How to Shift the Weight Around for Mountain Bike Racers

Video Transcript

"To demonstrate the importance of weight shifts, I am going to show you what the difference is between going down the hill in an attack position and going down the hill just sort of rigid and upright. So this first time, I am going to go down the hill sort of standing up all my weight forward. It's not very stable. Kind of scared actually. I was afraid that every time I hit the brake or put an impact into the bike, I was going to fall. So now I go down the hill in an aggressive position where I get my body lower and all stretched out. That more evenly distributes my weight between the front wheel and rear wheel. It allows me to feel the ground better because I am putting lighter pressure on each wheel instead of putting all my weight and pressure on the front wheel and it allows me to turn. Which is something that I would not been able to do in that circumstance. So I clipped in the attack position just nice and exaggerated and I am really able to maintain more control, move myself and almost generate some speed. So it is a better way to do things and a safer way to do things and it is something you need to be real aware of when you first start to ride. Another thing that I am doing is I am riding down the hill with my cranks parallel so I have one foot in front of the other. I am not riding with one foot up and one foot down or anything like that. That is going to make me unstable because it doesn't distribute my mass as equally and also, I am going to hit stuff with my crank hanging down like this. It is a lot closer to the ground or root than it is parallel. So you know parallel cranks, parallel cranks you are going to have one foot that you are going to like forward more than the other one. For me it's my left foot so I ride left foot forward and weight down and low as much as I can. "