Ben Cathro Learns To Ride Flat Corners Without Falling | How To Bike S3 E4 

Anyone else now only stay subscribed to PinkBike because of Ben?

Best tip I got from Ben in this series is "weight forward". Like many said we instinctively avoid danger by putting our weight back and away when we actually need to push the front wheel onto the ground for grip. Now I just need practice to reprogram my brain.

So happy to see you again Ben!

I find that pedaling out of these types of corners improved rear wheel grip at the apex. Timed right so you don’t get a pedal strike. It’s the same theory as powering out of a corner in a race car. You usually get some front fork dip as you enter after braking so get centered on the bike and transfer the weight by applying a pedal stoke as you exit

Coming from motorcycling, I find slow speed tight turns more favorable if you lean the bike beneath your body/legs, but keep your body upright and in some cases lean opposite of the bike. It's just putting weight where you want it, relative to the traction. Leaning the bike in a tight turn with your body well inside of the tires, is a sure way to wipe out traction.

Ben is the cutest one from the Pinkbike team!

I've been riding for 30yrs plus so plenty of time to develop a few bad habits! (Understatement) and flat turns are probably my worst! Great video! Keep them coming braaap! 🤘

THESE ARE THE BEST! THANK YOU @PINKBIKE!

So much technique is involved in that turn.

That was very helpful! Thank you!

That was great thankyou, proper on going practice and learning area for me

This is a great series you are putting together!

We are very happy to see you here again, Ben!!! I hope everything has been resolved at your house.

Cheers for all the videos Ben . . . always clear and very useful. The thing that helped me a lot with flat corners was to do quite an exaggerated 'pre-turn' before the main turn. Fabien Barel was brilliant at these!

Always good to watch and even my somewhat addled brain does on occasion work enough to try out some of these skills. Cheers Ben and team.

Brilliant 👏 👏 👏

for me it's difficult keeping weight over the front wheel in flat turns, the front is always the first to slide and the knee jerk reaction is to move back out of fear only making it worse. Sometimes both wheels loose traction, so you know you're balanced at least, but then the bike isn't leaned over enough to grab the side knobs because the fear reaction stands it up.. flat turns are a tricky skill to learn because you have to overcome the automatic fear reactions. Practicing power slides in loose conditions gave me confidence that I could balance a sliding bike though. And then you can throw yourself into the corners with more confidence to practice what it feels like at the limits of traction

Great video. I notice my issue with corners is getting the rear end to break loose without using back brake. Going fast into the corner with speed and confidence ends up in braking and fear due to the rear end not moving as expected. If you don't get it to break loose you go over the berm resulting in panic breaking to avoid it.

I HATE practicing individual skills such as these BUT I’ll do it for the Pinkbike crew👍🏻

This is one of the very few things i knew from the beginning cause flat loose corners and smooth jumps were all i could ride on my old sh#tbox hardtail🥰

I think when turning a flat corner locking the back wheel until the bike is aiming in the right it is faster than using this technique except if it is flat. In most slopes turning is faster with the rear wheel locked without weight on the back wheel. I would love to compare different techniques. Great explanation by the way

It would have been good to time the first and last run and shadow them for comparison.

I find it very difficult to keep my weight far enough forward when I get nervous in a downhill corner. Glad I’m not the only one. I’ll be drilling next time I come across the right flat turn!

Sweet Benny boi

Super timely for me. The past 2 days I’ve made about 30 runs at a flat right hand corner. Try to work on one aspect at a time until it started to come together. Man they are tricky. I’m finding it hard to have enough lean with the bike while maintaining my weight over the front tire. Finding the apex early and spotting the exit seems to help me find a good body position though.

Great videos these Ben. The cues are very valuable. How about how to ride a tight loam track? One of those with a single snaking rut! SO hard ‘;~}. 😂😊

Super

Here I am, in one of the flattest places (Florida USA), watching people do only downhill. At least my cardio is great. LOL

So the audio volume levels were a bit better in this video, although I still had to crank up the volume to hear the voices. At least the music wasn't that loud, although still too loud in comparison. Please just use that normalizer, please!

