So i’m trying to cut out all comfort braking from my cornering. It’s been brought to my attention I do quite a bit.

I’ve been practicing this one corner – it’s sort of the “sum” of all corners I ride locally. It’s on a downhill, it’s got bumps, the exit is at 90 degrees to the entrance, there’s roots. You carry good speed and there’s stuff to bounce off of, basically.

One of two things happen:

1: I comfort brake the corner. I get round the corner fine, but it sounds horrible and I probably loose a bit of speed.

2: I don’t comfort brake the corner, and I end up tramlining off the line toward the bushes which causes me to actually brake and loose all my speed.

I know it’s possible to do the corner without touching the brake – it’s not a downhill world cup corner. I just can’t “hold on” without hitting that brake slightly or getting the bike round the corner enough.

What’s going on here? Does anyone know any decent tutorial videos that I can watch on this? A lot I have found on cornering tend to be guys in carparks or fireroads – which is fine I get the physics is the same but I’d like something to watch “in action”.

Cheers!

I’d imagine it has very little to do with the corner and more to do with your riding position and bike positioning.

Reduce your entry speed until you can clean it, practice and build up speed again.

Slow in, Fast out for me. Basically brake well before the corner. If I need to brake in the middle for comfort (and I often do) it means I went in too fast. That messes up the whole thing and I come out slow. Going in a bit slower makes the whole thing smoother and more controlled and speeds up the exit. I’m sure most of the time the comfort braking is not required and I need to just commit, but my brain doesn’t work like that.

Another thing for me is I was setting myself up for the corner (dropping pedal, shifting weight, etc) too early, usually before the start of the corner. Going in fairly neutral then dropping the pedal and moving back once I was about 1/4 of the way round feels much better.

Be interested to hear other tips as I’m better than I was but still pretty messy and slow.

Maybe a little bit too fast in? Like mike says start a lot slower and build up.

I comfort brake too 🙁
wish I had time could make time to practice stuff like that.

I love skids.

Seriously, if you can get away with it [and if there’s no-one right behind you] try drifting the rear wide.

I can’t exactly describe how I’d do it, the bike positioning, looseness of grip, low pedal, tyres and many other things will all help.

But yeah, skids can really help, maybe just a small dab at the beginning to change your approach angle.

gofasterstripes – keepin’ it rad since 1984.

If the corner needs slowing down for, it’s not “comfort” braking really is it?

By the sounds of it, this corner, in idea conditions, and given a perfect approach CAN be ridden without braking, but, generally, it sounds like a better approach is a small, controlled loss of speed on the approach to the section, then get off the brakes, get the bike stable and turned, stay loose to ride out the bumps/roots, and then power out the other side!

Go slower to go faster ey….

Cool, so tonight I will practice getting my braking done before i’m in the corner and on the obstacles, then riding the corner without touching the brake at a speed that allows me too. Get faster and faster until I’m doing it all without any brakes.

GOT YA.

Its all in the looking. You can get away with pretty much anything if you’re looking in the right place.

Don’t look at the roots, or the bushes, or the bouncy stuff, or the apex.

Look out of the corner, or if you can’t see it, look where you think it should be. Get that right and the rest will follow. As you turn your head, your shoulders, torso and arms (and therefore bars) follow. The further you look, the more time your brain has to process information, and the more stable your head is – and not having your brain rattled around is what makes something not-scary.

Genuinely – it’s amazing what you can get round (and at what speed) if you let your head do the work. The rest of it – weight, feet etc, will all come fairly naturally afterwards (assuming you’re not a total numpty)

I was just gonna say what JonEdwards did, are you looking where you want to go?

Easier said than done in the heat of the moment I know, and I’m still trying to drill myself to do it better but it does work.

You’ll get tonnes of advice, some conflicting.

I’ll go with the Jedi approach though –

Get all your braking done before the corner. Sort the footwork (foot down on the outside edge), lean the bike not yourself, sight the exit or apexes as you go, and flow through the corner not touching the brakes. Will be controlled and at a speed that you can handle.

