How To Ride Any Drop Off On Your MTB | Mountain Bike Skills

drop-offs cause loads of crashes we see that and the fails and bales that you send into us so let's take a look at how to ride any drop the great thing about practicing riding drop-offs is it really does take the same skills for riding off a tiny curb to something that is pretty big like this one obviously drop offs do get much bigger looking at things like rampage but really same skills that you need so the great thing about that is it's much safer and easier to practice on a curb or a nice small drop off get it nailed and then move on because the thing about these bigger drops is they're way more intimidating i'm now looking at a big steep run out that's rough there's trees there's a big drop off and you can see the marks on this rock where people have dragged their pedals and their chain rings so this obviously causes problems so get it nailed on a small drop off first so why do people crash on drop-offs first look at the fundamentals you ride off the end of this your front wheel's going to drop and if it's big enough your chainring is going to drag on there and already your weight is being sent forward because your front wheel's gone off and your back wheel hasn't followed yet and now your bike stalls out slows down and sends you weight either for forward and you're probably pitching up and over the bars so obvious way to fix this you need to stop your front wheel dropping so much and that's why i also go on about practicing on smaller drop-offs because it's not gonna be a problem you're not gonna go over the bars if you just ride off a curve in the frontal drops first but you might as well practice it there because it's the same skill so there's a few different ways of keeping your front wheel high but really it's all about using your body weight and moving that around the bike to get the sort of required effect of keeping that front wheel light and not letting it just dive bomb off the edge so the first way is riding into the drop off in your ready position neutral position whatever you want to call it in the middle of the bike stood up tall as you would riding down this lovely bit of trail before and then as you get to the drop you basically just slide your weight to the back of the bike so there's a couple different ways thinking about it either you think about dropping your heels and moving your hips back or a way that some people like to think about it is riding in ready position and then sliding the bike by pushing your hands forward basically you'll end up in that same position heels down hips back and that's where i'm really talking about weight think about your hips as your weight if you've got your hips back that's your weight back and that's taking weight off the front wheel and that means it's not going to dive bomb the added sort of problem with this is you've got to get the timing right if you slide the bike forward too early then you're not going to get that desired effect of that sort of the push of the bike so it's then going to stall and then you can still get pitched over the bars anyway even though you're back here you've then kind of got further to fall and you're going up and over so getting the timing right but also making sure that you're not cheating you've probably heard this hundred times if you've watched our skills videos where i'm talking about how to manual and often people will just pull their arms on the bars and it can work the problem there is if you then get that wrong and the timing wrong your weight is still right over the middle of the bike if you pull it and then it drops you're then still going over the bars the great thing about sliding the bike forward even if you get tiring wrong hopefully you're going to get away with it [Music] sometimes you'll find drop-offs a bit like this one with a corner before it or just some other obstacle which means you can't come in with any speed so just doing that slide of the weight might not be enough sort of momentum to keep the front wheel high so now you've got to do a proper manual to really put some effort in to lift that front wheel long enough for your back wheel to roll to the edge and then both wheels go off and you're generally always trying to match the landing so on this drop off it goes downhill at that slope so i'm trying to get my wheels to the same angle so they kind of pretty much land at the same time even though front wheel might land a little bit earlier just getting there first just trying to match that angle it's giving me the smoothest landing so this means a good manual technique and you've got to practice this definitely for when trails get more technical slower more difficult then you're gonna need a manual for drop off two big don'ts when it comes to riding drop-offs number one don't look down basically you are kind of looking down because the trail goes down on this drop off but what i mean is don't look down at the drop off it's kind of easier said than done because this drop could be the biggest scariest thing you've ever done on my bike so it's natural to be looking at that thing thinking oh i hope i get away with this but actually more often than not people do kind of get away with it and then it's the run out where i've got a steep bumpy shoot trees that are obviously something i don't want to hit but also it's also bringing your weight forward so as soon as you start looking down your chest drops it's going to be counterproductive you're trying to slide the bike forward but if you're already down like this your weight's dropping forward number two don't touch your brakes again sounds kind of scary especially if you've got a steep run out but riding into this drop off any touch of the brake is going to send the weight forward or make the bike slide potentially so you've got to come in do your braking early commit to the drop off know that you're going to do it hopefully you're feeling confident you don't want to back out of this and then just don't touch the brakes at all until you've landed smoothly and then you can get back on them so there's definitely a few different techniques dealing with drops you've got the slide the bike forward you've got the proper manual you've got a jump i guess pretty advanced you might be coming off a drop there might be a gap and then a landing it's kind of more jumping than drop off so i'll leave that one aside because you need to be pretty comfortable with jumping to do that the last one i think is pretty technical as well and it's kind of dropping in almost like it's a vert ramp you might see bmx do this and they ride along the deck there's a coping and then they drop into a really steep half pipe so basically it's sort of counterintuitive this but if i just rode off this my chainring is going to drag so what i'm going to do is actually pick up the back wheel and nose the bike in get the back wheel past that lip and then i'm touching the ground you know as soon as i can really so that's really good if you're then dropping into a steep technical section you're definitely not always going to want to use this because it's pretty risky you're throwing the bike in something steep and if you get the timing wrong you could pitch yourself over the bars doing it too much or you could sort of case your back tire on there and again that could pitch you over so it's pretty advanced and not for every drop off but if like this you've got a nice dirt steep quarter pipe then why not have a go right there's some tips on how to ride any drop off if you've got any more questions leave them down in the comments section down below this video i'll try and jump in there and answer as many as i can uh but yeah hopefully that's covered most bases and hopefully you'll stop crashing on drop offs and we won't see any more won't send them into our uploader thumbs up if you love riding big drops

Channel: Global Mountain Bike Network

Views: 320,806

Keywords: how to, coaching, tutorial, mtb coaching, drop off, drop, fod, forest of dean, how to ride, drops, fade away, dropping, flat drops, mtb drops, over the bars, otb, flat landing, bottom out, GMBN, Global Mountain Bike Network, mountain biking, mountain bike, Bicycle (Product Category), MTB, Bicycle, Downhill, XC, Cross Country, Enduro, MTB skills, bike skills, mountain bike skills, bike, bike riding, cycling, gmvn, neil donoghue, sec-how-to, ର, scbpgmbn15, 1k, 1o, ଐ, ኽ, 1w, ፕ17, ή, β, υ, η, ι, μ, σ

Id: Xy2Pzh6YGbg

Length: 7min 32sec (452 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020