Mountain Biking Skills – A Guide [1]

Start all over again!

Do you want to ride a bike better and not get hurt? It’s actually very simple – you need to learn to ride a bike from scratch! Yes, that’s right. We learn to ride when we are young and not on difficult terrain. Riding a mountain bike quickly and safely requires much more than just walking. Mountain biking demands the maximum. This time we are not talking about high-flying tricks, we are talking only about standard trails. Speed, types of soil, weather conditions, steep trails and all kinds of obstacles work against the ability to sit on a bike. However, here is one good news – you don’t have to break anything to master it. Just return to learning the basic, key skills and gradually improve them, turning them into habits. This skills guide will help you learn and / or revise your riding technique, taking it to a higher level with a systematic approach. We hope that this approach will protect you from breakage, injuries, and disappointments.

Where and when should we practice to develop skills?

Take time to develop your skills. If you encounter an obstacle, stop and practice until you can overcome it easily. Try to walk with people you can follow and make sure everyone agrees to practice to develop practical skills. Too often, beginners try to catch up with a group that is more skilled than them.

It's usually not a good idea to pass a cyclist who is better than you. In such cases, you lose track of what they are doing. Instead, I recommend agreeing to pass and ride in front of them. Then, you stop and wait for them to approach, carefully observing their line of motion and posture.

Basic skills

Mountain biking is based on 5 basic skills: perception, balance, braking, steering, and pedaling.

Any obstacle first requires identification/understanding and then appropriate action, such as: balance, braking, steering or pedaling. In many complex situations, you will need to combine skills, for example: simultaneous use of balance, brakes and steering.

When we mention an “obstacle,” we mean anything that challenges our ability to stay on the bike: bumps, gravel, sharp turns, etc. An obstacle is anything that requires more than our standard skills.

Seeing mountain biking through the prism of these five skills allows you to break down your actions into appropriate techniques for overcoming obstacles. When you reach a dangerous section, you will see it as a sequence of actions that you may have already done, but may not yet be able to connect them together.

The inability to overcome an obstacle is always the lack of one specific skill. For example: failure to enter a curve and fall can be caused not by looking at the path itself, but at its steep side (perception); sitting unbalanced on a bicycle causes slipping during a turn (balance), using the brakes when entering a curve too quickly causes slipping (braking).

In the picture: Identifying, considering, and acting on obstacles encountered

Progressive/Gradual Approach

The only way to learn to ride safely on trails is to develop these skills gradually. Start with the simplest basic exercises in a safe environment and gradually increase the level of difficulty. Basic skills should be honed in a neutral environment before being complicated by additional factors such as rocks, steep slopes, roots, and slippery ground.

However, there is an alternative: forget all of the above and try to go straight to the most difficult trail. If you are lucky, you will not get seriously injured, you may have to carry your bike by hand for most of the way or you may get bored and irritated by the endless and difficult terrain.

I. Basic Skills: Perception

Every movement you make on a mountain bike is driven by your perception of the environment, yourself, and your bike. Being aware of where you can go, what you can do, and how your bike will perform is a skill in itself.

Look ahead, where you want to go!

This sounds very simple and obvious, but the majority of trajectory errors that lead to collisions are caused by inattention to the road.

Head tilt is about looking where your bicycle's wheels are going. If you're looking at something else, your own head tilt will throw you off balance and follow its movement. So ignore what's not in your path and just look ahead and where you're going.

In the picture: red arrow = braking distance; look ahead or you'll collide!

Look ahead to the point where you can stop.

Always look as far as you can to brake, so you can stop in front of an obstacle you can't overcome. You should practice braking on different surfaces to get a good idea of where your eyes should be. Remember, though, to look far away when going downhill at speed; look close when going slowly, and look as far as you can when turning.

Plan in advance.

Always plan your next move after an obstacle. If your gaze is focused only on the obstacle and not beyond it, you will be unprepared for what awaits you, which may be something you will not see.

Pictured: Think ahead about how you will move, never look at the front wheel when going over an obstacle.

Overcome the obstacle

Your bike can handle a lot and can handle a wide range of obstacles. You can ride over almost anything that is ¼ of your wheel diameter – that’s about 15.24 cm (6 inches). On the road, you’ll only encounter a small number of obstacles that are 12.7 cm (5 inches) wide. Experiment with riding over obstacles. Take your time finding and riding over larger and larger obstacles, rocks, and boulders. Start small, don’t ride over rocks larger than 5/6 inch. Try riding straight ahead and see how it affects your speed and balance.