Don’t worry about it being slow. When controlled and smooth it can turn out to be quicker cornering than barrelling in like a crazy loon skidding all over the place.

Simplistically and probably missing things as I can’t describe the stuff anywhere near as well as Tony can. On that note I thoroughly recommend a session with him or Nath (ukbikeskills that is) 🙂 . The cornering and singletrack skills were some of the best things I’ve ever learnt on a bike.

(assuming you’re not a total numpty)

Well I knew there was going to be a limiting factor somewhere along the line….

Reduce your entry speed until you can clean it, practice and build up speed again.

This

Also have someone film your body position.

I had a really bad habit of being too far back, I had no idea until someone pointed it out to me. Then it was like a light came on, no wonder I couldn’t go round corners I had no weight on my front tyre!

What JonEdwards said:

I end up tramlining off the line toward the bushes

If you end up in the bushes it’s cos you’re looking at the bushes.

Look through* and you’ll be surprised at how previously scary bits seem like nothing.

* much easier said than done.

one word: lasercock

Every time you practise going into the corner, turn to look out the exit and ignore everything else like it’s not there. The point into the turn you turn/look-out will have a big effect on your exit line from the corner. Start by going in comfortably and go a little faster each time. Play with it, it’s a lot of fun!

The last time I did this I was startled how fast I could go in, so startled that I turned/looked-out a bit too early into the turn and cut the inside of the corner, missing the outside berm entirely but keeping traction and fired out very fast into the wrong line for the next corner! It’s a lot of fun messing about like this.

one word: lasercock

+1

That and brake before the corner untill your speed in the corner is about the same as you’d comfort brake to mid corner. The point you’d skid is the apex, after that you should be lookig out of the corner and straightening up again, so there’s no need to brake past that point. If you lose controll after the apex it means you’ve not done half the cornering before that and are trying to do 3/4 of the work in half the corner, so slow up before hand and do more of the work before that.

One bit of advice I got from Mike at Switchbacks was to brake in sequence, front, then both, then release the front imediately before you turn in, and the rear in the same spot (i.e. 1 bike length later). Focuses my mind on what and why I’m braking, you’d never brake with the front mid corner, and by releasing the rear at a fixed point it removes the ‘comfort’ factor of dragging the brake, it’s doing nothing after that point but slowing you down unnececeraly and causing the skid not saving it.

For once, it may also be worth looking at the bike, not just the rider. I was suffering similar problems a while back and put a FIT cartridge in the fork during a service, the difference was incredible, with virtually none of the previous dive and chatter i’d been experiencing. Thoughts then turned to the rear shock, and a bit of time spent re-valving with Loco brought that up to scratch too, so much so that I had to re-evaluate all my braking points that i’d got used to on my regular trails. Certainly something to consider if you’re not completely convinced it’s all down to you.

Cool, so tonight I will practice getting my braking done before i’m in the corner and on the obstacles, then riding the corner without touching the brake at a speed that allows me too. Get faster and faster until I’m doing it all without any brakes.

That’s it. All the other technique stuff will increase the speed you can ride at but if you want to stop braking in the corner it’s all about getting the approach slow enough.

I learnt to ride super steep switchbacks by trackstanding and effectively falling into them – once you can ride a corner from stationary without braking you can build speed into it

Loads of good advice on here.

One thing I do, particularly in berms where I know I can get round, but might fancy tickling the brakes, is take my finger off the front brake, so any tickling is rear end only. k’snurk.

Not grabbing handfuls and skidding, obviously, that’s for kids, just a comfort squeeze that can be barely braking at all. The back brake is less effective, and upsets the bike and the steering less.

I find it’s a nice half way house to not braking at all.

Another thing which has stuck in my head from a years-ago motorbike mag article about braking mid-corner:

“If you can make in round with the upset of braking mid-corner, you can certainly make it round without.”