How to Fall Gracefully With a Mountain Bike

Video Transcript

"A problem I see with a lot of new riders and with myself sometimes is that you're climbing a hard hill, you fall over, and you don't get out of your pedals. How do I extract myself from the situation? Both my feet are still pretty firmly attached to my bicycle. Let's pretend I'm a little bit more wedged on the ground right now. How do I get out? The thing to remember is if you're all tired, you've been climbing a hill, your adrenalin's rushing, you don't have a lot of dexterity. How do I get out of my pedal? You can always remember if you can reach it with your hands, you can just either push up or down to get yourself released that way, and then just try to push the bike away. Push a little bit, get unclipped, and get out. Lots of times you can get trapped under the bike. Luckily, they're pretty light. They're not motorcycles. The thing to remember is if you can help use your bike to break your fall, go ahead and do it. Our wrists are not as strong as handle bars, cranks, stems, and all the other things on our bikes. If you are falling over, you can use your bike to help break your fall a little bit. That way you're not putting down your wrists and stuff like that. Usually, you find that you want to move away from your bike if you're falling, and we'll talk about that in the next segment."