MOUNTAINLESS MOUNTAIN BIKING | Improve your skills now!

all right this is gonna be pretty hard I'm usually lucky if I make this first try when I don't have a camera hanging off my head what's up everybody welcome back to channel i'm jeff lenosky I've been having some fun the past few weeks making these videos trying to help you get better while staying at home we're close to home since most of the trails are probably shut down that you'd like to ride right now so today I decided to grab my backpack and hop on my Reeb ridiculous and head into town and show you some more stuff that you could work on the terrain might be different but the skills are the same so let's go take a look and see what we can find [Music] all right now first things first if you were town or city is on a lockdown don't do this stuff we don't need anybody getting arrested second thing make sure you stay safe and keep it within your comfort zone when you're technical riding you could basically boil it down into three main areas riding on stuff riding onto stuff and riding off of stuff all right so the first thing we're going to talk about is riding on stuff because that's probably the easiest thing that you could practice and probably the easiest thing for you to find I'm gonna hop up on this curb and give it a shot see if we can get it first try all the tricky part so the number one thing that you can do to improve your balance when you're riding skinnies is get your center of gravity a little bit lower I like to do that by lowering my hips dropping them an inch will improve your balance dramatically all right the second thing that you can do to increase your balance is don't look directly down at your front tire now I know it's super tempting when you're writing something skinny but if you could look a little bit in front of you it's going to also increase your balance last but not least don't be afraid to use your brakes when you're riding a skinny if you start to fall off to one side you can feather your brakes and they'll slow your bicycle down and then you could use that change of momentum of your bicycle to shift your body weight back where it needs to be all right this right here is gonna be the ultimate balance training tool right here so the thing is really long it's not super high so it's fairly safe just high enough to really make you win that mental battle a little bit but it's long it's curvy it gets a little bit higher gets a little bit lower I'm gonna try to see if I can ride this whole thing from the start to the finish going back over those techniques that I gave you before and I'm gonna do it with a pretty cool camera angle to see if we can get this done you ready for this rich crew I don't know he's used a GoPro mount on top of my helmet but when I do it's for stuff like this all right this is kind of weird and take a picture to show you what this thing looks like Hey all right this is gonna be pretty hard I'm usually lucky if I make this first try when I don't have a camera hanging off my head and now I do so let's give this shot and try to go over some of those tips again all right so not looking down at my straight straight up my wheel but this camera is kind of in my way I'm trying to bend my knees a little bit dip my hips when you get some speed going or if you have a Down pitch you could actually drop your front foot and now I'll even give you a little bit better balance because then your weight is below the bottom bracket so it helps you even more and then a couple of things that make this bounce line so challenging is its long so it's hard to not lose focus and then I know this sounds stupid but you're riding so long with your knees slightly bent that you get the burning in her legs oh god I made it your legs are like I'm fire trying to do that thing it's just like Oh 45 minutes squat but made it and now it's pretty sweet so just to recap one more time don't look straight down your tire bend your knees get your hips down a little bit don't be afraid to feather your brakes or readjust shelf all right hopefully those skinny riding tips come in useful now we're gonna try to find a place to show you how to get on to stuff and I like to practice doing that with a punch we found the elusive three-tiered step-up in the wild this is gonna give us the perfect opportunity to work on a move that's the second most popular video on my youtube channel called the punch now you do a punch instead of a bunny hop and it's basically when you touch front tire to an obstacle and you go up or over it these are perfect to practice on curbs or anything higher and the three tips I like to give people on that is the number one try to practice not putting your front tire directly on top of the obstacle there's no need to make the move any harder than it is and when you're out on the trail you don't get bonus points from making a section harder you get bonus points for cleaning a section so by putting your front tire on to the edge or the face of the obstacle it basically makes it smaller and makes it easier to get onto now if you're doing a curb it's kind of hard to not put your tire on top but as you get about a foot or 18 inches tall putting your front tire into the edge will make all those moves easier the second thing that I like to do is to pedal into this move when you Coast into it you start out fast and you slow down when you pedal into it you can start slow and ramp up the speed ramping up your speed is what's going to help you get onto the obstacle so I like to pedal into this move this is gonna be a tough one so this is one two three four five six steps high and try to go up this wall as you can see when I approach the obstacle I take a pedal stroke I spring off my feet and then I spot my front tire into the face of it as my bike contacts the obstacle it unweight the bike and I put my bike up on the obstacle practicing this move on steps ledges it's the exact same move that I used to get over logs or up ledges out on the trail so it's a perfect opportunity to dial in the skill now while the trails are closed so that you're dialed when we get back on I'm digging this camera angle I might force you to watch this angle all the time although my subscriptions will probably completely fall off so now it's time to find some stairs so we can give you some tips on how to go down stuff now why do you want to ride down stairs stairs are an awesome way to work on your roll down skills because they're scalable if you're just getting started two or three stairs might be a challenge for you and if you're experienced you might want to ride down 1015 stairs a set of stairs is a perfect way to mimic a fairly steep roll down on your mouth like here's a couple tips that you're going to use to refine your technique so that you're dialed when you hit the trail you want to try to stay centered on your bike we've all seen images of people with their butts way back behind the seats and with modern-day geometry bikes you need to ride them a little bit different than you would have ridden a bike five or ten years ago so if your bike is three to five years old chances are it has a slacker headtube than ever it has a steeper seat tube than ever and it has a longer reach than ever if you want to make sure that you're riding a lot more centered on the bike with more weight through your feet and you want to have your elbows bent a lot of coaches teach light hands heavy feet and what that means is you want to keep your body weight through the pedals and then you want to have light hands so you never want to feel too much pressure on the backs of your fingers or on the palms of your hands your bike is gonna rotate downwards as you roll down something steep but your weight is still going to be through the pedals as you're getting to the bottom of a steep roll down you could extend them a little bit and accelerate your bike so that it doesn't just drive directly into the ground you could smooth out the transition and make that roll down feel even a little nicer so let's do a couple reps on these steps and focus on our body position as I roll in I'm looking ahead I'm using my brakes control my speed I'm feathering them and I'm keeping my body weight centered with my elbows bent when I get to the bottom I accelerate my bike a little bit and it helps smooth out the transition [Music] [Music] all right everybody hopefully enjoyed the video and hopefully those skills and drills will help you improve so you can get better for when we're ready to get out on the trail if you're looking for a more personalized interaction I just started a brand new patreon level this week it's called the Trail Boss collaborative I'll put a link to it in the description below but it'll give you access to a private Facebook group where you could post videos photos and questions and you can learn from me and other members of the group if there's a move or a technique that you're having trouble with post up a video I'll give you some skills and drills to help you improve if there's a random by question about how I set up my suspension tire pressure component choices it'll be your opportunity for a one-on-one interaction to give you all the tools necessary so that you can get out on the trails and be a boss I'm super excited to interact with some of you and take your riding to the next level so make sure you check it out and until next time get out there and be a boss socially distance [Laughter] [Music]

Channel: Jeff Lenosky

Views: 92,567

Keywords: mountain bike, bike ride, how to mtb, how to trackstand, how to bunnyhop, how to ride down stairs on a bike

Id: WZLITIpyRDE

Length: 10min 19sec (619 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 25 2020