How To Ride Berms Fast!! - Mountain Biking Tutorial

In the last video, we looked at how to do flat turns. In this video, we'll be taking a lot of those same concepts and applying them to berms. So if you've not seen that video, I'd recommend going to watch that video directly after watching this one. So if you don't know, berms are banked pieces of trail that allow you to get better traction and carry more speed throughout a turn. There are different components that go into riding berms, but let's first talk about braking. Braking while in a turn makes it difficult for your tires to get traction, and in some scenarios will lead to slipping out. So that's why, just like with flat turns, you want to do all your braking before you get to the turn. And once in a berm, you want to let off your brakes completely. Just like with any other turn, the line choices would be a nice smooth arc around the turn, and the sweet spot is usually towards the top. When going fast, I typically aim for a section that's about six to eight inches below the top, and follow that line the whole way around. Keeping your head up and scanning the trail ahead will allow you to anticipate any upcoming terrain, and also will prevent you from getting in trouble. As you can see here, I'm looking much further ahead than where my wheel is pointed. Picking focal references will help guide you throughout the turn. How far ahead you want to look really depends on how fast you're traveling in the radius of the turn. Some berms, such as the ones found on flow trails, can usually be ridden at slow speed. However, to ride a steep berm properly, you need to be carrying speed. Momentum helps glue your tires to the wall of the turn so you can lean in without losing traction. A common mistake that a lot of riders make is that they'll still try to ride the top of the berm and end up just slipping down. Without enough speed, we can't get the traction we need to keep our tires high on the berm. Steep berms, as long as we're going fast enough, traction is not an issue. When the banking of the turn allows it, it's a good practice to keep your bike and body perpendicular to the turn. For that reason, we can keep our feet level to resist the g-forces of the turn, and also keep our hips directly over the wheels. Now here's where things get tricky. Not all berms are steep enough for the speed we're carrying. In situations where we're going too fast for the steepness of the turn, we want to start using the flat turn technique to maximize traction. By shifting our hips to the side and over a drop outside foot, we can increase the traction our tires get, and this will enable us to carry more speed through the turn without slipping out. Up until now, we have only talked about riding berms, but in situations where the berm is steep enough, we can actually use a berm to generate speed. We can do this by pumping the terrain. On a regular feature, we generate speed by compressing into the downslope, getting light on the upslopes. So how can we apply this to berms? Berms are just a valley turned on its side, so we can apply these same techniques to berms. Just like pumping a regular feature, we want to press into the beginning of the berm and drive our legs forward. It's almost as if we're trying to squash an ant beneath our heels. Knowing how to pump berms will take your riding to the next level. You can go faster and maintain more energy by working efficiently. Now, one of the things many people have a hard time getting used to is leaning inwards. A good way to practice this is simply find a bank and carve turns in both directions. Remember, the goal is to get your body and wheels perpendicular to the ground. You may find you're more comfortable leaning to one direction or the other. That is completely normal, and personally, I'm more comfortable turning towards my left than my right. So yeah, that's how you ride berms. In the next turning video, we'll be looking at how to apply these skills to the trail. As always, my name is Phil Kmetz. Thanks for playing bikes with me today, and I'll see you next time. Okay, I'm a little bit proud of myself right here. Check this out. I'm filming the berm video, and I wanted to get like an aerial perspective looking down, and I don't have like a tripod or drone to do that. So I got a little bit creative. I think you'll like it. So there was this one branch I was going over the berm, but it was too high. So I took the rake, attached the GoPro to the rake, and hung it in a tree. So it's not perfect, but hey, it works. I think it gets the point across.