I feel like I am a bit of a pansy on corners :oops::

I probably slow down too much, and it's rare that I feel I am testing the limits of my tyres. I know a bit about good technique (drop the outside crank, weight through the inside bar, lean the bike over but not yourself) and when I remember to do it I can corner a bit faster, but I never really know how far I can push things.

Being clipped in I never really feel comfortable with deliberately trying to go too fast and test the limits traction – on the few times that I have tried it I end up bottling/understeering into things.

Any advice on how I can 'man up'? I would really like do develop a feel for how far I can push things.

I also get particularly uncomfortable on corners where the track is a narrow rut – I have had bad experiences getting cross-rutted and kicked off the bike. Is the technique to use the outside corner as a mini-berm?

Thanks all!

Just put on as much body armour as you can get your hands on

Can't afford that, maybe i'll just get fatter as a compromise.

Crashing is the way forward. Keep going in to the same corner faster and faster until your crashing, then back it off a bit.

Get foot position right for the berm i.e. Inside foot up – outside foot down, put weight on outside foot. Drop inside shoulder down and forwards in to the turn. Look towards the Apex and then exit, dont look at your front wheel.

Its all about commitment.

Go on a traiing course or ride with faster guys, never been on a training course, but I tought myself to corner by a)watching the collective/roam/seasons DVD's repeatedly, then going into the woods with faster guys and trying desperately hang on. Takes a while but you get used to the feeling of both wheels drifting, after which its just a case of ballance.

Try it. Falling off isn't quite the same as dying. You may graze your knees; but that's not always fatal.

If you are near Jedi or EdO try them out. They only get positives for their Manupyoubigpansy courses.

Never brake in corners. Its easier said than done but its safer/easier to go faster than you want and stay on line than braking which always upsets the balance and it'll go wrong, esp. in ruts or mud.

Try practising in your local park on some grass. Use some thing to ride around (jumpers for goal posts and all that) and keep hitting the turn gradually faster and faster until you feel the tires beginning to slip sideways (this is called drifting). When cornering it is important to look past the bend and into the direction you want to go next as this automatically puts your body in the correct position. If you stare at your front tire you are more likely to go off line and miss the turn.

This is a good question and it's actually where the British weather can play a valuble part.

The key to learning better cornering is to learn to feel what the bike is doing underneath you and to learn what it feels like to break and correct traction and to feel confident with the bike drifting underneath you, i.e. both wheels sliding equally and in a controlled way around a corner.

When you have loads of grip, the speed you need to acheive that is very high. Consequently if you come off the chances of you hurting yourself are higher.

So, what you need is wet weather and a suitable, loamy, loose corner with a small berm on it. Depending on where you life that will be easier or harder to find – in the SE there's loads but ooop north and at trail centres, in the peak district they are harder to find because the trails to be rockier.

With the wet weather your tyres break traction much sooner and thus at lower speed, so you can practice getting a feel of the bike moving around and breaking traction and you can experiment with moving your weight forwards and backwards. All this can be done in relative saftey because you're not going to be travelling that fast.

To enahnce the learning, drop the saddle by a good amount, say three inches or more as this will allow you to drop your centre of gravity and have more control. Also try to experiment using flats as you will innevitably want to drop a foot at some point in order to stay on the bike.

Weighting up the front tyre is a key skill, which means moving your weight forwards to give it more grip. The back end can break traction without causing too many problems for you but it's materially harder to rescue a bike when it's the front wheel that's loosing traction.

Try approaching this loose/loamy corner in the wet, breaking before you turn, then moving your weight slightly forward as you turn in to weight the front wheel. You'll feel the rear go a little light and probably slip at which point you want to dig onto the outside pedal, drop your inside shoulder and push the bike around the corner with you shoulders and hips.

That's hard to describe and you'd be better off getting some coaching from Jedi or something. But the wet weather practice is the best way to learn the basics.

if your not comfortable in clips put some flat pedals and some pads on and go practice in the woods.
try riding the same corner a little faster each time, until the tire breaks away, then back off a little.
try a few different corner the more practice the more your enjoy it.

edit: you lot are quick

The limit is the point just before you fall off / stack, so finding it inevitably means tipping off at some point, only at that point will you know the limit.
Of course that is not going to help you much, so just keep practicing and find your own level – sounds like you doing the right things

ohhh, and buy a BMX, fir slick ish tires, find a smooth grassy slope (not steep, just as long as its got a definate up and downhill side to it)

Stick a jumper at a point on the hill, ride down towards it and try and corner with the jumper as the apex as fast as you possibly can. You'd be amazed at the lean angles that are possible, I gave up after a nasty off involving digging my inside (i'e 12 o'clock) pedal into the ground, good fun though 😀

Agree with geetee1972 – riding in horrible slippery conditions can really help to teach you how it feels to be on the edge and then finally lose grip. As you get better, you'll learn to push the bike close to that point, keeping it just under control.

