Mountain Bike Skills You Need To Know - Scott Adams

Rating: ***

This is a good article for those just getting introduced to mountain biking and are looking for a few beginner tips.

The article focuses on three main elements of mountain biking: braking, going uphill, and going downhill. The biggest thing that the author stresses when braking, is to use common sense. Some situations will call for you to slowly ease onto the brake to avoid flying over your handle bars, while others will require a sharper more aggressive stop. Each situation is different, and you have to be able to quickly judge how you should brake. His other point is the the more pressure you put on a wheel, the harder it will break, so if you lean back, your back wheel will break quicker. When going uphill, he stresses to switch into a lower gear,  stay seated, lean forward, and to keep pedalling. If you are able to execute these, you'l find going uphill much easier. When going downhill, one of his main points is to relax, if you're too tight you'll bounce out of control. You can't oversteer or else you'll lose control. Going downhill requires you to focus, because any momentary lapse could result in a crash and possible injury.

I found this article very helpful, and provided me with tips and tricks I can use when I;m biking. As a someone who doesn't have much past experience mountain biking, I found many of his ideas very useful, and I'll definitely want to apply them whenever I go mountain biking. Hopefully I;ll be able to use some of his tips to become a stronger biker, and eventually progress to a point where they become common knowledge. I would recommend this article to anyone getting into mountain biking, as it is very helpful and informative.

Adams, Scott. Mountain Bike Skills You Need To Know. Active. June &, 2014. http://www.active.com/mountain-biking/articles/the-basics-mountain-bike-skills-you-need-to-know-875964