SHARE this channel if this fires you up 🚨🚨🚨

I love how you talk about the disconnect. How I learned to ride a motorcycle at speed is that you can't have a deathgrip on it. Let it move. Let the steering and suspension do what they are there to do. You are just there to help. Let the tool do the work.

Good stuff, riding hardtails teaches you to use your legs amd arms as suspension. I ride mine 30% of the time. Always good to have one in the stable.

Great video- so good to have these aspects explained with such clarity. I definitely have ‘head bobble’ and sometimes my teeth chatter going over scary rock gardens. I try so hard to relax, but as soon as I do something wrong I tense up and let the bike take me for a ride. Keep up the good work.

Good talk. I agree, bike cornering and skiing are so similar. I always finish my ski turns with a bit of extra pressure to pop laterally over to the next turn. Started doing this on my bike this year and it's quicker I think. Pedals level helps too so you're jumping off two feet instead of just one.

Great information, another great channel to add to my progression. Fluidride mountain bike instruction videos have improved my riding so much lately. Very similar advice as this. Just subscribed. Cheers from New Zealand 🇳🇿

Love the way you break cornering down!

Awesome info and video! 👏👏👏Thank you. Subscribed and recommended to my buddies. Keep them coming 👌👍

Ride a Halfbike and this will make sense. Inorder to ride a stand up bicycle your legs have to be slightly bent. Also when taking corners on a Halfbike the pedals have to be level otherwise you risk pedal strike. Halfbike look weird and take awhile to learn to ride but they teach you a lot about form and balance on a traditional bicycle. Excellent training tool.

Awesome video and explanations, it all really makes sense now that I think about it. definitely gonna try this out on the trails!

Glad to hear u mention target fixation. 👍

I watch a lot of downhill, basically the entire 2019 through 2023 seasons men and women (I had the good sense to "record" them all), and what is super apparent is how much body position matters at speed. Obvious I guess, but I mean in the movement, the body and bike disconnect. Finn Isles and Laurie Greenland especially (Danny Hart too) really do a lot of steering and unweighting of the rear wheel with their hips. I would even say it almost resembles hopping into and out of corners. Especially beautiful to see when it's like a left then a right, and they are just throwing that bike into position because they have the right center of gravity and disconnect from the bike. I think how you explain is the beginning of getting to that level. Not UCI level in my case, but total body and bike disconnect.

Can confirm have experienced all this. Dropping the outside foot is great, helps taller rider get lower also, but you give up all control if there are any bumps or drops to deal with.

Great info and very well communicated. It all makes sense to me and bits and pieces I have heard over the years from other experts. One thing that helped me recently was making a conscious effort to dip my inside shoulder and tilt the outside one up, while maintaining my head mostly vertical, and still doing everything else you advised.

Great info. The natural body suspension was a great point. Watching the pro DH riders just let the bike float under them and looking so smooth, over crazy chunk is a great demo of that.

Great video, always improving no matter how long a person has been riding. Side note, I also have that " Little Tikes " car in my garage. Grandkids love it..... 🙂

top Q vid, info & visual ❤ a personal milestone in cornering was after starting heavy club training. it opened a whole new chapter of fun riding your bike

I never get to the fun part of Evony. I see it befor a video. Damn.

Great vid man! Subbed 👍

Something I've been working on lately is which ever way I'm turning, I have that foot forward. Allows me to tuck the saddle behind my knee. Better separation.

Man this was good! Thank you

"There's nothing wrong" with Aaron Gwin's advice. Gee, thanks. I think I'll take HIS advice.

fun session, good info

This video is awesome. All the enduro bros always say drop the outside foot and i have tried and tried but it never quite felt right to me. The physics and force line of action approach makes so much sense to me as to why dropping the outside foot causes instability!

Great video! I’d like to see a similar one for XC riders with a tall seat post in the way 😅

One problem nobody mentions about "dropping outside leg" technique is that you can't shift your weight/hips back & forth without push/pulling on the handlebars which just adds problems when trail gets rough, but with that said it is still a useful skill when you need to save energy and find grip in flat off camber turns.

Spot on!

This was good. Cheers

You've nailed the magic carpet. The core is the keystone to a shredder and I never considered this. I try to keep soft arms but ya gotta be strong. Same for legs. The core taking over muscle tension allows everything to happen correctly.

There does seem to be a point (lets say degree of lean) after which having the outside pedal down no longer causes the bike to stand up, but rather gives you a point of contact to press down upon while your body’s center of mass moves overtop of what is the contact patch of the tire’s side knobs. Like your actual point of force applied through your outside foot is at the axle of the pedal, not really the platform or outer edge of it, meaning it’s closer to the pivot point (tire side knobs) that you’re leaning around. And this happens during slower speed flat turns rather than high speed or supported turns. To see what i mean, try standing the bike up from laying on the ground by pressing on the outermost edge of the pedal vs the axle area of the pedal,and see how much less the bike wants to stand up when applying the force inwards near the axle vs outside.. Anyone else get/ know what I’m saying?

