http://dirt.mpora.com/news/two-time-dh-world-champion-fabien-barel-talks-about-the-art-of-flow.html

Well….it’s settled.

…when you’re a god…

gave up after 3 minutes………….deep man

optimum vs maximum ….?

gave up after 3 minutes

Me too.

How strange for a french person to spout endless pretentious waffle. 🙂

Nice bloke though – met him briefly at Kielder.

The wheel size is a distraction from the main thrust of his argument about feel and speed in riding. Makes sense to me and who am I to argue with a world champion?

I think what he was trying to get at is that its faster to ride smoothly than ride at your maximum all the time….eg his interesting comment about the main difference between him and steve…he hardly pedals

He touches a little on how to train as well…Most of its common sense to privateers who pick up these tips on how to go about shaving seconds off their run. Practicing techniques so you can read sight read tracks….I liked that… as well as steve porters comparison with musicians as thats my folks background.

Think I will go chainless when shuttling for a while to force me to use the terrain more.

watched it all again

so

go back learn your skills at 50%……ride smoooth/carve like a skiier/relax and use innstick…..use your body and the ground to generate speed, relax, look ahead, and where you want to go.

Sorted, when do I let go of the death grip on the brakes?????

managed to sit through it all, finger wagging a bit annoying but let’s put that aside, the guy cares about doing what he does well

Sorted, when do I let go of the death grip on the brakes?????

I’ve been playing with this recently. Just as he says, go for optimum not maximum, and optimum means staying off the brakes and letting the bike roll. If that means staying off the pedals do that too. Because I’m not pedalling (or thinking about gears) I’m planning the routes through the lines better and looking further ahead. I dno if I’m faster (probably am), but it’s smoother and more enjoyable. That’s more important to me than flat out speed.

^^^ full disclosure: middle aged mincer talking nonsense alert ^^^

^^^ full disclosure: middle aged mincer talking nonsense alert ^^^

LOL……..in the same demographic

but to stay at optimum must mean slowing at some point…not full out major brake and skid…but braking to hold speed…………not making sense perhaps

slow into corner accelerate out…….so braking must be involved

or have i just reached MY optimum……death grip

my imagination of optimum, if graphed as speed against time would be closer to:

—————————————–

than

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

I think staying off the pedals is a side effect of staying off the brakes. Staying off the pedals, as much as appropriate, makes sense, it’s effort and causes unbalance. In most activities a master does less, not more.

slow into corner accelerate out…….so braking must be involved

not necessarily – pump

watched a video of a guy on a pump track the other day, he went all the way around it, back to the start and never pedalled once. Perpetual motion. Well not really but he was getting energy from the track not from pedalling.

Think I will go chainless when shuttling for a while to force me to use the terrain more.

Good video.. Dirt have some other good ones, his chat with Chris Porter on bike set up was interesting.
Chainless may work, I’ve become smoother and corner better since having a SS. You have to forget pedalling and go with the bike more once you get past spinning speed, keep momentum up. Feels like a good habit to have got into.

I´ve got it narrowed down to “brake less often”.

here we go, both of these were good:

How to ride a pump track: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhvNpeWgbMM
Pedal free pumping, perpetual motion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTC3ICg_LLc

I enjoy watching that second vid, it’s like an Escher puzzle, does not compute.

He has said elsewhere that too many riders think about being fast in each section of a trail, and forget that they actually need to be fast across the whole trail. I think that’s what he means by optimum versus maximum – thinking about the trail as a whole and how to ride that rather than seeing a series of seperate sections.

I like the way he thinks and talks about riding bikes. Just wish I had 1/10 of his talent.

The pint about feel interested me. I get this when snowboarding in poor visibility. You feel and react to the feel under you rather than looking and thinking. This seems relevant on trails you can’t practice like in Enduro.

My 29er is slower than my 26er. Fact

so if I’ve got the summary, learn to ride smoother and you will be faster. Makes sense really, spend the money on the weakest link in the package (not the bike normally)

29’ers often FEEL slower than 26ers.

Fixed.

Great stuff from Fabien though, when Steve shut up!

He’s wrong, focus on the patch of mud six inches in front of you, pedal like the devil himself is chasing you and deal with the problem as it arrives in you field of view. No time to tense up then.

My interpretation of ‘optimal’ is ‘the minimum use of rider input and energy to get the job done’.

@JCL yeah I think the finger wagging was needed, “stf up I’m trying to talk here'”. Barel’s trying to talk about the topic not himself. Again that’s not so common!

not sure matt…..maximum input by rider at correct times to use the trail to generate speed and flow…..physicality was discussed, minimum input would be sack of spud riding rather than flowing or reading the trail big difference to fighting the bike by excessive speed and braking……………

I’m thinking minimum input to get the job done.

Only what’s necessary and no more. I suspect most riders do more than is necessary which ends up having a detrimental effect.

But it’s open to interpretation, we’re all barking up l’arbre vrai, je crois.

Be like water!!!

for me he explained this the same as how bruce lee explained being like wateron a video I seen a while back. Also in particular a part about being a mechanical man.

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?feature=fvwrel&v=cXUkdHDTKfo
1:00-1:30

Chris, that video makes me think of what makes good motorcycle development riders like Rossi…they have the feeling/instinct plus the analytical side that helps to confer what they feel to the engineers. Some riders are really great at going fast but no good at helping develop bikes.

Fabien seems a little like the former – perhaps like Rossi who is a thinking mans rider.

You used to find really fast riders at racers who could never confer tips to riders because they simply rode with a lot of instinct and little else (my brother was like this)….I guess that’s sort of the same.

watched a video of a guy on a pump track the other day, he went all the way around it, back to the start and never pedalled once. Perpetual motion. Well not really but he was getting energy from the track not from pedalling.

What did you imagine he should be doing on a pump track?

I took “maximum” to mean the fastest you can go around any individual corner or over any individual obsticle, but “optimum” to be the appropriate speed carried in each section to reduce the overall time. Similar to motorracing, where you start off trying to go as fast as possible EVERYWHERE, but quickly realise the fastest overall lap times means that at some places you need to NOT go as fast as possible. (which seems counter-intuitive at first). In effect you are sacrificing a small amount of time in one short critical location to buy you much more time in the next section. A classic example of this is the rally drivers “handbrake around a hairpin” technique, where they practically stop on the actual bend, but having got the car turned fully as soon as possible, they can then just rocket off down the straight applying full throttle immediately. If they had tried to drive around the corner, they would not be able to get on the throttle as early, and peak speed on the next straight would be lower etc.

No idea Brant, didn’t really know what a pump track was, I thought it was like a mini BMX. But now, I wanna go on one.

Is it not more like if you barrel (sorry…) round a corner as fast as you can your exit speed will probably not be optimal for entry into the next corner.

A bit like motor racing on the computer – smoothly in and out of each corner with no skidding gets the fastest lap, piling into a corner and screeching through it isn’t so good and wastes time.