Basic Bike Riding - Mountain Bike Zen
Basic Riding Position
A basic riding position may lead to injury whether it be a severe one off injury or a chronic strain injury. It will lead to reduce riding comfort and efficieny, and yet many riders pay absolutely no attention to their basic bike set up and riding position.
General riding position
While riding both arms and legs should always have some degree of bend and never be straight in a fully locked out position. While pedaling your legs should be 80-90% extended, when starting out a little less extension is normal and building up leg extension over time.
Positioning your feet on the pedals
Feet should be flat on the pedals with the ball of the foot over the pedal, not the arch of your foot, as a general rule you should avoid pedal clips until you are experienced and feel that you need them. If you are not experienced even a simple fall when you are unable to remove your feet from the pedals could cause you some severe injuries. Mountain bike shoes have grips which aid the correct positioning of the feet for maximum efficieny and comfort.
How to pedal
The tendency for many riders is to pump down with each leg and let the other simply drift up on the pedal until the next downstroke, it is better to aim for a circular motion with the legs which will give a more balanced motion and use more of the leg muscles than simple up and down pumping. There is no harm in altering your pedaling style over the course of a ride for varied excercise and muscle use.
Pumping
You can use your weight on the bike to 'pump' the bike when going down small slopes giving you extra momentum to get up the other side. To pump the bike you need to be up off the seat with bent legs, as you get to the top of a slope you should be almost standing and as you go down pump your body down by bending your knees and moving your butt nearer the seat, this will add your weight sharply to the downhill motion adding greater inertia to accelerate down the slope.
How to steer
Turn the wheel to the direction you want to go. No, in fact you momentarily need to steer in the opposite direction you want to turn. Most of the turning motion when riding is caused by leaning your weight in the direction of the bend or corner. To get your weight over in the right direction you need to briefly steer in the opposite direction. If you simply stay as upright as possible and suddenly turn your wheel to the left you will fall off to the right as this is where you weight is being thrown by the steering motion. A tough concept sitting in front of your computer screen but very easy wben you saddle up and ride...so go on then!
How to brake
Make sure you know hand controls the front and which hand controls the rear and learn them well. You should always ideally use both your brakes at the same time to slow the bike but not always in equal measure. While riding on the level or moderate downhill slopes about 60% front brake and 40% back brake should be used. On steeper downhills you will need to use a bit less front brake and bit more rear. Front brakes provide much better stopping power but if you use to much front and too little rear you will quickly find yourself tumbling over the front of your handlebars. It is commonplace for cyclists to use only one brake through bad riding habits, a bit of self awareness, effort and practice will help avoid this.
Changing gears
Your mountain bike will almost certainly be advertised as having at least 18 gears and commonly will have 21, 24 or 27 gears/speed. You do not actually get all of these gears that are useable. Commonly your gears will be split 1,2,3 on the left and 1 through 6/7/8 or 9 on the right. The left hand changer will usually control the crankrings (ringset closest to the pedals) and the smallest of these rings will be your lowest gear and provide the easiest pedaling. While in this gear you should usually only be using the first 3 or 4 gears on your right hand side, going further than this will cause to much crossover of your chain and it will cause undue noise and strain the chain, it is also likely to fall off and/or become damaged. In the centre crank ring you will normally have full use of the range of choices on your right hand selector. When in the highest of your crankring choices you should only use the top range of gear selections on the right hand side. Usually your bicycle or gearset will come with instructions confirming exactly what range of use you have with each selection and it is worth reading this, although few people do. It is worth practicing gear selections on easy terrain as knowing your gears inside out is extremely useful for more challenging terrain when you need to plan your gear changes and make them quickly and in good time to avoid running into trouble.
Look ahead!
Whether it is braking, steering, changing gears, changing riding position, lifting your butt off the saddle, or some or any combination of these you will need forward planning and for this you need to be looking where you are going and not where you are. Generally looking forward about 10 metres is a good guide but you will need to practice for what suits you best, the more used to forward planning you are the faster and harder you will be able to ride.