How To Improve Your MTB Cornering- Riding Steep Corners

Steep corners can be quite a scary part of mountain biking where you're picking up speed where you maybe don't want to be. I think like all the other scary parts, when you get a feel for it and get some of the skills and you start to feel like you're mastering it, then it can also be one of the most fun parts of mountain biking. Here I've got a pretty typical set of steep corners on a mountain bike trail. It's actually really nice here because there's no other obstacles. The dirt is really grippy. It's loamy. It's nice and wide. I'm not dealing with any tree stumps or roots so I can talk you through the basics. Also, it's kind of typical as the hill goes that way and we go left and right across the full line of the hill. Wide amount of my trails always go left then right. You never get a left then a left or a right then a right. You haven't noticed that. Anyway, starting with body position. Obviously, it's pretty steep down here. You can drop in 30 meters and not a great deal of trail. To get good braking, you want to get nice and low on the bike, heels down, get into the bike to make sure your tires are gripping. Then you want to look to the exit. I've got two corners here, left and a right. As I'm dropping into this, I'm looking to where I need to be on the way out. As soon as I'm mid-turn, I want to now be looking down to where I'm turning into the next corner. Otherwise, it's really easy to get offline and that will mess up down there, not here necessarily. By always trying to force yourself to look a bit further, I feel like it's easier to get your lines right and also subconsciously do the right things on your bike. Knowing that you need to be there means that you're going to ease off the brakes or steer a bit more or do whatever you need to do to get there. It's really important, obviously, where you've got turn after turn because there's not much point in nailing this one, getting it really fast but ending up on the inside because you're never going to make that next steep turn. Think of your exit of your one steep corner as the entry to the next one and link them like that. Next body position that really does work, especially here where I have got a good grip, I'm really trying to lean the bike over and keep my body fairly upright. I talked about this loads in other coring videos where there's different ways of thinking about it. I like to think about it as bringing my outside elbow up to 90 degrees right angle. That will dip the bars over and the seat will go down the inside of my inside leg. That's a really nice way of getting the bike corner in using the most of my grip. Then if it does slide, I've got space to pull it back up rather than if I'm in line with the bike and it slides, your weight goes to the inside and often you fall off. The scary part, I think, about riding steep corners like this is the commitment to dropping yourself down the hill. You really often see this with people who are novices, I suppose. I would have definitely been the same. As I'm riding across the hill, at some point, I've got to go the other way and there's the drop. It's to my side. It's much safer to want to stay this side of the hill, but at some point, I've got to commit my weight to falling down the hill. It is when I'm at the steepest part of the turn. When I'm going completely down the hill, my bike's going to want to pick up speed before I then hopefully swing it across the hill and lose some of the gradient. Again, I've got the bank on my side there, so it's a much safer feeling. It's that middle bit of the corner where you have to learn to commit. Often with mountain biking, you don't want to just be guessing. To learn to commit, I would say you've got to start off on less steep corners and get used to dropping into the turn and using your normal regular cornering skills like looking to where you need to be, coming off the brakes if you can, getting the weight nice and low, and then building it up to steeper turns where I am going to be committed mid-corner. That is a situation where I might not be able to slow down if I want to, but recognize that. Recognize it might feel a bit scary until I'm used to doing it, but just get comfortable with committing to going straight down the hill and then back across it. It is always a case of trying to do it on something that's a bit more mellow before you start going something that's a bit gnarlier. The speed control part is obviously going to be hard when you're on steep stuff. Actually, if I come into section too fast, I'm not going to get rid of it unless I purposely slide out here to stop and then get going again, because I'm straight into another corner. That speed you enter with, you pretty much crash or you exit really fast, so I'd right away rather come in too slow. I am braking all the way through this. Braking mid-turn isn't the right thing to do some of the time, but actually, you've got no choice here. You need to be dragging the brakes pretty much the whole way through this section. Actually, sometimes I am pulling a bit too much back brake. If I've got to here and I feel like I'm still pointing too much down there, I will actually put a bit much brake on and get the rear tire to slide around and square the turn off. I guess it's not ideal. You don't want to be skidding and wrecking the trail or even sliding too much, but sometimes your back brake will help you out. I am then definitely more reckless with the rear brake than I am with the front. I'm trying to be as careful as I can with the front tire to make sure my front wheel is gripping all the way down, but actually, almost all the time, both the wheels are turning, turning, turning, unless I need to lock up the rear to make it turn just a little bit more. Body position on the bike, I guess, is fairly simple on these corners. Like I said before, there's no obstacles I'm dealing with. It's just literally steep corner, flat steep corner, so I can get nice and low to the bike. Because I'm braking hard down here, I actually am staying pretty feet level. Other cornering skills videos, you might see me talk about dropping the outside foot to get the weight down and get the bike turning, but actually, if I'm braking hard, or even if you're in bumps or you're in more obstacles in the corners, then it's better to stay up with two feet level, so nice and flat feet. I