- Today, we're gonna dive deep into one of the least talked about
aspects of mountain biking. Something so obvious and
mundane that it's overlooked by nearly everyone. That's right folks, it's
time to learn how to brake. Huh. Okay. (upbeat music) (tires scratching) (tires scratching) (upbeat music) (pleasant music) Wait, what's that you say? You just brake when you want to slow down and then let go when you want to go fast. That's it. Actually. Yeah, they're right. Thanks so much for watching. Don't forget the face
plant that like button. Wait wait wait it's not that
simple. It never is with me. Turns out there's
actually so much involved to maximize your trail braking, to increase control and speed. That's right, braking
properly makes you faster. But what should the ratio
of front to back brake be? Is it bad to lock up the
brakes? How should I set them? Where should you be braking? Where should you not be braking? How do you do stoppies like Bernard Kerr? That last one is a little bit tricky. But something I think
most people don't know is that the fastest and
best riders in the world are actually the best at slowing down. Seems crazy until you realize
that being able to brake with great technique, gives
you the confidence to go faster because you know you
can scrub that speed off in a heartbeat. First of all, let's make sure your brakes are setup correctly. We covered brake types, sizes, setup, and why all the different
things work the way they do in detail in the Bike
Setup vid, so go watch that if you wanna learn more. My recommended setup is
to use one finger braking, if you can, with the lever set up so your finger is at the end of the lever and the lever pulls to the
inside of your middle finger with the bite point, close to
the bars. But not touching. Lever and angle is a personal preference, but for mountain biking,
you should keep it somewhere between parallel to the ground and at a 45 degree downward angle. Braking is super variable thing and I'm going to separate
into two different types to simplify some
explanations in the video. The first type is speed
control or comfort braking, which is used to battle against gravity to stop you from going faster. You don't really slow down, you're just maintaining
a comfortable speed and it's difficult to
tell if someone's doing it unless they've got a couple of
right honkers in their bike. The second type is
aggressive deceleration, which I call race braking. This is much more focused type of braking that is used to decelerate
and prepare for features on trail and it's much more
obvious to our casual observer. In the previous body positioning video, I talked about the default boss stance and how important it was to
stay centered in the bike unless you're riding
through rough sections or performing certain maneuvers. The other situation is
when braking. Kind of. If you don't slide your weight back, when you hit the brakes, your upper body will try
to keep going forwards and will lever the bike
around the front wheel in a beautiful arc and deposit
you out the front door. (laughs) So, when braking you have
to push the bike forwards, which pushes your weight back
to stop this from happening. The harder you decelerate, the more you need to
shift your weight back to combat these forces. The further back you go, the
lower you will naturally get, which also helps in these situations. So if you're delicately comfort braking, you don't need to move far, but if you've just watched
your mate have a yard sale right in front of you and
you need to stop ASAP, big push back and a haul in those anchors. Not only does this weight
shift help to stop you from potentially having a terrible time, it also helps get the maximum
amount of stopping power out of your tires. There's two main forces on display during a braking maneuver, gravity acting vertically downwards, and the mass of your bike and body decelerating horizontally forwards. When you add these two forces together, you get a diagonal force
moving down and forwards from your center of mass. If the forward force is high
enough from braking hard and your position is peer enough, standing up tall and forward,
that means the diagonal force points in front of your front wheels and that will rotate you forwards. Obviously, this is bad news
in terms of crash potential, but it also means the back
wheel has no weight in it and is not able to contribute
to slowing you down. When you shift your weight back, it pushes the bike forwards, that means when you draw
the same diagonal line from the center of your mass, it actually falls between the two tires, meaning they are more evenly weighted. This means you can use the
shifting of your body weight to control the grip
between the two wheels. And that's pretty cool. When braking, I find it's
good to have the arms almost straight as there
will be a lot of force going through those arms
and you don't want to be dealing with all that
force with bent arms. Also, the harder you brake, the more you should dip
your heels and wrists so that they're perpendicular
to the forces acting on them. One more thing to add
to the basic principles is that before you release the brakes, you need to come back forward
to that centered boss stance. If you don't and release
the brakes anyway, the bike will try to get away from you. Engaging the weight back, passenger mode, which is never ideal. (laughter) Brakes should only be fully released just as you settle back
into that center position. (pleasant music) You can practice this weight shift, cruising down a road
to keep things simple. Okay, I can sense some extra wrinkles forming on your brains now. Let's start applying the
above, to some trails. I like to start with
the number one mistake that I see most people making, and it's not utilizing
the front brake enough on steep tracks. Everyone has done this. It's the default thing to do
and some uninformed people even teach others to do it. Because, I mean it seems safe. It's the OG bro tip,
scream through the forest as you see your bud dropping
into some gnarly section. "You just lean back. Back brake only." - [Cameraman] Lean back. Lean back. - [Biker] Whoa. - [Cameraman] Lean back. - Hopefully we learned earlier
that a lot of the forces when braking go into the front
wheel, helping it to grip. So you're actually throwing
most of your braking power out the window by not
trusting it and utilizing it. Best way to practice this,
is to find a nice steep consistent slope or bit of trail that you can comfortably ride down, then challenge yourself to ride down on it with only your rear brake
on or only your front brake. Use your body weight to
help shift over the wheel you're braking with to
try and get the most grip out of it with a goal to
getting down the section, smooth and controlled. Shifting your weight over the back wheel is a piece of cake, but getting
your weight over the front can be scary. I find the best way to adjust the pressure is to have straight arms
and then use my legs to push my weight forward and back to adjust the pressure in my hands. You should feel like you're
