your body weight is going   right into the inside side knobs of your tire  and so you've got all that weight and pressure   pressing those side knobs into the ground and  it's very unlikely that they will break loose   but here's the thing and this is the key to all  of it if your tires do break loose when you're in   that position where the bike is leaned a lot more  than you are the bike and the rider move sideways   together as a unit so rather than you losing  traction just going wham down onto the inside   of the corner onto your shoulder you just drift a  little bit and it's actually a whole bunch of fun   and one of the coolest things that happened with  me and kind of the psychological part of going   into corners was that before i learned this  i was pretty nervous going into almost every   corner that i found especially flat corners  but as soon as i had that bike body separation   and the bike was totally leaned over and i knew  i wasn't going to go flapping down to the ground   the little part of my brain that was  scared going into corners just kind of   turned off and when that happened it was game on and the final tip is when you're out there  practicing the corners if you have access to   a gopro and a chest mount i found that really  really valuable for actually seeing how much   i've leaned my bike over and let me tell you if  you're not used to doing this it seems like you're   leaning your bike over an extreme amount but  then you go look back on your gopro footage and   you realize you've gone from here to there and so  use the footage that you captured to compare it to   other people's footage like jeff's and then  you can really see how far you've come along   with leaning your bike into those corners  well i really hope you found this helpful   let me know if you did down in the comments and  especially after you've gone and practice this   a little bit come on back to the comments and  let me know how things are going i'd love to hear   about it also you can use #theloamranger over on  instagram and show me your video clips or photos   always happy to see that and share it and that's  about it for today get on your bike get out on the   trails and practice some corners because we all  know how important corners are for every part of   mountain biking thanks for watching subscribe if  you want to see more and we'll see you next week

Channel: The Loam Ranger

Views: 515,954

Rating: 4.9696827 out of 5

Keywords: the loam ranger, loam ranger, mountain biking, downhill mountain biking, mtb, extreme sports, enduro mtb, how to corner a mountain bike, how to corner, cornering tutorial for beginners, mtb tips and tricks, mtb tips for beginners, mtb tips how to go faster, mtb tips and tricks for beginners, mtb skills, how to, mountain bike, mtb tips, mountain bike skills, jeff kendall weed, seths bike hacks how to descend stupid fast, ibis ripmo v2, 661 protection

Id: 8y6ocZHpLoE

Length: 8min 9sec (489 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 04 2021