can brake nice and hard, get my heels down and get the weight down and into the bike rather than up and over. However, I'm freestyling a bit on that. If I get mid-turn and like the skidding bit, if I'm still not cornering as hard as I want to, I'm going wide on that corner, then I might drop the outside foot, give it a bit of back brake, and get the bike really lent over. That's when I dip the outside foot and get the bike laid over to make it corner. That's where you can do all those three things in conjunction. It's going to turn harder. Then once you feel like you're back on the right line, you pick the bike back up, go back to feet level and ease off the back brake so no longer any chance of skidding. It's not always perfect. I am freestyling all the way down to try and make sure the line is perfect, but the skills are improvising all the way down steep corners. Practice and repetition is obviously really good. I used to love doing this, finding one or two steep turns in my local woods and just hiking back up, doing it again and learning where to brake, what line works. You are going to find steep corners that you've never ridden before, especially if you like traveling to ride your bike. Sometimes you need to improvise what you're doing there as well. The difference here is on a mellower turn or a faster corner, if I've never ridden it, I'm always tempted to try and find an outside line. Open the corner up, make it easier, maybe even go outside, inside, outside. With steep turns, you can find that if go outside, you're actually going up the hill or you're not dropping down into turn, which means that when you commit to go in straight down the hill, you've got more height to drop. It's going to be harder to slow down, so it can be scarier. In really steep corners, it could be actually better to stick low, although it may tighten the turn up. You're then not committing to going high, dropping in, and then finding out, oh no, the corner goes even tighter and now I've got too much speed. It's safer to stay low in those situations, but it totally depends on the track. Again, you're trying to look at the exit, so you plan what you're doing mid-corner, but I would say that's a situation where you don't always want to just try and make the corner easier by going outside. For a bit of variety, I've ridden over for another little bit of steep cornering. This is a nice, pretty natural bit of trail. I'll show you, there's one tight turn behind me that goes right around, and it goes into a steep chute. I was wrong earlier. There is a left, and then a straight, and then another left. It doesn't go left, then right, then left, then right, the whole way down. I will ride this and talk you through what I'm doing. Completely different dirt in this part of the hillside. We're in the woods, as you can see. Some of this stuff is absolutely completely hard pack, and then you do go into softer bits. This corner here, you'd almost expect it to be black with rubber. It's so hard pack. It's breaking hard now, rocky as well. Now I'm coming off, trying to get through these roots. I'm into steep. Get on the brakes. Open off. Brakes again. Whoa. Slide out still. I was a mile away from nailing that, I'd say, but it was okay. Like I was saying before, the most important thing there is line. If you go offline, there's these massive sides of the gully, and you would definitely get into trouble. I'm more worried about staying online and just improvising, like I said, about what I'm doing with my brakes, but also how much I'm throwing the bike around. Definitely in this situation, I'm not as happy to do a skid. Because it's hard pack, it feels like if you start it skidding, it might not stop, whereas in that loamy stuff, it's much more forgiving to let the bike drift and it will start gripping again. I'm more careful when this ground is rock hard, but I think I should try that again. Take two, I'll try and drop in a bit quicker if I can. Not too high there, otherwise it wouldn't make that turn. Off the brakes, off the brakes. A little bit smoother. Let's carry on. If you've ever ridden your mountain bike in big mountains like the Alps or something like that, you'll know that long tracks with steep corners are really punishing on the bike and the body. If you haven't changed your bike, often you can feel like you're really heavy on the bars on your shoulders. That's why in the world of downhill racing that I used to do, if you ever went to a steep track, steeper than any of the other tracks, you would bias your bike to be a bit more weighted to the rear. On a triple clamp fork, you can slide the stanchions right through to bring the front end up. Stick some more spaces underneath your bars or even put higher rise bars on, just so you're tipping your bike or bring your bars up, should I say, so it's easier to have your body tipped further back on the bike. We've talked about it to Kurt Norton and his massive bars, and I've tried that out recently. That does the same thing. Also, you're definitely going to be rewarded for having lots of grip in steep turns. There's no messing with the laws of physics. Friction and grip is the same thing, basically. A big chunky tire with tire pressure that's going to help you slow down is super important, especially on the back. I do find that this rear tire is the anchor. You can, like I say before, you can get a bit more aggressive with this one. If you've got a nice chunky tire, it's really going to dig in and help you slow down. I think steep turns are a really fun part of mountain biking because they're never the same two days in a row, especially if you live in the UK. One day, they're dry. Next day, they're absolutely mucky as hell. I love learning how to do it. I also love having flat pedals on for this. I do still switch around between flats and clips, but particularly for steep corners, I love being able to dab. I can be a bit more aggressive, I suppose, and if I have to, I can get my foot down nice and quick. I feel like I learn a bit quicker that way as well, because I can, like I say, go a bit too hard. It's just a safer way of doing it rather than risking a crash. I feel like I'm risking less with flat pedals. Yes, it's a fun thing to try and learn, I think. Practice it. Get over and session a section and get it nailed. Learn to get that bike sliding around. Give us a thumbs up if you love riding steep turns.