Thnx for this video! This will help me a lot. About dropping the outside foot: I was practicing this and it didn't feel good. I felt a bit locked into that position and this was especially uncomfortable switching between fast turns. First dropping one foot, making a half rotation and than dropping the other. (And switching between turns occurs a lot when riding downhill.) Do other people experience the same problem?

There is a time and a place for everything - Including dropping the outside foot. Time. Place. No one technique works across all scenarios. Including getting so low with the torso, which I disagree with, look at the pro riders and how tall they stand on some corners.

Really great approach, I feel like youtube was lacking that kind of evidence and science based content, keep up the good work.

I started BMX racing over 40 years ago and I've always preferred level pedals when possible. There's some times when outside pedal down works best but those times are the minority. With level pedals you can press into the corner with much more control as well you can move in all directions with more fluidity. Try pumping rollers on a pump track with pedals vertical vs even. Every turn is different and requires different approaches for best results. Try carving a skatepark bowl by leaning the bike, it works well on the less vertical lines but will not work nearest the coping. Same applies in the trails. Flat and off camber turns usually work better with outside foot down. Different corners work best with the appropriate technique

So after seeing lots of cornering videos in the past, most of them being the same ideas and skills... I happened across your video. I was skeptical at first as you said to ignore all the other advice, and do this squatty thing and move your bike back and forth between your legs. Well, let me tell you... I tried it this weekend, putting 50 miles on my mountain bike and once I got it, I was totally able to shred corners like I never have before. Flicking the bike around was extremely easy at speed. The only thing I need to master better is to just turn the handlebars more and not rely on leaning as much... when you're already squatting, then leaning the bike between your legs... just forcing the handlebars a few more degrees just makes the bike immediately turn. This method also makes it easier to lean into it once you start to turn, so long as you're still squatting. I did some really sketchy cornering this weekend, and didn't crash once. I can't wait to share these tips with my friends. This completely changed my skill level and confidence in hard and fast cornering. Thanks so much for making this video and thinking differently.

I agree with you techniques, and the push thru the feet is a bit of a secret weapon once you get the feel for it when paying attention to the small changes in the grip situation on trail - it's kinda fun to spot the bits you can really push into. That said, I grew up racing motocross and riding motorcycles, and 'countersteering', i.e. applying pressure (pushing forward) on the inside grip when turning is like having power steering when cornering. Are you familiar with this technique, as it's saved my bacon on a few occasions when I felt I wasn't going to make it thru a corner - that one extra nudge on the inside grip saved the day and got the bike cranked over a tiny bit more to make then curve.....I never hear any mtb coach types talk about it, yet its' common knowledge in the dirt bike world.

Good stuff. I do think certain corners require a outside drop of leg. I have some corners locally that are loose and pretty flat that sure feels like having the outside foot down allows me to go faster. Now that being said I'm no pro and pretty squarely in the intermediate camp. I bet a pro would make me eat my words. Lol

Good stuff, I try not to let my outside foot drop more than a little past a quarter turn back, so my heal is as far back as possible. gets the weight on the rear axle, has a bit more swing to go if you hit a bump and if you need even more weight you drop the heal... never straight legged on a MTB ha K maybe exhausted on a fire road lol

Dropping the outside pedal has always felt unnatural to me unless I need the extra pedal clearance. It makes me feel stiff as my upper body fights the bike wanting to lean the other way. Once I learned to jump my bike, cornering became easier. Knowing when to load your suspension and using your thigh strength, just like when you load into a jump, really helped pushing around all types of corners.

I tried very hard to turn internal pedal up, external pedal down, and I always find myself thinking on doing that. Level pedals is more natural and can concentrate more on other details like obstacles

Let me solve the confusion. Keep your outside foot back. I agree with you on the dropping the pedal all the way down. You need the inside pedal for control in chunky turns.

