The Ultimate MTB Riding Secret!

Imagine there was a discipline of mountain biking that was solely dedicated to riding the most technical and difficult features imaginable. And think about how if you could learn one or two elements of that discipline, how much it would impact your riding. I have great news, that exists and it's called trials riding. This is the number one hack for all mountain bike skill development. Pick up a few elements of trials and your whole riding game will be changed. Wait a minute though, isn't trials all about special bikes with no seats? Sure some of the most aggressive competition bikes are like that, but the main goal of the discipline is to ride your bike up and over obstacles without putting your feet down to balance yourself. Sounds familiar right? In a way it's the goal of every other form of bike riding. Trials riders are just doing this technical riding at such an advanced level that it almost doesn't look like bike riding. The riding you see online or at competitions can sometimes be so far beyond normal riding that most riders wouldn't even consider trying it and that's a huge mistake. Back to my original point, learning some trials basics will substantially impact your level of riding. We spend so much time focused on getting our bikes dialed or even training cardio for big rides, but picking up skills from the trials library will make an even bigger impact than either one of those. I'm not saying you need to be hopping around in your back wheel or dropping off of huge ledges, but if we drill down to the core of the trials riding basics, there's a lot of useful stuff that can help us out. The beauty of it all is that most trials skills can be practiced just about anywhere, no trail required. Let's talk about the different ways the trials can impact your riding. We'll start with balance and wheel placement. A trials rider can track stand forever and has perfected correctional hops, which can help us put our wheels in the right place on the trail. When it comes to riding super narrow or technical lines, having a good sense of where your wheels are and the confidence to hold the line all the way through is by far the most vital component. Trials riders practice basic balance movements and moving their front and rear wheels around. Imagine being able to redirect either wheel at any given time in a wide enough range to give you a full 180 on the trail. You can see how this might be useful in a switchback scenario or any other tight space that you get into during your ride. Bike handling is another key element, and when I say this, I mean the balance points over each wheel. The more comfortable you get over your front or back wheel, the higher you can bunny hop and the steeper you can ride down confidently. Practicing endos and lifting up the front wheel are the foundational moves that a trials rider would practice, and they will both benefit your bike handling ability and push your balance points in both directions a lot farther than you would have originally expected. Getting up and over obstacles is a hallmark of trials riding as well, and even if you're not bunny hopping over handlebar height, imagine being able to ride confidently up and over a giant tree or rock in the middle of the trail. I've got an up and over tutorial that digs directly into this, and you can start practicing on things as small as a curb to get the feel of it. Everything in this discipline is about starting small and building up, so by learning the basics of timing and unweighting your wheels, you'll be going up and over much bigger features with this practice. By this point, my hope is that you're beginning to see how even the basics of this style of riding might play into your own riding. Imagine just adding one of these skills to your riding and how it might make your local trails slightly easier to shred. So the main concern that I hear from people who want to ride trials but on their mountain bike, they're afraid they're going to smash this front chainring, they're going to bend it, or they're going to snap their chain or anything if they hit a rock or log, and that is totally fair. I understand that completely, but there is a really easy fix for this. You get an integrated bash ring like this. This is made by Wolf Tooth, and it's just real thin. It's an integrated spider that fits on SRAM Race Face and Shimano crank sets, and you can put a 32, 34, or 36 tooth chainring on here, so it doesn't mess up your gearing setup that you already have. All it is, it's just a thin layer here that goes a little bit higher than your chainring and your chain would be, and it hits the rocks and logs first, and it doesn't do any damage to anything that you've got. So it kind of keeps everything intact. If you agree with me that this is a great and fun way to progress your riding, please consider subscribing to the channel and join us here. We also do a live stream on Twitch every week, and there's all kinds of playlists with different tutorials that will help you progress your riding in all kinds of different videos. I hope you get a lot of value out of this channel and all the videos I've posted here. I can't wait to hear from you in the comments. Now let's dive into the next playlist and really start progressing. We'll see you there.