Everything I WISH I KNEW When I Started Mountain Biking

I'm going to show you nearly everything you need to know about riding mountain bikes in the most fun and confident way possible in about 18 minutes. From bike setup to riding technique, there's going to be three levels of difficulty so everybody can get something from this video. Let's go. Up first are three quick but critical setup tips for your bike. The first quick one is brake setup. Now what I see from a lot of beginner or even intermediate level riders are brake levers set up way too outboard, too close to the end of their handlebars, and they're using more than one finger to brake, which is a very, very, large no-no in mountain biking. In mountain biking, as you know, it's a pretty rough sport and we need as much grip on our handlebars as possible. If you have your brake levers too far out this way and you're using two fingers or sometimes even three fingers, now you have almost zero grip on your handlebars. Whatever fingers are left gripping the bars have to work over time and that creates a ton of hand soreness, arm soreness, and even shoulder soreness. In this case, when it gets really, really rough, you might not be able to hang on at all. The best thing that you can do in this kind of scenario is move your brake levers inboard so that when your hand is in the most comfortable position on the bars, it's set up just so that your one index finger is at the very end of the lever right, right there for maximum leverage. All right, next up, and you are not going to want to skip this one, tire pressures. Having the right or wrong tire pressure can completely change your ride in every single way from bump absorption to traction to not exploding your wheels or getting flats, it's kind of important. I've seen a lot of riders out there ride with too little pressure or way too much pressure and so here are some very rough pressure ranges depending on how much you weigh. And you can typically get away with running one or two psi, less pressure on the front wheel than the back wheel because there's just not as much weight on the front and you want as much traction as possible on that front wheel. So if you're say less than 150 pounds, you can usually get away with around 18 or 19 psi in the front and two or three psi more than that in the back, so low 20s. If you're between say 150 and 190 pounds, usually around 23 in the front and 25 plus in the back. And if you're say 200 pounds plus, you're looking at more like 25 or 26 psi in the front and closer to around 30 in the back. These pressure ranges should give you a nice amount of support in the tire without being so stiff that you lose traction and without being so squishy that you damage your tires or your rims. Okay, newer riders, listen up. This can save you a whole lot of literal pain and heartbreak and that's keeping your pedals flat when you are not pedaling. I've seen this all too often with newer riders and we've all been there, but as you're coasting down the trail not pedaling, I've seen so many people have their feet on the pedals but one foot is down low and the other one is up high. That is one of the worst things that you can do when riding downhill on a mountain bike or just riding anywhere on a bike really. As you already know, the pedals on your bike are pretty dang close to the ground already and when you're going over uneven terrain like this where there's roots and rocks and all sorts of stuff that are trying to catch up your pedals, if you have one leg down, you have now moved one of your feet and one of your pedals super super super close to the ground, especially if you have full suspension bike that compresses. The likelihood of catching your pedal or your foot on something down the trail is extremely high now which can send you over your bars and that's obviously not a very good time. The fix for this is extremely easy. You just have to do it and that's making sure that your cranks and your pedals are parallel to the ground as you're riding. The next rather dangerous thing that I see newer riders do is to stay seated on their bike while they're going downhill. When you're riding a mountain bike in the woods, a huge part of your suspension, whether you have a full suspension bike or not, is actually your legs. Being able to soak up hits on the trail and all of that, you need to be able to move your legs up and down and allow your bike to move underneath of you. But if your seat is all the way up and you're connected to that seat with your butt, you have exactly zero room to move in and around on your bike while flying down that rough trail. And that brings us to the magic of dropper posts. Now you don't need a dropper post to have a ton of fun on your mountain bike, but boy does it ever help. When you're climbing, you have it up and the moment you've got a downhill coming up, hit the little trigger on your handlebars, push the seat down and it's out of your way. If you don't have a dropper post, I just recommend having your seat up for the majority of the climbing section and when you know it's generally going to be mostly downhill at that point, put your seat at least halfway down, if not all the way down, to get it out of your way. I kind of wish this next one didn't make such a massive difference, but it does and that's shoes and pedals. All right, I'm going to anger some people real quick on this one, but it needs to be said. If you are a beginner or intermediate rider, heck even an advanced rider, and you have friends who are telling you that you have to go to clipped in pedals or clipless pedals as they call them, they are wrong. Do not listen to them. You don't have to do it. Clipless pedals are great, but 100% not necessary. We're going to assume that you're riding on flat pedals and I'm going to show you how to get way, way, way, way more out of them. The other day I was on my friend's bike and he had like pretty normal flat pedals, and even though I have a really good grippy