How To Improve Your MTB Cornering- Riding Flat Corners

We've all heard the saying, jumps for show, corners for dough. What does it mean? Well, essentially, if you want to go faster, it's in the turns where you make up the time and the speed. Flat turns, I think, are some of the hardest turns to master, especially when you do start going quicker. Don't worry, today I'm going to share with you some top tips for how to crush those flat turns. Before we get going, why not show a little love for the channel and hit the like button? Don't forget, subscribe to keep seeing great GMBN content, like what you're going to get here today in a gravel car park. It may look underwhelming, but it's actually perfect for what we want to be able to practice. That's all the varying aspects of flat turns and linking them together. Let's dive on in. To get started, then, we need a few markers. This can be done with anything. This is the beauty of it. A bit of wood there. We'll put my water bottle about there. We'll evenly space them out with a rock about there. Then I've stolen the cameraman's water bottle there. What that's going to allow us to do is able to be able to weave through these turns. You can either do them singularly or link them up, which we are going to get to. It does mean that you can practice this skill literally anywhere, even a Forest of Dean car park. Let's start with body position. For that, we need wrong reach. Come on in wrong reach. Here we go. Stop just there. Let's have a look at what he's not doing quite right here. There's a few things going on. His pedals are level when the outside foot ideally wants to be down. His head is down as well. He's not looking ahead to the next turn when he's linking them up. We've also got very stiff arms and legs. He's not in that attack position. He's very straight arms and legs. Also, he's not really leaning the bike and keeping his body upright. He's trying to lean into it all as well. That's not really going to give you the most grip that you can possibly get. Let's send him on his way. Off you go, mate. Lovely. Now, we need correct reach. Come on in, mate. Stop. Same corner, same position, not same position, but same place on our corners. Quite a few things done differently here. First up, you can see head up, eyes looking forwards. We're going to get onto eyes later, but certainly that head up, chin up, spotting what's coming up on the trail, or in this case, the next turn when we're linking them together. The outside foot is dropped. That's going to give him more grip, which, like I said, we are going to get onto. He's also in a much more aggressive stance. You can see there's two things going on here. That aggressive stance is allowing the body to be in a more vertical position and the bike leant over combined with the outside foot down is going to give you the most grip on a flat turn because you're putting a lot of force down into the bike, through the pedals, into the tires. Yes, nice one, mate. On you go. Let's talk pedal position. Now, look, as right Rich comes through, we'll stop him there. Hold on a minute, mate. Now, look at where his pedal position is. The outside foot is down and the inside one is up. Now, the reason that is done is because essentially it puts the most weight on the outside foot. It forces the bike down into the ground. Like I said, it sinks your body weight into the suspension, into the tires, and really gives you the most grip. It also allows you to lean the bike over whilst your body stays more vertical. You can really lean that bike into the turn. You can get as much weight into the ground and get maximum grip. Now, flat pedals is best to learn this on, but you can do it in clips, of course. Sometimes you might even drag a foot. You might have your inside foot off the pedals. Now, think of old school Kovarik or Sam Hill here. Check out this clip. The reason for that is because that guy is absolutely charging. When you're going flat out around a flat turn, the bike will dance and skip around underneath you. You have to have that inside foot out waving around ready for a little dab or just to keep balance. Let's stop him hovering here because he's been doing that for a while and send you on your way, mate. Thank you. Then where should we really be looking when it comes to flat turns? Well, ideally, heads up, eyes up, and you're looking at the turn coming up. This can change whether it's a single turn or you're linking multiple turns together. Let's start off with an individual turn, a solo turn, if you like. Entering the corner, you're going to be coming up. You're going to be looking at the turn, looking at the apex because what you're already doing there is you're already getting set up for it. You're already on the correct line. You're looking ahead at the turn. You're looking at the apex where you need to be heading. You're always, and this is a general rule for mountain biking, in all turns, you want to be looking where you want to go. You'll look at the apex, then obviously you'll hit it. As you hit the apex, you're then looking at the exit for the line that you need