How to Distribute Weight for Mountain Biking

Video Transcript

"MICKEY DENONCOURT: When you're riding through a section of rough trail, especially if you're on your--a bike that isn't huge, it isn't a huge, full, world cup caliber downhill bike. It's super important to have the right balance between being on top of your bike and really pushing it around and being light, letting the bike move around beneath you and find the line it naturally wants to go to. Things that can help you remember to like really stay light on the bike is like your handlebars, it like takes slight digital pressure to change direction. Most of your weight shifts and turning with the bike like this are actually more like in your hips and stuff like that. So your hands should just be lightly in your handlebars like you should be able to like play the piano and ride the bike at the same time. Just slightly on there, fingers lightly on the brakes like ready like you need any digital pressure. And then, it's really--most of your weight should be centered on your pedals, pedals should be nice and level, should be good and squared off and the only times you really need to push down hard on the pedals and really weight the bike are those times that you really get traction or initiate a turn or something like that. Otherwise, you just want to be on top of it, you want to feel what's going on and just sort of let the bike doing what it does. You can practice that just riding down a smooth trail, I mean, this isn't the place to be practicing like riding light in the bike and stuff like that. But you'll watch as I ride through this section again, my feet might actually going to roll a little bit off the pedals, like my hands are just really lightly on there and I'm just sort of floating over the bike, letting it chatter between my hand and myself and just get smoothly down. Ah, that's why it's a great idea to wear goggles, I just got some dirt in my eye which makes riding smoothly a little bit harder because it gets rid all of your depth perception which when you're looking ahead and riding lightly, it's pretty important. It's sort of the--that fifth sense that you have but--yeah, I'm light on the bike, my hands are rotated forward and I'm just letting it move on through."