The grip you get into a corner will keep increasing with speed (provided your technique is right) until that point where it suddenly breaks away. Trail centres can be great for learning to really attack fast corners and to trust the massive amount of grip you can get from the edges of your tyres when you learn to corner fast. Suddenly the corner you always slipped out on will be really grippy because you're going faster, leaning harder, weighting up the tyres and driving those grippy side knobs into the dirt rather than wandering across the top of it on those smaller centre knobs. IMO the point where that clicks is a bit of an epiphany in your riding – all of a sudden you can ride soooo much faster and harder.

I agree that to find the limit you have to go past it, like learning to wheelie! But the trick is not to do it somewhere you will really hurt yourself when you do! A really really good tip for practising how far you can push it is to:-

choose a downhill corner to practise on and get hold of a stick
poke the stick in the ground at a distance from the corner that you can roll in from and go slowly round the corner without touching the brakes and using good technique.
Gradually move the stick further back each time and keep off the brakes until you A) fall off b) run wide c) pussy out!!!

This really works for me! The most important part is to nail the corner slowly with a good technique a few times before moving the stick back and speeding up!!! We did it out in the alps years ago and forced oursleves to ride a set of corners with the death grip!!! (ie not covering the brakes!) it really works esp if you can find good corners in an open area that you can run off into if you wuss out! The better your technique the more confident you will feel and the speed will soon follow!

the techniques for great cornering are :-

1) Keep fairly low down and central, the higher your weight the more leverage it has over the finite amount of traction on your tyres.
2) Brake into the corner not round it!!!
3) Look at the entry into the corner until your heading into it then LOOK UP AND OUT OF THE CORNER!! I often choose something to 'spot' like a tree in line with the next section. This is like snowboarding, if you look forward out of the corner it will turn your head, which will turn you shoulders which will in turn twist your arse and hips over the correct side of the bike! Where the eyes look the rest will follow!!! Look where you want to go not at what you want to avoid!
4) Commit yet maybe brake more than you think you need to at first! , you dont need to go flat out into corners, just rail them cleanly and you will go faster through them overall and esp out of them! If you let go of the brakes and look out of the bend I guarantee it will work (well 9 times out of ten!!!!) and you will be burning your mates off with your swift clean no mistakes technique. Plus it looks good and you can kick up roost!
5) Be prepared to lose it a few times! Its not that bad!!! Just avoid tarmac!

x

Training weekend is probably the best advice

I went on one at Blue Mountain a small ski hill in Canada a couple of years ago. They had cut a series of regular swooping turns in a green ski run and I went down tht on my own before the lesson started. On my first run I had sympathy with the kids in front who were creaming at each other "why the hell are we on this run? it's sooooo lame duuuude there's no drops or anything"

Then the coach took me to the top of it. He said "looks a bit gay doesn't it? well, what we're going to do is ride just as fast and as hard as we can down this and you'll see something different. The idea is to get it sideways"

Boy was he right. When the curve is consistent and the ground soft and unrocky you can really concentrate on the line, feel what the bike does and what the approach to the breaking point of the tyres feels like.

Sadly I've not seen anything like that run in the UK

But lessons are a good think and there seems to be an explosion in coaching in the UK in the last few years.

Unclip the inside foot! Aim to plant the foot down at the spot where you need bike over the most – sometimes you'll lose grip and need it, more often than not you won't.
Failing that a dropped or droppable seatpost will let you keep your weight lower and give you more maneuverability.

Thanks for the advice. It might seem obvious to someone else, but I guess the cornering on slippy terrain sounds like a good idea. My normal reaction when I feel i'm losing grip is to panic, so if I can defeat that and try to control the bike I might make some headway…

P.S I can't believe no-one told me to MTFU 😉

MTFU

better?

Ditch the spuds for a while if they are putting doubt in your mind.

No falls, no balls, as the saying goes.