Advanced riding requires advanced fitness to be sure. By incorporating a few simple techniques into your technical repertoire, you too can emerge from the gnarliest single track with a stupid smile instead of an open wound. In some ways, mountain biking is a game of momentum. But momentum sometimes yields loss of traction and wipeouts. The equalizer in this equation is balance. Balance is basically your butt, or more precisely, what you do with it.
For example, a sketchy left-hand corner may secretly desire to defeat your side knobs and bring you to a crashing halt. You can foil this insidious plot by leaning the bike sharply to the left while hanging your butt out to the right, keeping your center of mass over your bottom bracket and driving those side knobs directly down into the ground. The smaller the frame, the more sloping the top tube, the easier it is to slap your bike from side to side. (They’re also lighter and more rigid.) This is why most au courant frame designers have gravitated to the overgrown BMX look.
Good balance will also help you climb steep pitches. You need to apply enough pressure on the rear tire to keep it hooked up and you moving forward, but enough pressure on the front tire to prevent you from looping out over the back and hooking up your head with the soil.
Conversely, descending extreme slopes obliges you to keep enough weight on the front wheel for maximum braking power and enough weight on the rear to prevent the bike from catapulting you down slope like a bean bag when you stub your front wheel into a rock.
Rule of thumb:
Going up? Move forward on the saddle.
Going down? Move back.
For the steepest climbs, you need to be on intimate terms with the extreme nose of your saddle. Slide all the way forward, grab those bar ends and concentrate on pedaling smooth circles up the smoothest line. Gut-busting climbs are where clipless pedals really shine. The ability to haul back on one pedal with your hamstring while mashing the other pedal with the opposing leg’s quads radically increases your torque and the range of slopes you can climb. Clipless pedals are worth their weight in gold.
On technical, free-fall drops, you butt has to be over the rear axle. Here, unrestrained momentum is your enemy. The key to keeping things under control is your front brake, which is incomparably more efficient than the rear brake. Put your waistline behind the rear of the seat and maintain just enough speed to keep moving by “feathering” the levers. I like to get so far back that I actually place my chest in the seat itself.
Sometimes the only way to clean a section is to come to a complete halt, balance for an instant and then move off on a new line. Called a track stand, this is the second most important skill besides a wheelie. It’s also a breeze to practice. Find a grassy area, pedal forward, bring the bike to a stop with your feet in the 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock positions and see how long you can balance. When you start to fall over, pedal just enough to regain your balance and try again.
An even more basic skill is the wheelie. No, you don’t need to be able to ride a figure eight on your rear wheel. However, you do need to be able to confidently loft your front wheel over rock, log and slippery root at speed. A simple yank on the bars timed to coincide with a pedal stroke is often sufficient to get things started. If you have front suspension, a sharp push on the bars can facilitate a rebound that lifts the wheel. Again, practice on a lawn and do not remain clipped into your spuds while you learn. Your butt will thank you, trust me.
A very cool (and very handy) variation on the wheelie is the nose wheelie. This advanced move often immediately precedes the endo, short for “(rear-) end-o(ver-the bars)” for most riders. Unanticipated nose wheelies have a tremendously high pucker factor, but the angle required to launch you into a low orbit is much greater than you think, especially if your butt is all the way back like it should be.
Nose wheelies are essential for those special occasions (like a downhill switchback) when your bike is too long to fit through a turn. Roll past the apex of the corner, loft the rear wheel, swing it to the outside, set it down, reorient the front and off you go. Mastering this move will also give you the confidence to reassert control of the bike when the trail gods throw that unannounced “Nose Wheelie Pop Quiz” at you.
Between the wheelie and the nose wheelie, in terms of difficulty, is the bunny hop, of which there are also two basic species. The simplest involves a two-wheel takeoff and landing. Ride up to the obstacle, leap into the sky (take your bike with you) and use your momentum to carry you forward and beyond the problem with your wheels level throughout the jump. This move, however, has its limitations, chiefly in the height of the obstacle you can clear.
There’s a slightly more advanced derivation that I call the “porpoise” (for lack of a better term) because your bike describes a swooping arc like a dolphin leaping from the water. On this move, ride up to the problem and loft the front wheel first (you are now rolling on the rear wheel). Then, as the front begins to pass over the obstacle, lift the rear by jumping. Push forward on the bars as you jump (your butt goes back). This helps the rear wheel gain elevation. The front wheel will continue to describe a downward arc and contact the ground first. The rear will describe the same arc as you roll forward. The porpoise allows you to save energy because you don’t have to jump as far to clear something. With the basic hop, the bike maintains a level attitude in the air, so the rear tire has to clear the problem before the front wheel can descend. With the porpoise, you adjust the attitude of the bike in the air so that you only have to clear one wheel at a time. The energy you would be using to get distance can now be directed towards gaining maximum elevation or better yet, accelerating down the trail.
For really big logs, gauge the required elevation by lofting the front wheel so that it just kisses the top of the log. That’s your mark. Now jump so you put your rear wheel on that mark. Your muscles will remember how high the front wheel had to go. (You now have rear wheel on log, front wheel on ground. If your butt is not way back, you are also flying over the bars.)
A crude variation of this move drives the big ring into the wood of the log for traction. While it lacks a certain elegance (and is hard on your big ring), it’s an effective way to claw over the biggest logs.
These are obviously dynamic moves that require trial and error to master. To survive the error part, you first have to master the single most important skill of all, crashing softly. The worst wrecks happen when the front wheel suddenly begins to move much slower than the rest of the bike and the attached rider like a dead stop), driving that rider up, over and into the ground.
Endos stink. And they happen. When the light bulb of recognition flashes on in your oxygen-starved brain and that little voice says, “Hey man, I think you’re screwed!” you have to eject. Get away from the bike. Number one, it can take care of itself. Number two, it’s going to be pretty ticked off at you for getting into this unseemly mess. It will add insult to injury by landing on you. Getting free may not be easy if cranked down the retention spring on your clipless pedals.
Whether or not your bike is on your tail, release the bars and bring your arms up to help absorb the impending blow from the ground. (This is why we wear gloves.) If you’re in a slow-speed, pile-driver sort of affair, absorb the impact with bent arms. It beats catching yourself with your face. (This is why we wear helmets.) If you’re in a Wide World of Sports-type endo, dissipate the energy by tucking a shoulder and rolling. This assumes your trajectory isn’t taking you into a large, immovable obstacle, like a tree or rock. And if you are silly enough to get yourself launched in a boulder field, you’re going to have to pay for your foolishness.
Finally, remember that discretion is the better part of valor. This means that you don’t go for the big move on top of a group of hikers. All it takes is a couple of chuckleheads to close a trail. Then where are you going to practice?
Posted in Biking Information