How To Ride Any Drop Off On Your MTB | Mountain Bike Skills

Drop-offs cause loads of crashes. We see that in the fails and bails that you send in to us. Let's take a look at how to ride any drop. The great thing about practicing riding drop-offs is it really does take the same skills for riding off a tiny curb to something that is pretty big like this one. Obviously, drop-offs do get much bigger, looking at things like rampage, but really same skills that you need. The great thing about that is it's much safer and easier to practice on a curb or on a nice small drop-off, get it nailed, and then move on because the thing about these bigger drops is they're way more intimidating. I'm now looking at a big steep run-out that's rough, there's trees, there's a big drop-off, and you can see the marks on this rock where people have dragged their pedals and their chain rings. This obviously causes problems, so get it nailed on a small drop-off first. Why do people crash on drop-offs? First, look at the fundamentals. You ride off the end of this, your front wheel's going to drop, and if it's big enough, your chain ring is going to drag on there. Already, your weight is being sent forward because your front wheel's gone off and your back wheel hasn't followed yet. Now, your bike stalls out, slows down, and sends your weight either forward, and you're probably pitching up and over the bars. Obvious way to fix this, you need to stop your front wheel dropping so much. That's why I also go on about practicing on smaller drop-offs because it's not going to be a problem. You're not going to go over the bars if you just ride off a curve and the front wheel drops first, but you might as well practice it there because it's the same skill. There's a few different ways of keeping your front wheel high, but really, it's all about using your body weight and moving that around the bike to get the required effect of keeping that front wheel light and not letting it just dive off the edge. The first way is riding into the drop-off in your ready position, neutral position, whatever you want to call it, in the middle of the bike, stood up tall as you would riding down this lovely bit of trail before. Then as you get to the drop, you basically just slide your weight to the back of the bike. There's a couple of different ways of thinking about it. Either you think about dropping your heels and moving your hips back, or a way that some people like to think about it is riding in ready position and then sliding the bike by pushing your hands forward. Basically, you'll end up in that same position, heels down, hips back, and that's where I'm really talking about weight. Think about your hips as your weight. If you've got your hips back, that's your weight back, and that's taking weight off the front wheel, and that means it's not going to dive bottom. The added problem with this is you've got to get the timing right. If you slide the bike forward too early, then you're not going to get that desired effect of the push of the bike. It's then going to stall, and then you can still get pitched over the bars anyway. Even though you're back here, you've then got further to fall, and you're going up and over. Getting the timing right, but also making sure that you're not cheating. You've probably heard this 100 times if you've watched our skills videos where I'm talking about how to manual. Often, people will just pull with their arms on the bars, and it can work. The problem there is if you don't get that wrong and the timing wrong, your weight is still right over the middle of the bike. If you pull it and then it drops, you're then still going over the bars. The great thing about sliding the bike forward, even if you get timing wrong, hopefully, you're going to get away with it. Sometimes, you'll find drop-offs a bit like this one with a corner before it or just some other obstacle, which means you can't come in with any speed. Just doing that slide of the weight might not be enough momentum to keep the front wheel high. Now, you've got to do a proper manual to really put some effort in to lift that front wheel long enough for your back wheel to roll to the edge, and then both wheels go off. You're generally always trying to match the landing. On this drop-off, it goes downhill at that slope. I'm trying to get my wheels to the same angle so they pretty much land at the same time. Even though front wheel might land a little bit earlier, just getting there first, just trying to match that angle. It's giving me the smoothest landing. This means a good manual technique and you've got to practice this definitely for when trails get more technical, slower, more difficult, then you're going to need a manual for a drop-off. Two big don'ts when it comes to riding drop-offs. Number one, don't look down. Basically, you are looking down because the trail goes down on this drop-off, but what I mean is don't look down at the drop-off. It's easier said than done because this drop could be the biggest, scariest thing you've ever done on a mountain bike. It's natural to be looking at a thing thinking, oh, I hope I get away with this. Actually, more often than not, people do get away with it. Then it's the run out where I've got a steep, bumpy chute, trees that obviously something I don't want to hit. It's also bringing your weight forward. As soon as you start looking down, your chest drops, it's going to be counterproductive. You're trying to slide the bike forward, but if you're already down like this, your weight's dropping forward. Number two, don't touch your brakes. Again, it sounds scary, especially if you've got a steep run out, but riding into this drop-off, any touch of the brake is going to send the weight forward or make the bike slide potentially. You've got to come in, do your braking early, commit to the drop-off, know that you're going to do it. Hopefully, you're feeling confident. You don't want to back out of this. Then just don't touch the brakes at all until you've landed smoothly, and then you can get back on them. There's definitely a few different techniques dealing with drops. You've got the slide the bike forward, you've got the proper manual, you've got a jump. That gets pretty advanced. You might be coming off a drop, there might be a gap, and then a landing. It's more jumping than drop-off. I'll leave that one aside because you need to be pretty comfortable with jumping to do that. The last one, I think, is pretty technical as well. It's dropping in almost like it's a vert ramp. You might see BMXs do this, and they ride along the deck. There's a coping, and then they drop into a really steep halfpipe. Basically, it's counterintuitive this, but if I just rode off this, my chainring is going to drag. What I'm going to do is actually pick up the back wheel and nose the bike in, get the back wheel past that lip, and then I'm touching the ground as soon as I can, really. That's really good if you're then dropping into a steep technical section. You're definitely not always going to want to use this because it's pretty risky. You're throwing the bike in something steep, and if you get the timing wrong, you could pitch yourself over the bars doing it too much, or you could case your back tire on there, and again, that could pitch you over. It's pretty advanced and not for every drop-off, but if like this, you've got a nice, dirt, steep quarterpipe, then why not have a go? Right, there's some tips on how to ride any drop-off. If you've got any more questions, leave them down in the comments section down below this video. I'll try and jump in there and answer as many as I can. Hopefully, that's covered most bases, and hopefully, you'll stop crashing on drop-offs, and we won't see any more. We won't send them into our uploader. Thumbs up if you love riding big drops.