I’ve ridden a few routes recently that has had as a feature closely spaced banked berms descending.

Now I can rip like the best, ride XC like the best, mince through the trees like a pro, mince through the trees at a reasonable pace but the banked berms through me …. to literally!

Riding into the first is fine but I end up having to break hard or risk running over the top of the second – this alternates as I head down.

Slower is fine but who wants to ride banked berms slowly especially when its loamy

So what the secret?

Last few rides have been on my fat bike which does not lack grip, but I do ride with a fixed post so am naturally quite high up on the bike.

At the end of the day I’d like to get my endure on have a bit of fun.

So what are your suggestions?

er drop post? get lower, throw the bike around a bit more, got a pic of them? can’t exactly visualise them – other option is they are built a bit shit

Go slower or change direction quicker. The latter might be an issue with big wheels and tyres.

You need a 26er

Most fatbikes are 26ers

Lean more (the bike, not you), spot your exit (head up, look where you want to be), steer with your hips, lay off the front brake.

less of a barge = more fun

buy a quick release or take an allen key and drop your post for the fun bits. push back up and try again a few times. its a bit old school i know but it does help.

tilt the bike under you more to make the turn rather than just ride round the berm.

I ride a fat bike and have no problems with tight berms, so it’s not the bike, and can ride around the limitations of a fixed post (although I have fitted a dropper to help with the occasionally badly landed jump). BUT, fat bikes do show up shortcomings in your technique that a normal bike wouldn’t as you can’t just do a little zig zag across the track between the berms to set up for the second without losing speed like you can on skinny tyres.

The tricks are:
1) Pump the berm hard. The bike should almost flick out from under you and wheelie out of the berm as you push the pedals into the apex.

2) As a result of 1, there’s less lateral force on the front so it can corner tighter, you should aim to exit the berm set up for the next one, this usually means exiting as tight as possible, not being lazy and flowing the curve to the exit.

Get it right and the front wheel feels like it floats round, whilst the back really rips round. Start slow and aim to exit the second one faster than you entered the first until the technique’s right, then add entry speed until you can’t pump any harder and the front wheel starts to follow the curve of the exit on the first berm again so you lose speed through the second (bad).

And apply it to every berm, not just the sequential ones, the number of people I follow round Swinley losing so much speed/time following the berms right until they run out of trail is mad!

I love a good quick left-right-left berm set. I think what I kinda do is use the compression in the first berm to really load the bike up, then as that berm ‘finishes’ use the rebound from the compression to let the bike go light and really push it over, under you, to the other direction during this to set up for the next berm… or something like that… It almost feels like a bunnyhop but lent over and changing the lean angle whilst the bike is in the air…

The Hope video of Brayton riding on the first page shows this in extreme quick nicely actually…

Go slower to go faster.
Slower and in control will likely see you round the full set of berms faster than being out of control and having to brake hard or cocking up one berm which puts you off line for the next one.
Practice getting round them perfectly then increase speed from there.
Also go and find a pump track, they tend to have tight berms to practice on. When you get them right you can really feel the bike dig into them and your tyre will feel like its trying to rip its self from the rim.

find a pump track and drop your seat as far as it will go and learn how to pump and push through the corners by forcing your bike into them as hard as poss and look at the Exit of the corner rather than what is in front of you! keep trying till you suss it, Fatties are Awesome on pumptracks (and almost everywhere else too) 😀

what Jemima says. That’s how my quick friends do it.

The bottom line with me is I struggle to think about the next one while I’m doing this one, so I’ll often do one berm well then **** up the next as I’m entering it in the wrong place, in the wrong shape. When I get it right I’m basically working on the next berm pretty much as soon as I enter the first one, and treating them as one big snakey feature not “berm then another berm”

Next investment is a day at UK Bike Skills (seriously the best bike investment you’ll make). More or less the first thing they start with is how to go around a corner. Turns out most are doing it wrong anyway.

Make sure the foot that is on the outside of the berm is all the way down, then steer by pushing the handlebars towards the ground on the inside of the berm, trying to keep that lower arm as straight as possible. The aim is to at least get the bike at right angles to the berm, so it’ll be leant over quite a lot. This will give massive levels of grip and stability.