Not being funny but this takes me back! It's soo old skool this was the way we started racing the DH trails back in like 99/03 when training, amazing to actually see this being thought of now as being a correct way that's if it takes on and gets looked into more but what I will say is I've just got my first embt on Saturday from like 2008 when stopped riding after smashed my collar bone and dislocated shoulder that kept popping out but must stress was absolutely NOTHING to do with this technique it was the way we ride now foot down the bike hit a root and went the opposite way and folded me in 3 parts lol arm wrapped round my back like wtf 😂 laugh now but man that was messed up lucky never lost it! But yeah watching yt vids recently really got my mojo going again and wanted back on my bike so badly I went n bought a 2023 cube action team 160 with carbon frame bars and 170mm fox 38s nice bosch smart system etc so first bike since my Giant atx One! It's going to be sooooo different!

whats your take with tire pressure with this approach? I ride exclusively ebikes now which is somewhat like a dh bike weight. I prefer the higher side of psi to get side knobs to dig

There are most certainly times when dropping the outside foot is way more beneficial than momentary instability. It's never just a horizontal or vertical argument, and there are 90 individual degrees or variation in-between as well. What very seldom gets discussed in these beginner/intermediate cornering videos is the super important skill of correct hand weighting. The outside hand needs to be weighted. Most riders, especially beginner and intermediate riders, weight the inside hand and steer with the outside. That's wrong. A good drill to check is to do tight figure of 8s. Hard to do with a weighted inside hand, but easy with a weighted outside hand.

Keeping pedals level matters. The times I have forgotten i hooked roots or rocks and took flying lessons.

I don’t agree with anyone that says you must do it this way. Build your tool box and learn what tool is best for the situation. You will be a better rider if you master both techniques and know when to use them.

Do you feel any need to apply countersteering….ie, by applying some pressure on the inside bar…or does this get included as you turn your shoulders and hips into the corner?

Can you do a video to help those of us who are scared of really tight downhill switchbacks? Learning to turn and shred is good, but where I ride in so cal there’s a ton of slow speed and super tight/rocky and loose switchbacks. I for one have taken a class which helped but really helped me overcome the fear of basic switchbacks that aren’t as exposed or are more flow oriented. Problem is all of my local trails have some sort of tight slow tech switchbacks in them. How can one improve tight and slow corners? Also, when dealing with switchbacks, what should our timing be like with regards to “looking” ahead where we want to go? With how tight (some are a literal 180 with exposure) these are, I find turning to look down the trail throws me off because I’m feeling so close to the edge.

I took instruction 3 years ago, and the instructor (Ben Tufford) preached level pedals in corners. I fought it at first but made myself change because of the benefits he suggested. It's made my cornering so much better. There are still times (like off camber corners) that I feel like I need to drop, but level pedal are where it's at. Quick test: Stand over your bike. Drop a pedal, put pressure on that pedal ... what does your bike do? it WANTS to lean TOWARD your dropped pedal. So by dropping, you are actually fighting AGAINST leaning the bike. Causing the bike to want to go STRAIGHT.

It’s easy to apply it on the pavement. Once on the loose sandy ground trails I get scared.

So from an engineering standpoint, the outside leg dropped causes a few things. Most not good. The straight leg and crank arm are parallel and the acis is right through the bottom bracket. Forcing all the energy up the leg, hips, torso. Sure with good feedback you can modulate to absorb some force. Whe pedals are level, there is a rocker arm effect that may allow more subtle bike movement in response to bumps, thereby not forcing the suspension to do all the work. Just an observation. For me, as a bmxer and superbike racer, i had to unlearn a few things. From superbikes, leaning off. Not good on a mtb. Now some good habits were countersteering. Very subtle but the idea with mtb is not to force the front around the turn, let the cornering geometry from the lean of the bike do the work. Steer in to flick the bike over for esses. Untill you push the front. Then back off. There is no throttle to save you. 😂😂

I've been level foot my entire life. It makes no sense to me loading everything on one foot. Even when I do road cycling it feels much better level footed than load out side.

Do you switch the lead foot cornering left vs right?

Intense Primer with Ohlins suspension? sweet bike.

I never drop my outside foot since I was a kid and it’s always leveled the only time I drop it is when it is really sharp turn and I need that extra bike angle. Dropping the outside foot on a big long berm makes the bike oversteer for me.

I like how you explain things. One thing that dropping your outside foot does is, when you push on the outside pedal and drop it, it wants to stand the bike up straight. One question I have is, when cornering, does it matter what foot is forward? It seems to me the inside foot should be the foot that’s back. Does it matter?

So you should be flat pedals through ever corner?

