I’ve been struggling with teaching corners. Once I was carefully breaking down my own riding in front of people, I started to notice my feet moving as my hips shifted for level pedal cornering. This told me that level pedals and corners don’t really match, not even berms. The feet naturally want to shift as the inside hand guides the bike. Since noticing that, I’ve stopped teaching level pedal cornering and have seen much faster improvement in my students. You sir, hit the nail on the head. 🤘🍩

As always - great tutorial and actually tailored to the needs us 'hard of learning' who actually need it, i.e. it's as simplified as possible to give us a chance to remember it when you need it. One comment. I don't know if this is just me, or whether you've encountered this with other people on your clinics: when I started learning, I saw lots of tutorials telling me not to steer with my hands, but to steer by leaning, and I took this too literally... I was trying to get the bike round corners only by leaning it. In other words, where you're saying the inner hand 'guides' the bike round the corner, I was just taking this as meaning the inner hand pushes the bike over to the required lean angle. Believe it or not, it took me more than a year before I realised the most basic laws of physics and geometry - the front wheel has to be steering if the bike is going to turn. I now understand the nuance involved here, i.e. when you lean the bike over, then the front wheel will turn itself to the required angle if you let it, but I'd have got there a lot quicker if the tutorials I'd watched had acknowledged that steering the front wheel is a necessary component of the turn. So for me, it would have been helpful if this tutorial included a few more words about what the inside hand is doing when it's 'guiding' the bike - i.e. even though you're trying to let the front wheel do its own thing as much as possible, the end result should be that it gets to the required steering angle for the turn. Once you understand this, you can start tweaking your technique and the idea of balancing the inner hand 'guiding' against the outer foot pressure actually starts to work like magic.

This must be the central debate in basic bike handling. My coach INSISTS on level pedals. I got “corrected” in every turn in the initial session because I tend to drop the outside pedal (thousands of miles of road biking will do that to you!). Then I come to this video and get told to drop the outside pedal. Then I read the comments and get advised to use level pedals. It’s truly maddening! There must be an actual best way for the average flat turn or berm - those that do not have technical properties that make for exceptions.

Nice...concise and simple. I always felt like dating clear back to my BMX days in the late 70's, it just feels instinctive to lower your outside foot, because that drops your center of gravity by the length of your crank arm. Physics. Big gap from the 70's to 2014 when I started mountain biking, but that was still ingrained! Early on, I even tried the "level pedal" turning with the popular rationale that it means you're "always prepared for the next corner," and it felt awful to me, even in berms. I have never had to turn so fast back to back that I can't drop my outside foot. The obvious "side effect" of learning to corner like you're illustrating in this video, is that it will go a long way toward teaching riders bike-body separation, which is what a lot of riders struggle with learning.

@richdrewtherideseries

7 ай бұрын

Couldn’t agree more fella!! Our thought process is simple: aim to use technique that will supply 100% of traction, it won’t hurt ya

Went out yesterday with this in my mind and it went great. Tighter, Faster cornering!!

Keep It Simple - I like that! ✌

Gravity is definitely a factor, but so is centrifugal force. Throwing your hips away outside and over the bottom bracket only works if you are going so slow you have no centrifugal force. Correct me if I’m wrong. riding a bike straight or through corners is a game of balance. While I can appreciate the simplicity of the video, it sure does leave a lot on the table.

Wow, such a great explanation!

Always dropping that knowledge. Appreciate the info!

@rinky_dinky

7 ай бұрын

Dropping it like that outside foot!

Great videos. Improved jumping from you guys. Would love to see you guys take your bikes to the mountains and give some pointers on mountain biking. Out here in Santa Cruz we ride a ton of steep terrifying chutes!

Great video. For me, turning with feet level opens the area between legs which allows to lean the bike over more. It also allows for easier adjustment for body positioning fore/aft, etc

100% right 👌

Bottom line is, when turning the “hips don’t lie”

Great

Practice doesnt make perfect..... Perfect practice makes perfect

Good stuff and as mentioned berms will be a little different. I've been racing xc mtb over 20 years and this is legit - only thing extra worth mentioning is if your (non bermed) turns have places to pedal strike you have to account for that but that gets into a whole bunch of random specific trail conditions.

What is the best way to go through switch backs when you need swap the dropped foot quickly ??

@LittMTB

7 ай бұрын

Backpedaling a half pedal between turns. Chances are you are going downhill, so you let gravity maintain your speed and you just focus on balance. Eg: Left turn, right pedal down. As you straighten up to switch from the left lean to the right lean, do a half rotation back pedal and turn right with the left pedal down)

And do this 5,000 times 😊 that ingrained this technique… practice and repetition.

Simple works because there's truth to simple.

I can get this in flow trails where you might be on a smoother trail; what about when the corner has lots of chunky and / or loose rocks on the surface the size of your fist? Where I ride they are definitely not machine cut and often times larger rocks seem to migrate all over the trail

@crappypatty

7 ай бұрын

Nothing changes, where I live has some of the rockiest and chunky terrain and the cornering technique here is the same.

@BodieMoto

7 ай бұрын

@@crappypatty of course it changes lol at highland bike park during the end of the season you WILL pedal strike on braking bumps with rocks in them lol there is absolutely NO ONE dropping their outside foot on terrain like this, you simply can't unless you're on a hard tail or a bike with very little travel with short crank lol. I only drop my outside foot while cornering on the road, on the trails is quite literally pointless lol its also bad for beginner because they don't lean their bike over as much as their should in the beginning, which means that outside foot being down puts you EVEN CLOSER to the ground.. and when you panic brake a bike it automatically leans itself back upwards, and what happens if your outside foot is down towards the wall of the berm then you panic brake and straight out the bike? you pedal drops INTO the berm and you get popped off lol No one teachers beginner to ride like this at bike parks, by the time you can benefit from dropping you're outside foot on mountain bike trails you're already good enough that you don't need anyone to teach you when and where you should do that. Overall is always best to stay flat on the pedals, you aren't losing any grip at all by not drop dropping your outside foot, and again as a beginner this causes so much imbalance when something goes wrong also this video is incredibly frustrating because he's using terms like "gravity" incorrectly lol like bro come on. He also is teaching counter steering wrong, you don't "guide" with the inside hand, you apply pressure forward on the handle bar in the direction you want to go. So if you're turning left, you apply FORWARD pressure on the LEFT handlebar grip. You don't "guide" the bar in that direction and its dangerous to explain it like that because when it comes time to make micro corrections you need to apply reverse pressure on the other side of the bar. With his explanation, when someone panics they would turn the bars the wrong direction and eat dirt

@evanboleware5749

7 ай бұрын

I only put my outside pedal down when I’m on the very edge of grip or going across an off camber. Most of the time I put trust in my ability’s and lean my whole body and bike into turns keeping my pedals level. I have more control and can pump the ground easier.

everything about weighting, and counterbalancing in order to put lean and angle the bike onto its outside knobs and set the arch is kinda the same as everyone else's advice. Don't steer, lean... which means get off the saddle and initiate and hold while weight transfering. Not so different than skiing and using the entire edges of the skis. Difference I notice is with weighting the hands here... I was pretty sure Aaron Gwin uses the outside hand and not the inside one, but then again he's a multi-UCI WC DH Champion lol