shoes, riding downhill on that bike was so much less confidence inspiring because it was just so much less grip between my foot and the pedal. I was sliding around and bouncing around and it made me ride slower. It made me take less chances and it made me feel like I had to grip my bars more because that was the only part that I felt that was truly connected to the bike. I'm going to tell you this right now, and it's a little counterintuitive because every time I show people any sorts of pedals, I mean, these pedals are especially weird, but any pedals with longer spikes, they all start freaking out about how they're going to get them into their shins and all of that. I will tell you right now, after like 28 years of mountain biking experience, in order to get less shinners, you want terrifying looking, super spiky pedals. The more those spikes can dig into your shoes, the less bouncing around your feet are going to do on your pedals. That also means the less times your feet are actually going to slip off of your pedals and you're going to get that awful shinner. Getting yourself really nice grippy pedals is one of the most confidence inspiring upgrades you can possibly make to your bike. When combined with good quality, nice sticky mountain bike specific shoes like these ones from a brand called 510, not sponsored by them or anything, I just happen to use these, that combination between a grippy pedal and a grippy shoe is absolutely unbeatable. I feel totally locked in and I never think about my feet. I never ever think about my feet bouncing off the pedals, no matter how rough it gets. This next one's going to help you smooth out your ride a lot and spend a lot less money on drivetrain components. Do your shifting before you get to the hill. It'll stop your drivetrain from getting absolutely destroyed and shredded with all that torque on it while you're frantically trying to change gears and also you'll wind up stalling out a lot less often up that hill. It's the same with going back down. As you're coming up to a downhill, change into those heavier, harder gears before you wind up going down because somewhere on that descent, you might need to put a pedal stroke or two in and if you're in a really easy gear, you're going to spin up so fast. I've seen people fall straight off their bikes because of it before. Make sure you're in the right gear before you need to be in the right gear. All right, this next one is for all skill and experience levels. This is a Timberbell and Timberbell is also the sponsor of this video. Timberbell is a really well-made bell that stays completely silent when you don't need it, as you can see, but if you find yourself all of a sudden on a busy trail network or what could be a busy trail network around the next corner, flip that switch. Bell does its job and then once the coast is clear, flip the switch again, totally silent. This bell lets hikers and wild animals and equestrian riders and other bikers know that you're coming from a distance in a more passive, less startling way than yelling or hitting a normal bell at the last second. With the Timberbell, other trail users really appreciate getting notified in advance. Instead of knee-jerk reactions out of frustration and surprise, you get friendly waves and thank yous. The Timberbell was created by mountain bikers for mountain biking, so it's specifically designed to be able to handle the roughness of trail riding. They have a bolt-on model that I use on my bike and they also have a quick-release model that you can move from bike to bike like Beth likes to use on hers, and you can get your own Timberbell at mtbbell.com. A huge thank you to Timberbell for sponsoring this video. Next tip, look ahead, eyes up. This is true for pretty much any sport, but especially for mountain biking. With so many obstacles big and small coming at you so fast, it can be hard not to stare them down. Unfortunately, this is one of the worst things that you can do because the fact is wherever your vision goes, you go. If you're staring at the big boulder, you're going to hit the big boulder. The trick is, yes, you want to be scanning for obstacles and the right path that you want to take down the mountain, but you just want to do that further down the trail, not right in front of your front wheel. By the time that obstacle is right in front of your front tire, it's too late anyways. You literally cannot react fast enough to deal with it. By keeping your eyes scanned down trail, it gives your brain enough time to make a plan, to figure out where your tires need to be, not just reacting to where you think they shouldn't be in the very last moment. You've got to give your brain a little time so it can process and make those smart moves rather than just reacting at the last second and hoping for the best. I have personally found over the years that one of the best ways to progress on mountain bikes is to film yourself riding, especially from the chest mounted angle. Helmet cam is okay, but chest mount really shows your body's relationship to the bike and how they're both moving with each other. I highly suggest filming your ride, especially if you're trying to work on cornering and actually trying to see if you're getting that bike body separation. Filming yourself can really, really highlight what you're doing right or what you're doing not so right. But I will say, I do see a lot of people out there with their camera set up just like this. And if you were going to ride your bicycle with your camera like this, well, as soon as you're actually in a riding position, you're just filming the ground. So if you're going to do that, quick little tip you've seen before on the channel, let's show it again. Flip the camera around, put it at, I don't know, 45 degree angle-ish. And then once you're like this, your camera's in the exact right spot it should be, capture your bars and the trail instead of just dirt. If you're generally worried about going over your bars, especially