there. Now, obviously, if it's a rough piece of trail, you need to be looking at a particular line for it that you need to hit to then link on and carry on down. However, if you're linking multiple turns together, you're then looking at the apex of your turn, then the exit, but you're shifting your eye line, your gaze to the apex of the next turn. You're doing this for a number of reasons. Firstly, so you can obviously break in the right positions or points that you'd need to break and slow down accordingly for the corner. Secondly, to adjust your body position and your line choice. Actually, a couple of bonus bits in there. You might need to shift body weight from one point to another, as you more than likely will, and obviously change your line potentially. These ones that I've set up here are all very equal, but if they get tighter further apart, looser, one might fade away and off camber. You need to account for all of this as you shift your gaze, as you shift and, like I said, constantly scan the area ahead. Let's talk about body weight and your weight transfer. Now, when it comes to linking up turns that we can see, correct, Rich, coming through and looking good all the way through, but let's rewind a bit and bring him back here. Thank you very much. Now, the weight, as we said, is always on the outside foot for good reason. It puts a lot of pressure into the ground and gives you maximum grip. Now, when it comes to linking up turns, you could see there that he was switching the bike from left to right. The body was actually staying fairly vertical, but the bike was doing the leaning and then he was switching outside foots down. As he was going around a right-hander, you can see the left-hand foot's down and vice versa on the other side. Now, he's doing that because, like I said, you want that weight always on the outside foot. The trick here, there's two ways to do it. If you're going uphill and say you're riding flat turns, switchbacks, uphill, you'll generally be doing that pedaling forwards. Now, for me, and this is actually a personal preference, it's not always a set way, should we say. You can see as he was coming through that he was switching pedals backwards. As he'd come up to a turn, outside foot would be down, he was going to turn left, switch it, a back pedal, half a pedal, just to get the foot in the right place. Weight is also fairly central within the bike. He's neither too far forwards nor too far backwards. If you get your weight too far backwards, especially on flat gravelly turns like this, you're going to unweight the front end and it can wash out from underneath you. That is something you don't want. Anyway, enough of him holding it there. On you go. I've brought you to the woods for this final segment. We're talking about braking, when, where, and which one to use. I thought this is a prime turn. It's a nice long left-hander we're going to hit in a minute. Ideally, when it comes to braking, you want to be a little bit more back brake dominant. Too heavy on the front brake and you could cause it to lock the front wheel up and wash out from underneath you, as we've said. You can also cause it to distribute your body weight unevenly. If you are too harsh on the front brake, it can cause your body weight to go more over the front. Having said that, sometimes there is a good point to having weight over the front. If you're getting very back brake heavy, it's a really fast loose turn, sometimes it's actually good to lock the back wheel up and get a bit of a drift on. That's where you're going to see the back end start to step out and get all rally on it and steer with the rear. Guys like Sam Hill are absolutely amazing at doing it. Now, what that's doing, they're actually then shifting a bit more weight over the front. You can see that inside leg trailing out for balance as well. A lot more back brake heavy and they're just ever so lightly modulating or feathering the front brake. That's the optimal way. However, in a more standard flat turn like we've got here, you're going to be standing up, you're going to be in your attack position, head up looking forwards. Outside foot's going to be down and then you're going to be fairly even, if not a little biased towards the back brake. Never do you really want to lock up unless you need to get that drift going, initiate that turn if you like. Nice and smooth, braking, not beginning, not in the middle, just as you enter the turn, your brake here. As you hit the apex of the turn, this is when you'll let the brakes go so that you can get most grip through the middle. Then we're going to keep going, you'll let the brakes off and carry all that speed out. There we go, some top tips on how to hit those flat turns and hopefully identifying some things that you may have been doing wrong with right and wrong, Rich, but let me know. Do you want to see more of him again in the comments? Let me know. Of course, we'll get a few more instructional tutorials coming your way. As always, a little like and a subscribe to the channel does go a long way to supporting us, but for now, I'm out of here. See you, everybody.