The key is the quick change over to drop the other foot, then straighten the other arm into the next berm.

Its fundamental skills like this that are so lacking in most riders. Usually a combination of bike quality and bravado gets people through, but not through efficiently.

A day spent on a bike skills course will go through all this stuff, and be of a massive benefit.

Look up.

Go to ukbikeskills

Make sure the foot that is on the outside of the berm is all the way down, then steer by pushing the handlebars towards the ground on the inside of the berm, trying to keep that lower arm as straight as possible. The aim is to at least get the bike at right angles to the berm, so it’ll be leant over quite a lot. This will give massive levels of grip and stability.

The key is the quick change over to drop the other foot, then straighten the other arm into the next berm.

Never been to see Jedi, but for sequential berms (or really, most big berms where grip isn’t an issue) I’d disagree with that. Having the outside foot down and inside arm almost straight might give you the maximum grip and lean angle, but it removes any ability to pump the bike. And with features in quick succession you (or I certainly can’t) change pedals quickly enough without upsetting my balance because it requires to throw weight to the inside of the bike to change pedals, just as you want to throw the bike the other way.

Having the pedals flat allows you to pump with both feet (so twice the power) and means you’re already perfect for the next one.

As soon as the berm requires more grip than the bike normally has (i.e. the kind of shallow berm that natural forms on a busy corner) then treat it as a normal sequence of corners with alternating feet etc, but then you don’t pump them because you’re already at the limit of speed/grip.

Lean more (the bike, not you), spot your exit (head up, look where you want to be), steer with your hips, lay off the front brake.

This but on tightly packed corners you need to add a bit of a pump in on the exit to take the weight off the bike so you can position yourself and the bike for the next turn.

I’m no expert though so another wise move is to invest in a skills day!

I was struggling with this last year and mentioned it when I went to see Jedi. As soon as I rode a turn he spotted what I was doing wrong – although I thought I was keeping my body upright/level and leaning the bike I was actually dropping my inside shoulder as I pushed the bars downwards to lean the bike.

That meant my weight was falling inside the front wheel, causing the bike to push/understeer on slippery surfaces and making it very difficult to ride a left-right-left or right-left-right sequence because I had to keep throwing my shoulders from one side to the other.

Now that problem is pretty well fixed (I’ve noticed I still sometimes revert on over-familiar trails where the trees are very close – literally diving around the foliage) I’m riding those sequences much quicker and more in control. I try to remind myself to stay strong with the upper body and throw the bike around beneath me.

This is a great video for some really forceful cornering technique:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYwEDwKHUmE[/video]

Imagine you are skiing, use your hips.

Having the outside foot down and inside arm almost straight might give you the maximum grip

Inside arm pushing down will reduce grip, not give you more. It pushes the bike over, but you should still weight the outside.

Having the pedals flat allows you to pump with both feet (so twice the power) and means you’re already perfect for the next one.

Interesting. There’s a few double berms I ride regularly that I usually have trouble with. Slow down to speed up is usually reliable advice and I suspect I usually pile into the first too quickly. You want to be fast out of the end of the sequence – once you’ve got that you work backwards – but that might help.

I’ve ridden with a guy on a fatbike and, rather than the percieved slow direction changes of a 29er or a big bike, despite being a very skilful rider he did seem to have bother getting it turned in quickly.

That’s not to say it can’t be done, but that combined with a high seatpost will make it harder to change direction faster. Concentrate on leaning the bike into the bend you’re about to hit, this will help – other bikes may be more suitable for this sort of thing, but if you like your fatbike then buying another bike for one set of berms is probably taking n+1 too far.

A normal rider on a fatbike with saddle up not being able to smash tight berms you say? Would you expect a BMX to be ok at riding over sand dunes?

Imagine you are skiing, use your hips.

+1

Or imagine you’re not on a bike at all, if (like me) you don’t ski.

Or just take the inside line instead of the berm, it’s quicker in some cases for sure.

thread titles messing with my head, keep reading “Sperm Bank” 😆