Huge progression in one day! 5 Mountain Bike Pro Tips

You brake on top, you ride on the start, you brake a bit on the bottom. You know what I thought was good? These hips are a bit too much on the front. Is this good enough Jack? Welcome back to my youtube channel. Today's video is about progressing on your mountain bike and for this I'm gonna be riding with my neighbor Jack. He's a competitive road cyclist but he's pretty new to the sport of mountain biking. I consider him as a squamish average mountain biker. I'm gonna give him some tips and hopefully he's gonna be improving by the end of the day. Let's go! While Jack gets ready I'm gonna prepare my bike because most likely we're gonna have to tune up a little bit his bike. I'm gonna be taking allen keys obviously but also a pressure gauge, regular pump and very importantly a shock pump. For today's video I'm gonna be taking my Propane Eugene. I haven't done much content with it but it's a 29er trail bike, 150 millimeter on the front, 140. It's a little brother of the Tahit. Should be perfect for today. Now we said like mountain biking. You told me to take it seriously. Well yeah but no skin set. That's a better outfit. Okay we made it on top of n trails here on Alice Lake. I guess n trails, Boni's Elbow and Hueso is one of your favorite laps. How comfortable are you on it? Yeah I ride n trails and Boni a lot so I'm pretty confident. Even in the wet I would ride it and then usually I would get to the bottom of Boni and decide if I'm gonna ride Hueso or not. Okay so yeah we're gonna do the same. The reason why we stick to a trail you know is just because you've been riding it a lot so you already know it. You know what you can currently do and the idea is not to push yourself but just to tune up your technique and your skills so hopefully you can progress and just overall like increase your riding experience. You can feel more confident, have more fun and hopefully you guys learn from it. Okay it's pretty funny because the first tip I'm gonna give to Jack is a tip that I will give to 99% of the intermediate mountain biker and it is to stand up. So you end up riding quite low on your bike. You actually squat a lot and that doesn't give you the best position. You should be standing up and really looking ahead. That way you have a better anticipation of the terrain. You can pick up better smoother lines and if you need you can squat low and use your arms and your legs so you can be more mobile on your bike. You can move the bike easier and also you fatigue less. Should I go into a feature? Standing tall? Anytime you're riding unless you are cornering, taking an impact or setting up weird for a feature you should be riding tall and strong on your bike. If you are like competing and if you're trying to go as fast as you can sometimes you need to ride a bit lower just to get more traction on the bike or to have a better cornering position but overall when you're riding a trail like that you should be riding on a very neutral position and your neutral position should be somewhere like this. So heels down, legs pretty straight, your hips far back and really looking ahead with your elbows out. I think riding tall on the bike is the only thing I might be able to do better than you. You got a slight advantage to start with. Should we give it a try? Maybe I'm going to show you first and then you can do it. Anything you noticed? Your upper body is tall but quiet. You're not moving around a whole lot and the bike is doing a lot of work for you it just looks way smoother. Because I stand high I can actually use my core to control the bike and I really use like every part of my body to keep the bike on the ground and get the bike exactly where I want it to go but I don't hold on to the bike too much especially you know it's slippery there's those rocks I kind of let a little bit of flex to the bike to go kind of wherever it wants to go in a certain direction and I can do that because I'm tall. If you're tall, I mean tall on the bike, I got a bit confident here but so if you ride like squatted like you did you ride lower you don't have the tolerance to kind of let the bike you know float on the terrain and so you have to like really hang on to it. It makes sense but it feels like squat it should be the right way to do to me and I like you know like I feel as I go into I'm like I need to be ready like in a like squatted position but then it makes sense actually that reduces how much movement. So when you squat it's like you're ready position you know to get on a jump or to get to certain section but you cannot be in that ready position the entire time. You need to be in a neutral position and when you need to be ready you go in your ready position. So for example you are pretty tall the entire time and this section of the trail you want to be smooth you want to go behind your rear wheel a bit then when you get right there you go in your ready position. But if you're in your ready position the entire time that kind of defeats the point and then you're no longer ready. I was gonna say other than that that was much better. You know what it is like honestly I'm coming into that and I'm just I'm not looking where I would normally look because I'm in a different place. Well the thing is that you need to get used to your new position right it's like you get a new bike or a new part new tires even if it's better you still need to get used to it but I think like like you were on a you were on a good path here you definitely had more speed you look more confident you made a mistake here not because your position wasn't good just because this trail is extremely hard and awkward to ride. Yeah normally I would ride this section okay but just being in a different position and I think maybe at a different speed it just threw me off a little bit from the way you're definitely going faster also you can see here you move the rock I don't know if that's what you know made you make a mistake but you're going faster this trail is extremely hard to ride very awkward and everybody makes mistakes here yeah you know it's like there's so much stuff that can go wrong but you know you are safe you didn't crash fortunately um yeah I think I think like to me that looked much better you can still be a bit taller so legs a bit straighter and your hips are too far on the front yeah I feel that yeah I felt like I was I felt like I was going to go over the front yeah you had too much weight on your front wheel yeah but also we're going to