Countersteering matters

"Feet level with the ground kind of like the skier" hmmm. How do you carve a turn skiing? "The outside ski takes most of the pressure during a turn, while the inside ski adds stability and control"

Great content, and I've subscribed on the basis of the 2 videos I've watched so far. But I don't agree with one key aspect of your explanation here. The way you've described it, all the steering is done by leaning. However, if you look closely at every cornering clip on your video, you'll see their front wheel steering round the corner. If their front wheels weren't steering... they'd be going straight. You're obviously a very skilled rider, so I don't believe for one second that you don't know this, plus I've heard you name-check Lee McCormick, and I'm sure you've seen his videos showing how the front wheel automatically steers around the corner when you lean the bike. However, your target audience for these videos is the likes of me, who definitely aren't very skilled riders, and who can get completely confused by the huge amount of often-conflicting technical content out there on cornering. So I'd recommend that in any future video on cornering (we can never get enough) you should explain what steering is taking place. For you, it's automatic - for someone as bad as me, it's not. Specifically, a good explanation for a beginner would be (1) after you've decided where you want to be turning, you counter-steer your bike to that position whilst letting your knees and shoulders 'stay where they are.' This will put you into a good cornering position, i.e. the bike leaned over, with your hips rotated round to the outside of the bike and your hips and knees pointing inwards in the direction of turn. (2) Let the bike steer itself, but if you do need to sharpen the turn, then you do that by pulling back on inside grip or pushing forward on outside grip (same difference) to steer harder, which will result in increased pressure on your outside foot. Eventually, beginners will get this into muscle memory, and they can then just think about leaning the bike through corners without worrying about the steering, which will be happening subconsciously and automatically.

😂 nice

Im watching and learning this and im 54 years old 😅

Mini van paid off, use monty python pic of god. Im listening 100%

Grippy roots 😅

Interesting video with some good points. You should really reduce or at least keep your skiing references much more general. While skiing and cycling are quite simular your understanding of ski technique is limited and not accurate. If you want to use skiing technique as a reference spend some time watching the latest Interski videos on YT. The CSIA for example talks a lot about skiers of different sizes, proportions, fitness, strength, mobility, balance and skill will get very different reactions from skis with a simular amount and rate of correct movements. Even with as close perfect technique as you can get all of the skiers at Interski look different from each other when doing the ski technique demos. Its the same for cyclists. Another key thing is no two turns or corners are ever the same due to speed, grip, surface conditions, turn/corner size and shape. Even on the same trail every corner is a little different every time due to the variables. Its very arrogant for you to disagree with pro riders who ride far better than yourself. No two riders at any level ride the same in cycling or skiing due to all the variables. Every pro elite rider has developed the skills and techniques that work for them. Its an inexperienced coach who talks in absolutes about techniques that do and dont work in any given riding skill or situation. If you think a skier's outside leg is not longer in a turn than the inside leg go look at some ski carving or racing videos. A much shorter inside leg and how to get it is key topic in current expert ski videos. You also dont press on the out side ski to carve you tip it higher on edge and twist the ski to load it and carve. I imagine that bike cornering is going to go along the same line of more tilt and angulation too. You really misintetpreted what good modern ski technique is so you need to do some home work there. In cycling you need to be able to corner with your legs in all orientations to effectively manage all cornering situations you will encounter. There is no absolute for foot placement. Anywhere in the crank circle that is comfortable and balanced works. That wont be level for most riders in most cases its going to vary from evely bent legs to near straight and fully flexed to every where in between Your tone is arrogant. You're talking down to your viewers. You dont have all the answers the pro racers havent figured out. Your ideas arent new or a secret. See the PMIA Manual, Lopes and McCormack's MTB skills books. You're probably not a bad guy but it annoys me to see a guy like you so confidently and arrogantly talking shit to other riders, coaches and teaching systems while using skiing examples that show your significant ignorance of ski technique. When you're that far off understanding how skiing works your riding knowledge is off too. It did show in your demos and talking points on seperation. In both skiing and cycling its simply seperation of the upper and lower body. You dont need to put your "correct" spin on it. The most knowledgeable coaches are humble they dont need to put others down to get their message across. I hope you get there some day.

According to the internet, if you're not using a raised reverse stem at this point, all of these suggestions are useless. This is basically a time capsule of how people in the stone ages rode bikes.

Merry Xmas honey ….. I now WANT YOU BADLY. Is what you should have said . 😅

Great advice, but without a dropper post the relevance of this techniques drops significantly. And considering most riding does not happen with the seat post slammed and you won’t be pushing it down for every turn, you have to be able to deal with all this. First, it is best to understand that this technique relies mostly on weight distribution, NOT carving. And this is where a low outside pedal makes a lot more sense - since your saddle is in the way! And you don’t have to straighten the outside leg either. Keep some flex, keep some weight on it and you can still modulate the bike lean very effectively.

You lost me when you washed out. You got me back when you said Lee McCormack.

3/10 guide, I keep missing all my turns watching this guide while riding

Ive always wholeheartedly dismissed the drop your outside pedal advice. Its the most common bad advice out there imo. Keeping pedals parralel with the ground is a good explanation for it. It happens naturally but I think many people see pros doing it and misinterpret it as them actively pushing the outside pedal down.

This made sense till he took his top off 😂

Public comment

wrong.