I have been training hard for Battle of The Beach since returning from my snowboarding holiday. It took a couple of weeks to get back up to my original training pattern because of having a slight cold.
During the week I have been working on skills and thought I would share with you some tips and techniques.
Cornering
Cornering is an essential skill for any type of riding, but especially when you’re off road and finding your way through trees having a good cornering technique which means you’re not losing speed and flow by breaking in the wrong place or not looking far enough ahead.
This session takes around an hour and you should include a good 10/15 min warm up and 10 min cool down.
Find a quiet field or off road area where you can lay out some markers for two corners, or if you are lucky enough to live near some good single track where there is a couple of flat corners you can use without getting in anyone’s way.
Then set up your phone in a good position to video yourself taking the corners, to start with work on nailing the technique, then speed the process up timing yourself at getting round a short loop or just through the corners themselves.
Write down the times and conditions so over the weeks you can see how you are improving.
Then work on the technique;
• Ready position as you approach the corner
• Enter at a controllable speed so you don’t break in the corner
• Look towards the exit as you approach the apex
• Weight positioned over the centre of the bike, slightly forward of the saddle
• Inside leg up, outside leg down and apply pressure into the outside leg
• Angle your hips into the bend
• Apply pressure to the inside handle bar and lean the bike into the corner
Great video found on the British Cycling website.