check your suspension because your front fork might be a bit too soft so you can see he's riding taller but his hips are a bit too much on the front and his front wheel is gonna hit the rocks and I put too much weight on his arms and you can see the fork is quite soft it's quite deep into the travel on this section of trail okay same as before this time I'm gonna follow Jack see how much he's improved yeah his body position is much better and you know what I mean you made a mistake but you corrected it so Jack made a little mistake but because he had a better body position he was able to correct it save it and keep on going whereas normally what would happen yeah normally if I've made that same mistake a few times before and it usually means I don't ride the whole thing yeah because you stand up higher you got more margin to save it yeah whereas if you had been like crunched over on your bike then you would not have been able to I nearly stepped off in anticipation of not being able to ride it but actually I was able to ride it through it's good let's uh let's ride it this time yeah so Jack already has got more speed yeah buddy that was really good you had way more speed and on top you even moved your rear wheel a little and this you were able to do that because you were standing up exactly that felt way easier to move the back around a little bit that was perfect so yeah that was really cool to see Jack had a much better position and even at the start of the trail he was able to move the rear end of the bike and he was able to do that because he had that neutral position while he was standing up if he had been crunched over on his bike like he did at first you will not have had the mobility to move on the bike like you did so that was really good you managed to get a good exit speed behind and uh no I think we were making good progress how do you feel yeah it was good uh I never moved the rear wheel the way I did there I just felt like just felt way more balanced on the bike it felt very natural like it you know you're just like you wanted to open your corner a little bit and you just well you just moved it and so that's good yeah sweet well let's uh keep that same body position and apply it to the rest of the trail yeah so what's your line around here so I'll normally come on rider's left of that first tree and then control my speed drop onto this slab here and then right through the kind of janky rolls there and then you see the big tree in the middle at the end I kind of wait to see which direction I get bounced in before I decide which side which side of that tree I go on it's kind of braided I don't even know which way is the proper trail but now that you got a better position you're going to be able to choose where you go yeah as long as the bike yeah so I mean uh I guess not ideally I would go go left and keep the turn more open yeah I don't usually have that option let's uh yeah let's have a look okay I use a coach now what that was perfect that was really good you feel how stable you were yeah that felt it did feel much better but now the only difference that you know you need to go to a mountain biking speed instead of road cycling you need to go a bit faster but how do you feel it felt faster I'm not sure that I was on and off the brakes at the right time but I was definitely on and off the brakes yeah but it's not it's not really being like on and off it's just about choosing where you put the most power on the brakes and where you let go yeah so it's like imagine when you're driving your car and there is a speed bump you don't want to brake on the speed bump you want to brake before the speed bump so then your suspension go back to the initial point when you take the bump it's kind of the same here you get a big compression so the best way to slow down is obviously to break in the compression but past that compression once you're stable on your bike you kind of want to carry speed and you are like quite a lot on the brakes on that bumpy section was what would be better is that you brake on top you ride on the slab you brake a bit at the bottom and then once you've controlled your speed enough you let go the brake and you go back on the brakes later on when the trail is actually smoother okay you know you're good enough of a rider that you could carry more speed and get back on your brakes later okay so maybe you should try that okay so you can see your body position is better you are definitely faster slow down a lot before and you slow down until the start of the corner yeah and then you really let go which was exactly what you want to do so that's really good the only thing i can notice is i mean you're getting faster and you have a stronger position so you get the bike to take more impact than maybe you used to so i think you should stiffen a bit uh the front end of your bike so we're gonna add a bit of air just to get that front end a bit higher and so you can like massage your stuff a bit easier okay so you're at 70 psi and i think we can go to 75 okay that should be enough to give you a bit more support and have the bike seat a bit higher in the travel that video is actually sponsored by jensen usa jensen usa is an online retailer they started to sell seven mesh they also do topic or camelback product and they've given me a gift card for jack so you can purchase a chase vest like this one or a pressure gauge for example so thank you so much those guys and when you guys do a purchase using one of the link in description that support my channel so i can do more and so thanks so much for that so because we added some air the fork is gonna come back faster so we're just gonna add one click of rebound and that should get back to a rebound that jack is familiar with let me uh follow you okay can you keep up that was good you recognize this one yep i know this one well okay well i know you can ride it but instead of you know teaching you how to go fast let's work on going as slow as we can because in slabs going fast is actually fairly easy you just don't have to brake we worked on compression and we worked on body position before so now it's more about braking control and i think the best way to learn about braking control is to try to go as slow as we can so you can really start mastering your front brake and your rear brake and you can really like you know find that modulation before sliding and i think this is a pretty good slab to do it so i'm gonna do it first i'm just gonna go as slow basically as slow as i can and so