up on top of the bars and not hiding behind them. You will find that points,
you will lock up your wheel and skid. The challenge is to learn
to smoothly modulate your braking power. Squeeze firmer to slow down more but if you feel it slipping,
ease off the power. Get traction again. Once you get a hang of this drill, I bet it's easier to control your speed with your front brake. Trust it, because it is
key to riding steep trails like a boss. So, where should you brake on the trail? The disappointing answer
to that question is, wherever you want and wherever there is grip to do so. But I think there's a
better question to ask and that's, where should
you not be braking? Simple answer is anywhere
you need directional grip, which includes corners, (ground rumbling) off-cambres, slippy roots, that kind of thing. Anywhere there's nothing to slow down for, and anywhere you need your
suspension to work at its best. In an ideal world, you should only brake before any high energy features like turns that can't be taken at
the speed you're going or huge compressions. That's really hard to
picture and implement, so let's give you something to
actually apply on the trail. I'd start with reducing comfort braking. To do this, pick a section of trail that's mostly straight but
littered with little obstacles, like rocks and roots
and maybe it's just got a few wiggles in it. Something that would make
you want to drag your brakes. Pick an entrance point to the section and a target that you want to try and stay off your brakes until. There's two things that
you then have to do to make this happen. When you get to your chosen section, you need to get your weight centered. Boss stance. Get in charge. When the speed picks up, the
temptation is to lean back and it feels safe, but it
can cause you to go off line and get in trouble. Number two is to look ahead
at where you are going. If you do it normally, try
this staying off the brakes, you'll be going faster than usual. So you need to give this
extra speed a direction by looking where you want to go. Don't focus on the specifics, just look at the shape of the trail. If that worked, then
brilliant that's progress. If you didn't manage it, no
stress. You are making progress. Keep setting yourself
little challenges like this to encourage you to not comfort brake, and you'll find yourself
doing it naturally. Once you start reducing
the comfort braking, you'll find you start coming into the high energy features
and turns way quicker, and that's where race braking comes in. You want to do this late, hard, and do it where there's plenty of grip. No point trying to brake
just before a feature if it's covered in loads of slippy roots. Choose a spot where there's good traction and you can usually use
a bit of lane choice to find grippier, smoother ground to allow you to brake even later. The way to practice
this is to pick a corner with a nice fast run in,
on not too steep a trail and set up a braking zone. Make the start of the braking
zone early to begin with and you can move it around as you get a little bit better with this. The X of the braking zone
should be just at the turn. Come in with no braking so that's reducing your
comfort braking in the way in, then brake hard at the marker
to scrub your speed off fast. Then get back in charge of the
bike and then off the brakes for the feature. Like all conscious trails,
start slow and build up a speed. This takes a lot of practice to get right and it's really good once you get it. It's one of my favorite feelings in a bike to come proper, flatter, get
hard on the brake's heels, then dig in the tires into the ground and just get cleanly off
of them and rail the turn. So hard to be at path like every time, but so good when you get it right. So this section here is absolutely perfect for looking at the
different kinds of brake in. So this is a comfort brake in section over the bottom up there,
coming pretty quick and then it gets real narrow down here. There's a big stump, narrow
trees and a blind crest. It's the kind of things that you just, you wanna slow down for. But really, it's straight line. You don't need to slow
down, but you want to. So this would be a perfect example of somewhere you could
try and set an in point, coming out of the bottom, set an end point just down here by the camera,
and try and not brake. I'm gonna focus on looking
ahead, staying off the brakes, keeping that weight centered. But then it leads you into
a race brake in situation, which is just after this. So I've come through the gap
in the trees, just up there, over that crest. I've not looked at the trees.
I've not looked at the stump. I've looked through to the
exit, stop comfort braking. You hit this road crossing
and then down here, bug tree with some juicy
roots coming out of it and then a really tight turn. And the ground here is a bit off camera. If I was to stay off of the
brakes, into this section, do not gonna get enough traction there to be able to slow down for the turn. And it's gonna be exciting. (ground rumbling) Not gonna get riding that. So what I'm gonna need to do
is, do my hard race braking scrubbing off the speed here on the road. There is a nice flat bit of road and you're gonna be compressing into it making those tires grip into the ground, scrub the speed off here. But then I'm not gonna
immediately let go of the brakes because I still need to control the speed. So I'm gonna do a little bit
of speed control braking, bit of comfort braking just here, off as I go over the roots, back on, on the firm ground
in the other side of the roots and then finally off of the turn. So I'm not braking where
our wheels could slip. I'm trying to do it where there's grip. A lot of people coming into
this, would see these roots and maybe it get pushed
low down into the corner, but really with a better lane
choice, set up a bit higher, you're gonna make this
turn go a lot nicer. So, looking ahead, staying off the brakes, no comfort braking, hard race braking, lay as
possible, scrubbing the speed off. Little bit of delicacy coming
through all these roots, control the speed and finally, rule that turn. Sounds so simple. It's not. (laughs) It's really hard. But this is the kind of thing
that you got to practice. Braking, once you start getting it right, really really just helps things flow. Hopefully you learned
something today and if you did, I love a nice big juicy
thumbs up on the vid. It's free to do and I'll
put a big smile on my face. (laughs) If you've got any questions
I'm gonna be hanging around in the comments for an
hour after this goes live to try and answer them all. But now, it's all up to you. Get out there. Pack a braking
mistake you always make. Use my teachings, eradicate that error, subscribe to the channel and
I'll see you in the next video. It's all about pumping and
it's gonna be fantastic. (fun music) All right, are you still rolling? Is it? Are we done? Is it? Are we done? (sighs) - [Cameraman] Where is he? Where is he? - [Ben] Guys. - [Cameraman] Where is he? - [Ben] Over here. - [Cameraman] Oh there he is. I got him. (ground rumbling) (cameraman laughing)
