Don't Get Lazy! | 5 MTB Techniques We All Forget

When it comes to mountain biking, it's an endless game of learning, tips, tricks, techniques, there's all sorts. It's because of this sometimes we can forget a few of the basics, a few of the lesser-known ones maybe. Well, don't worry. Today, I've got you covered as we're going on a Rich Payne refresher course. Vision. Now, we're always being told to look ahead, but what does this actually mean? Vision is a constant stream of images going through your eyes essentially, but trying to focus on one point, well, that's not quite as easy as it sounds, our eyes are naturally drawn to focus points on the trail. It's very difficult to focus on everything because it's all coming at us so fast, and this is a good thing, but why? As we're riding, we're constantly focusing on the obstacles ahead of us, but we're focusing on particular things. As I ride this corner, I'll be focusing not on this little bit in between, I'm focusing at the mid and then onto the exit, not the little bit in between, and that's what you need to practice. If you're just trying to focus on every little bit, your concentration essentially gets drawn away from actually riding and you're not focusing as hard as you should be on, well, the difficult stuff. The slower the speeds, the closer you can focus and compute what's coming up and going through. The further away it gets, obviously, you're going to need to look further ahead down the trail. There's no set distance for this, but you certainly don't want to be staring right at your front wheel and you don't want to be staring off into the distance. It's just going to be something that comes kind of intuitively the more you ride and the more you learn. Okay, now it's time to talk contact points. We always think of our hands and our grips, but don't forget our feet and our pedals are 50% of that as well. Being able to control the bike with obviously your hands, but most importantly, your feet as well is another great skill to think about and potentially brush up on, something that you'd almost take for granted. You can use your feet and your pedals and that connection down there to control the bike just as much as you would with your hands, pushing, pulling, maneuvering the bike and gripping the bike with your legs and your feet. It can actually be quite a lot more of a help than just with the top end of the bike. That connection then to the lower half of your bike through the pedals, through your feet and your legs can really help strengthen, control, and maneuver the bike just as much as up top. The more weight that you put through your feet, the more grip you're going to generate and therefore, the more stable you're going to become. Think of it this way, heavy feet, light hands. Essentially, the more you can incorporate riding with your lower contact points, the easier you can take it on your upper contact points. Things like fatigue and arm pump are hopefully going to be reduced, giving them a bit of a break, allowing you to ride better. Three skills in one here, which are most applicable to flat turns. However, they do come into play on adverse camber and berms as well. They are, of course, leaning the bike, giving yourself elbow room, dropping your outside foot just enough. Those three points combined then are going to help you generate more speed, you're going to have more grip into the ground, and you're going to be able to corner quicker, faster, smoother, better, and not like that guy. What an amateur. What are you doing? Let's talk about spinning circles, people, here, pedaling. Sounds simple, right? It's something that we can forget about, overcomplicate, or not do quite right, especially when we get tired. Myself, I can be accused of this. I get a bit lazy, and I just mash at the pedal with my quads. I'm just hammering down, pushing away, big old pistons. We don't want to be doing that, no. We want to be spinning circles. We want to be using the full range of motions of our leg. That's going to incorporate all the use of all the muscles that we've got there, and it's going to be the most efficient. Rather than just stamping down, like I said, don't think about the entire pedal stroke as one big revolution. Think about pushing down and then scooping back as well. You're pulling back up on the pedal to complete that nice revolution. See you. Now, on top of all the other points that we've covered in this video, another thing I like to keep check on and which can work in tandem is braking, just when, where, and how to brake. There's two important things to focus on here. Firstly, it's braking too late. Now, I see this quite a lot on the trails, and it's when riders are trying to go really, really fast, they're actually trying to brake as late as possible, but they're also doing this when they get tired, trying to brake as little and as late as possible. Because of that, they end up making silly mistakes or poor timing in their braking. Actually, in the long run, affects them more and makes them even tired. It's a bit of a double-edged sword. The second thing about braking is actually splitting up which brake we use and when to use it. In some corners, it's good to come off the brakes completely before turning, and others you might actually want or need to control your speed until the apex, but aiming to use the rear brake more for this helps your front tire grip better and not fight your turning. Think of it as both brakes for slowing down and maybe the rear brake for turning, if you need to. There we have it then, some often overlooked or underrated skills when it comes to riding your mountain bike. Are you guilty of, shall we say, forgetting a few of these or maybe not practicing them as much as you should? If you are, well, you know where to let me know, down below in the comments. If you like the video, why not give the channel a little like and subscribe. It goes a long way to helping us make more great videos for you. For now, I'm out of here. Thanks for watching, everyone, and I'll see you later.