In the picture: The wheels will go over almost anything that is ¼ of their width, although you have to consider the push/impact force.

The ground as a brake

Any obstacle you encounter will slow your bike down. If you're riding on rough terrain, you'll have to pedal harder. If you're going down a rough slope, your bike will slow down quickly.

In the picture: A very rough surface, such as a cobblestone, will “eat” the speed.

Hold on

If your tires are in good condition, you will get good traction by pressing on them. Traction is the ability of a tire to maintain traction regardless of the force applied to it. If the force is greater than the tire's grip, it will start to drift. The surface of the ground can greatly change the tire's grip capabilities. Therefore, it is always important to determine the conditions of the soil type. Below are the conditions from strong to weak traction.

• Ideal conditions: Moist, heavy, compacted soil provides the best grip, with tire knobs digging deep into the ground.
• Firmly packed and dry, rocky: A compacted soil and rocky surface is a good grip for rubber tires. Be careful with dust, keep in mind that there are loose elements on a hard surface.
• Loose surfaces, dirty sand: Loose surfaces offer little grip at first, but as soon as the tires sink into the ground (turning or braking) they suddenly offer a lot of grip. This complicates the situation.
• Debris: The area is often covered in debris, such as dead leaves. Like a loose surface, it is almost impossible to grip a layer of debris until the tire breaks through it.
• Mud: Wet ground is like soap. This requires you to push your tires down to a firmer surface. Mud covering a hard surface makes it extremely slippery. Watch out for rocks and roots covered in a layer of liquid mud.
• Gravel: It is certainly the most unstable surface. Gravel reacts like ball bearings. A thin layer of gravel on a very hard surface is the most dangerous configuration. A thick layer requires the tire to dig deep into it to achieve traction.

Gravity play

The main difficulty of mountain biking is balancing the forces of gravity – if you hit a rock with your front wheel, you are propelled forward. In reality, your bike is stopped by the force of the impact, and your body continues to move forward, possibly even “flying over” the wheel. You should always be aware of these moments of impact on your path and be prepared for them. You should adopt a posture that allows you to overcome the force of the impact before reaching the limit of your balance.

In the picture: Your body is not dependent on the bicycle. If it stops, your body will continue to move forward.

Collide head-on with obstacles

Imagine that all the rocks hit your front wheel. The impact can be very strong. The size of the obstacle determines the strength of the impact. If the obstacle hits the wheel straight on, you have to brace yourself with all your weight. But if you hit it at an angle, it will push the front wheel sideways and you will not be able to straighten up and you will fall. So always try to hit the obstacle as straight as possible.

Going straight is always the best option.

When riding on rough surfaces, try to “cut” through them as much as possible. Moving freely in rocky areas increases the chances of jack-knifing and getting your wheel caught between two rocks. Hold the handlebars firmly, adopt a correct posture, don’t strain, and let the bike do its job – it knows its job best. Just make sure there are no obstacles on the road that are too big for your wheels to handle.

Exercise: Study the path to take

Practice dividing the road you are going to ride into sections of obstacles. Imagine that the road is a series of bends, curves, and obstacles that you have to overcome. There are always easy sections in difficult sections – places where you can brake without losing your balance, and flat areas where you can turn sharply.

Example of a difficult path: Look carefully at the road: it is quite narrow and borders a steep cliff – you don’t want to fall into this cliff. The road has two steps, and there are large stones on its banks – some of them have been dug out of the ground. The section of the road will be 20 meters long.

Now, look only at the path you are taking, not at the steep slope and the cliff next to it!

Now look at the obstacles – anything that you can push over with your pedals or shoulders.

Now just look at the obstacle you have to overcome: 1 section of 2 steps, 1 large rock, and then 3 steps. Everything else is insignificant.

Now imagine that the road is just slopes and hills – your bike will be bumped or hit everywhere. That's all you need to focus on, as you need to adjust your stance accordingly and slow down where necessary.

Thus, this section of the road is not as dangerous as it might seem at first glance; divided into two steps (a ravine) and one hill, it is even easy!

Translated and edited by Tea Gulua and James Dean