Riding Around Bends - Mountain Bike Zen
Cornering Bends and Berms
Look ahead so you can see the corners coming and look for the exit for the corner before you enter it, being aware of the severity of the corner and how long it will last, as well as what is on the other side such as anther corner, a drop off, or a tree, will help you plan your speed and the technique you used to take the bend. Brake in advance of entering the corner unless you are well versed in skid techniques and have the tyres to do it you are best of leaving the brakes well alone and concentrating on your steering while in a corner.
Berms are corners that have raised banks at the edge, these can be natural or manmade, usually on a trail these will be manmade and can be built up with raised dirt, gravel, mud, rock, roots, logs, planks etc. or any combination of these. Essentially a berm allows you to take a corner at higher speed than you could without it and acts to keep your forward acceleration while using centrifugal force to keep your firmly attached to the track. They can be a huge amount of fun.
When entering a corner or berm you should generally have the pedal nearest to the outside of the corner or raised part of the berm down and the other one up, having them the other way around could cause the pedal to scrape into the ground or hit a rock as it would be too low and you could end up in trouble. It is just as common however to take corners and berms with both pedals level. There is only one position they can be in to be level with each other so this is pretty obvious, you may need to do this where you are coming into an s bend or where there may be a drop or jump straight out of the bend as you are unlikely to want to be pedalling in between.
When riding a berm you will want to lean your whole body into the bend keeping yourself on the same angle as the bike, where there is a normal corner without the berm it is best to lean the bike down toward the inside of the bend but under your body but keep your body perpendicular to the ground so your weight is going straight down to the ground through the area of tyre making contact.