if you're going down something steeper, the thing that you should definitely be doing is the thing that you're probably most worried about. When you want to go down something steep, or if you're just riding and you really don't want to go over your bars, don't lean back, get low. When you lean way back to the backside of your bike, you're taking almost all the weight off of your front wheel. And if there's no weight on that front wheel, there's no grip. This is about center of gravity, center of mass. And so if you don't want to go flipping over the bars, you need to lower that center of gravity. And in this case, the very best way to do that and keep grip on your front tire is to honestly just bend your arms. That's all you really have to do. Bending your arms brings your center of gravity down low, especially if you combine that with, you know, keeping your knees bent, which they should be anyways. But also when you bend your arms, it brings some of your weight forward over your front wheel, which I know seems super counterintuitive, but if you're focused on keeping nice and low with your whole body, it's a lot less likely that you're going to get pitched over your bars, even if it's pretty steep. And now you've got some weight on that front wheel, on that front tire, so your front end maintains grip. So, you know, you can steer and such. Now, if you want to move fast and smoothly down any trail, but especially really rough ones, your bike and your body need to move with the terrain, not against it. You need to let it buck, as they say. Don't fight against the trail. Work with it by allowing your bike, your arms, and your legs to conform to the ground while keeping your head and torso as calm as possible. It keeps your vision straight. It helps you generate speed by pumping, and it's a lot less rough on your body and your bike in general. Cornering. On your tires, there are center knobs and side knobs. Center knobs are for braking and acceleration. The side knobs are for cornering. These are cornering lugs. And all you need to do is get those cornering lugs into the dirt to let them do their job. And the best way to do that is to lean your bike over a lot. You don't have to lean yourself over. You can stay pretty upright, but lean your bike way over and let those side knobs dig into that dirt. And I promise you, especially if you're keeping your arms bent and keeping some weight over the front tire, your cornering speed will magically be at least twice as fast. Weight that front tire, lean the bike over, and use those cornering lugs. It's kind of just as simple as that. Drops. Here we have multiple sizes of drops. There's a really big one over there. There's little teensy tiny ones over that way. Here's the thing about drops. Doing a drop properly is 100% about just matching the angle of your bike to the angle of the landing. So if you're thinking of it that way, the only thing that changes anything as far as technique with drops, it's not about the size of the drop. It's just about the speed that you're going. Let me show you. If I was going the exact same speed off of a three inch curb, it would require the exact same technique as if I was going off of a 20 foot drop in a bike park. So if I'm going slowly off of this drop and I want to match the angle of my bike to the angle of this landing, it's all about timing. And so as I'm going off of this, if I'm going slow, there's a lot more time for my front end to drop down while the back tire is still on the drop. And so because of that, I'm going to have to move some weight back and even out that trajectory so that front wheel go off kind of at same angle and land at the same angle. Now, if I was going into this really, really fast, the amount of time that my front wheel is in the air and my back wheel hasn't left the drop yet is really, really small. So if we do that, I have to do almost no body English. I have to do no compensation for that to have my wheels land at the right angle. It all just sort of happens. Jumps. Oh man. Jumps are kind of their whole own separate thing, aren't they? And it's a pretty difficult thing to teach too. There's so much subtlety to it. And I've made an entire separate video on it. You can go and check it out over there. But I think the most beneficial thing that I could possibly get across to somebody trying to learn how to jump is that you have to stay in control. When we're talking about jumping, we're talking about compressions and getting pressed into the lip and forces, you know, pressing down onto your body and forces lifting off after that. Once you go off the lip, there's just a lot going on. But through all of that, you can't be pushed around by the jump. If there's forces pressing down onto you as you go up the lip, you've got to press right back. And the very, very, very worst thing you can do going off of a jump is to let all those forces press you down into the back of the bike. Because if you do that, then you have all of this energy built up back here that is ready to spring forward as soon as you go off the lip. And that is when you go over the bars off of a jump. You've got to be the one in control. You have to stand up to the jump. You've got to stand up to the jump. You've got to stand up to the jump. You've got to stand up to the jump. So as you start rolling up the face of the jump, you go from kind of a ready position, you know, arms and legs bent to purposefully and powerfully standing straight up as you go off the lip of that jump. And by that, I mean standing up perpendicular to the ground. Start small, work your way up from there. It can be a whole heck of a lot of fun. Well, there you have it. I want to thank Timber Mountain Bike Bells for sponsoring this video. Make sure you check out the link in the description and the pinned comment below. That's 90% of mountain biking in about 15 minutes. Now all you have to do is practice all these techniques relentlessly for the rest of your life. Okay, bye!