What Is A “Scandi Flick” And How To Do It | MTB Skills

Welcome back, you beautiful people, and welcome to a very autumnal peak out here in Italy. Today, I'm going to teach you how to Scandinavian flick. Yes, that stunt they do in rally cars. I've got a few steps on how to do it. Let's go. Yes, the Scandinavian flick, the most common used skill when it comes to rallying, but it's not just off the road that they use it. They use it on the road as well, and when it comes to hill climbs, it's perfect to maintain your speed when you come into a really sharp chicane where you just need to get in and get out really quick, and it works with mountain biking as well. When you're coming down the trail, and you've got a really sharp bed, you don't really just want to hit on all the ankles and slow right down just to navigate yourself around a corner. You can actually skid right around it and keep your speed, not to scrub as much speed as you want. Now, to learn this skill, the best place to do this is on a fire road or a bit of trail like this. We're in the forest, like I said, the autumnal colors right now are on fire. I love it. So what I'm going to do, and what you should do, is start off small. You want to learn to crawl before you can walk, before you can run. Now, I've set up a few logs right here already. Now, this is where I'm going to initiate my corner. So I'm going to come in towards you. I'm going to explain this all in a bit. I'm going to Scandinavian flick right here, and then I'm basically going to flick it and try and go up there. So this is a perfect opportunity to do this. The ground is nice and, you know, not so grippy. I can break loose on all these leaves and stuff like that, and it's going to be perfect. So let me talk you through all the steps. Right, step number one is lower your saddle. If you have a dropper post, lower it. If you don't have a dropper post, it doesn't really matter. Just loosen off that quick release or that Allen key bolt right there. Slam your saddle as low as you can. Why? Because you want to keep your body weight quite central to the bike. If you have your saddle really high, your body weight's quite far over the front, and you're just going to feel very weird to initiate that slide into the Scandinavian flick. Number two is momentum, speed. So I've got a nice roll in here. You don't want to come in too fast because we're learning. So coming with some speed, as you can see, I've pegged out or marked out a trail with a right-hand turn. It doesn't have to be a right-hand turn to start. Do the way that you think is perfect for you. So it could be left or right. Step number three is now where you initiate the slide. When you come in, if you're going to be going right, I'm going to stay far over right on the trail. When I come over to the right, I want to start to slide. So that's when I start to use the brakes. Get the back end to brake loose. I'm turning left, so you're turning away from the way you want to go. You turn left, and as soon as you think you're coming to the apex of the turn, that's when you shift your butt, your whole body weight, with your hips and your feet on your pedals. You move it, and you've basically forced your way around. As soon as you start to slide the other way, let go of the brake, and then start to pedal out. All right, let me break it down by using the bike. So I'm coming in over to the right of the trail. So if you were to hit a right-hander, you would come far over to the left, but when you've got a lot of speed, you can Scandinavian flick it. So I come over to the right of the side of the trail. This is where I lock the brake, I skid. Yes, I know, we're skidding, but this is part of this technique. So when you've locked your back brake up, I'm forcing the bike out to the side, so the right-hand side with my hips, but I'm turning away from where I'm supposed to be going. And when my bike starts to slide right here, all the way through, you can feel it wanting to slow down. Stop, this is where you want to really force your hips all the way around by turning right into the turn. So at this point, I'm actually really hard on the turn to the right, and then I'm going to manipulate my hips all the way, all the bike, all the way around, and I'm going to let go of the brake right here. Soon as you let go of the brake, that's when it's going to grab grip and you start to pedal out. But when it comes to descent, you don't really need to pedal. Gravity will do its thing. You come in, slide, slide, let go, go. A few tips on what not to do when it comes to the Scandi. When you're trying to learn on the flat ground, is coming too slow. Because if you come slow, you're basically just going to come to an absolute stop because your brakes are just going to slow you right down. So come in with a bit of speed where you can actually brake that rear wheel to let it slide all the way around. Another issue is, when you initiate the skid, people think they skid and then hop the back. Soon as you hop the back here, you're going to stop and it's going to send you that way, which is not very good, especially if the terrain's really steep. If you skid and then hop, your body weight's just going to go like that and you can tumble all the way down and you don't want to tumble Wumble Dewy. So they're the main two issues when it comes to it. Not enough speed, too fast, you're actually going to go straight or skid and hit the tree or hit something here. You don't want to go too fast. You want to do all your braking. So if you're coming in faster, your skid's going to be longer. For this, the skid is short. As you can see in that last slow-mo, I actually was going a little bit too slow and I went slow and then I had to hop the back end round and it stalled me here. It didn't actually force me all the way around to go that way. The whip wasn't all the way around. It actually forced me off the trail, past my line. Another issue is initiating the Scandi too late. Now if you come in and you think, oh no, no, no, I need to do the Scandi now. So I start to skid right now and when you start to skid, you're actually going past the right-hand turn. You're going all the way over here. You don't want to do that, especially if this was a tree. Now I like doing this thing around little shrubs where I'm going really fast through a section and I need to get whipped around. So I would Scandi, skid, and then turn myself around the bush to move my body all the way around the shrub, which is a perfect place to do it. So with all this done here, and nail the techniques on the flat. Don't be doing it on the trail because you're going to skid, well, skidding on the trails frowned upon in most places. Now if it's your own trail, perfect. You can learn to your heart's content. But do it on a fire road or a bit of trail like this where you can set up some logs where it's quiet, there's no one around, and you can just skid here to your heart's content and let your tire go bold. Anyway, enough said. Hopefully that has worked out for you, initiating all those little points and key points on how to do the Scandinavian flick. It's a really cool skill to have, especially when the terrain gets really tough and tight and you just need to get that back end around and whipped around everywhere. I love doing it. Hopefully this has helped you out and understood how the Scandinavian flick works. It's a really short tutorial, but hopefully this is going to fuel you to go out there and have more fun on your rig. Until next time, see ya. Cup of tea? Cup of tea because it's cold.