you can visualize like my body position what i do and then you can uh you can try okay i'm gonna move a bit further this is good enough jack that's only because yeah that was awesome what did you notice on my riding technique to go as slow as i can uh well it was really slow and uh yeah like i feel as though i can ride it comfortably but not as slowly as you've done um it's really obvious how much you're relying on the front for traction like i can see the rear doesn't have a whole lot of weight on it and it's like skipping just just on the brink of losing traction yeah your front brake really stops you whereas the rear brake only slows you down so different use and on a slab like that where the grip is really good you just rely on your front brake like that's that's your number one priority is to deal with the front and the rear that's where you're gonna skid and that's okay if you do skid kind of let go and get back to a better modulation so you can uh you know you can get traction again because when you skid you're basically out of control so you want to keep your tires rolling and uh yeah have fun go slow as you can okay yes your heels one brake i'm squeezing it so i was actually really impressed by your first attempt you are really controlled you had really good brake management i was very impressed because you went really slow at the start and as soon as you skidded a little which is you know which is pretty normal i was expecting you to pick up a bit more speed but you actually didn't you managed to like you know refocus and get back on the traction again and really keep a consistent speed to the bottom so it's really good you were maybe a bit too low on your bike which is good in a way because you want your center of gravity to be low but when you start skidding or if you make a mistake especially if your front wheel makes a mistake you have you know less space to correct yeah so right now it's a straight slab so it's very easy but when you're gonna come to like more technical slab you don't want to be that low on your bike because if something happens you can't really correct so one thing that i've noticed that your ankle are still pretty high and if you look at mine my my heels were really deep and that way that allows me to get even lower from the ground without compromising my my body position so i can keep like a fairly high stance get my hips as close as i can from the rear wheel but get my legs still a bit straight so i can push on the bike make myself super heavy and get like still in very good control so maybe you should try again and try to get those heels down a bit more okay thank you let's do it yes a lot of front brake your hips your hips yes there we go you could be coaching mountain biking now still came in a bit hot and then i lost it again yeah i just started to lose it a little like i held it though you know this slab is like fairly easy but when you're gonna go on i don't know like guranga and that like yeah more spicy stuff yeah you're gonna slide so it's good that you get used to like kind of losing control and getting back control that's really important perfect cool let's move to the next one so you've done really well on the slab up there this one is not much harder but the big difference is that it's completely off camber so the technique is not much different with your braking but the big thing is that you're gonna have to change the position of your feet like any off camber corner basically you want to drop your outside feet just like when you're you put the weight on your outside leg so same idea you're gonna have most of your weight on the outside leg which is gonna be the right leg on for this particular feature you keep your heels down but your outside leg is gonna be lower so you can help the bike to get traction and yeah that's gonna make the process easier you're gonna be more efficient with your braking and this is whether you're braking on the slab or you're not even if you go really fast you want to keep that traction so you want to keep your outside foot down and that's really gonna be helpful so let's do it a few times you kind of were a bit like too crunch on your bike so you didn't have the best mobility yeah it was much better you had like outside foot was down heel were down and what you did different is mostly that your hips were more far back so you're more spread out on the bike so more stable better control and because you are not crunched when you came on that section of the trail you were on your like you know basically a neutral position you were able to move the rear end of the bike and set up nice for the exit of the trail so that was good like how does that feel yeah it felt way better i have to remind myself hips in particular hips and heels like i have to keep telling myself but i can really feel the difference uh in in my body position and then yeah it feels great the best way to progress is really to you know be over critical of your own riding and really focus on the things and like remind yourself like before you drop in it's like okay i have to think about my heels i have to think about my elbows my hips until it becomes natural yeah nice so that section of trail is actually super fun you definitely had better braking control better position but i've noticed at the bottom in between the corner you seem to sit a little bit and pedal in between the corners which i don't think is a good thing first of all your gear is a bit too easy and you should have a bit a bit more power so maybe run one or two gear lower just so you get more resistance and i think it's better if you ride your bike like if you didn't have a chain if you don't have a chain you can't make up for a mistake by pedaling yeah so pretend you don't have a chain that way that that's going to make you ride like more round pick up smoother line and carry more speed you won't be able to brake as late you'll have to brake earlier and carry your speed out of the corner and when you sit like that and you spin your legs you take more chances to make a mistake by hitting a rock whereas if you stay standing up and you push into this corner you're going to carry more speed make okay so i should make fewer mistakes you shouldn't make and now let's see if you can ride this one okay so normally when i ride this i'll come in pretty slow but with just enough momentum to not hang up the front wheel on this first little section here on the crack and then basically pinball my way down until i get to the rocks at the bottom and try and hit the brakes hard enough there and scrub enough speed to get around the corner before the tree stump at the bottom yeah me what i would do well what i would advise you to do is to open your corner before stay inside so that way you can kind of miss the crack and the big step yeah that makes it easier you're less likely to get bounced around you'll be able to control more speed there and then what you can do once you come faster and faster your braking point will actually be on those rocks why because that's what we talked about earlier on the entrance is that compression so you got a big compression your bike is gonna go deep into the travel there's a lot of weight on your bike yeah and if you've got a strong position that's where you can break super hard enough and then just manage your corners after that okay so maybe try to stay more inside tight and see if you can ride it smoother than before okay cool all right so how was that yeah it felt good i was i was trying to be further left and it felt fast but actually at the bottom uh i was pretty comfortable getting past the the tree stump yeah you can see your tire marks so you are more inside than usually and then you kind of open a little bit yeah so and you could literally go on a perfect straight line from here yeah so you could stay a bit more left and i believe it will be less bumpy you'll be able to to control your speed a bit better yeah yeah yeah it's just a all the clean rock to the right is very appealing when you're trying to break you know like i get pulled towards it but then i can see that actually if i stay left it's there's less uh sort of up and down it's gonna be less bumpy less fewer compressions and then uh a smoother straighter line yeah try to stay a bit straighter work on that body position and try to really make yourself as heavy as you can into that compression on the pavers so you can really shut down the speed and then let go for the corners okay all right let's try again that was really fast and you're all serious next year so what about this one yeah i feel way better left line that's straighter yeah yeah yeah you actually go fast yeah that felt both faster and more in control i think that better line and a better riding position you can be more confident and you can break harder where you need to break and then you can just let roll the bike and that was really good the body position feels so much better yeah like i feel like i can go into it with more speed and i'm now less worried about getting bounced around because i'm absorbing things better so i got a bit more time to look ahead and break at the right time that that was by far the best i've ever ridden that section think about your hips so i try to be because it's flat right hips further back elbows more out and so that way your control position which is like gonna be your chest and and shoulder like you above above your your stem and your front wheel basically and that way it's just easier to angle the bike so maybe follow me on this section of trail i'm gonna go on the front and you're gonna see my body position you see what i mean i'm like i'm in a stronger position my hips are more far back and i really i really keep space to move the bike so we're gonna focus on those two corners this one is pretty good because you come really fast on it so you're gonna have to focus on your braking zone you're gonna come tall um get weight on the bike so you can really be efficient while you slow down and then stand up a little bit focus on your body position and really make a nice corner you carry good speed out but then you're gonna have to break again and do the same for the next corner and for this corner it's pretty flat actually so make sure you've got same on the off camber rock face outside foot at the bottom so you can really put weight on the nose of the tire and get the grip so you i show you yep good okay my turn your turn but you have any feedback on any questions no i mean you did what you said you're gonna do it looks like you know it's noticeable you kind of load the bike up and it sounds ridiculous but you can hear that you've got lots of traction yeah you know like the sound is like like your tires are just gripping exactly and that's because i can put a lot of weight on my outside leg and have a good body position so i can really get those side nubs to dig into the dirt yeah and do what they're they're here for yeah and see like after that i stand up again i braked again so you don't want to get over carried on this one too fast right so remember corner but have a good exit speed back on the brakes corner again yeah and you can see like you didn't you didn't skid in the corner but you can see exactly where your wheels were because they're just gripping so much and remember that if you brake too late and you break into the corner naturally you're gonna see it and then you're gonna lose all your speed out yeah okay all right so i'm looking at the video it's pretty good actually you like you had a good braking control you really shut down your speed before yeah and then you enter the corner and once you enter the corner you no longer braked and then you did it again here you braked and then yeah enter the corner what i can criticize is more on the corner you didn't have your outside leg at the bottom and the thing is that you're going to a speed that was like low enough that you're not gonna slide yeah but once you're gonna go faster and faster at some point you're gonna slide if you don't put more weight on that berm yeah you're gonna slide if you don't put your outside foot at the bottom i heard your tires going like that means you're going fast i was making that sound with my mouth as i went past that was really good like did you feel the difference yeah that was good yeah it felt better for sure yeah thank you guys for watching that video i hope you enjoyed it how was it brilliant i really enjoyed it a few uh seemingly small tips that made a really big difference so yeah i really appreciate it awesome let me know in the comment below what tips was the most valuable and i'll pick up the best answer and give away a 50 gift card from jensen usa and talking about jensen usa every time you make a purchase using the link in description that support my channel so thank you so much and right now don't forget the deal with gopro when using the code remy at checkout you'll get a bunch of free accessories including a chest that's only until june 9th for north america so enjoy and i see you next week