After watching Tom Pitcock he would put his right foot forward peddles level when turning right. Which I find hard to think about in time to do it as I ride with my left foot forward I think that’s why I find it easier turning left.

Never washed the front wheel out. I'm assuming that was because of the balanced weight distribution. Thanks Ben, I'll give it a go myself!

I’d do a how to bike camp with Ben.

🎶 track? It’s *Believe Me When I Say It* by *Matt Large* - and yes we are THRILLED to be your trusted provider. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nbXOiatUi0g.html // Epidemic Sound

I’ve been trying out all the skills in this series and have gotten noticeably faster in corners

Decades of racing motocross but damn I still struggle looking ahead while cornering on a MTB.

I've always done way better turning left than right. I suspect it has to do with needing to lean the bike a lot (which I do) but also having the rear brake on the right hand makes leaning it right more awkward.

Hi, small tech question: what fork is it on your bike? Thanks

What are those blue forks? “Work on your weaknesses” never a truer word spoken. Will you be ghosting the IXS rounds? Asking for a friend 😂 keep up the brilliant work Ben and PB team 🤘❤️🌈🕊️🌎

For sharp corners, go wide as possible to carry momentum and preserve energy.

I wouldn't have thought we have the same kryptonite; most of the time it's a flat turn that gets me.

so hard to learn this on your own; how do you know when its good? A manual its easy to know when its good; a jump is measured by the near death index, even a berm "feels" good when you ride it well. But flat corners always feel a bit iffy; without someone who's better than you to compare against how do you know if your getting the most out of it?

Could you talk about how to enter a corner? What's the best path?

What about pre-turning? Not applicable in this situation or simply different schools of thought?

That corner needs a pre-turn. More weight over the outside pedel. That is hips will be on left side of bike, and also rotated towards the exit of the corner. See Jeff Kendal-weed cornering videos. He uses exaggerated cornering positions possibly too much, but for that corner they would be perfect. The position also allows you to catch a rear wheel slide much easier.

1:30 what you shud do is; ride it super high, then.. drop it straight down out

Honestly, I know it's probably not the best way to do it, but I usually just powerslide through a turn like that, keeping my leg on the inner part of the turn close to the ground, and when I start to lose speed towards the end of the turn, I use that foot to kick off and gain momentum.

Hm, I found out that I pretty good at looking through corners and leaning bike, but I should work on breaking to cut this apex nice and clean

What is that reversed bridge forward fork?

IMO Look at your position of your feet, if you put your outside foot (crank pointed back) before the corner then as you roll into the corner that outside foot will start to come down. As you do this you will notice that your right knee will naturally point into the turn. That slack from pointed back to down will give you more down pressure on the sidewall of the tires = more grip and more confidence.

It would be great, if you could manage to put some red-green “virtual” lights on the video for each brake, to show us when you brake and release… (you would be the first one to do it as well)

Why did the intro make me want a Costa Latte?

If Ben is struggling doing a flat corner, I’m feeling much better about myself when I struggle too… 😂

I went to Austria and there was a few flat corners like this with stone stairs in the middle. Spoiled every corner in my way 😂

Why didn´t you break harder and earlier, wouldn´t that improve grip and in the end the overall speed?! Or did I get something wrong here?

are his lowers mounted backwards on his fork???

Can’t accept just slo mo. We need ghosting I’m afraid 😁

I never would have guessed Ben isn't an ambiturner.

Many skills on bikes can be transferred directly to car racing. Same techniques apply to road racing as they do to bikes.

Pro

And again the sound volume is shit.

More baby blue forks in the world please.

why does it look like his fork stanchions are on backwards?

jesus why is the mic sound so quiet? get it together lads!

why is it , that when i watch pink bike, i am always one video click away from crash footage!?!

The volume difference between Ben's voice and the intro music is really huge.

mad skills ignoring the gnat buzzing arround your face on the outro

Next episode left hand flat corners

"There is just gigabytes and gigabytes of people just like bumbling down easy trails. Its fine to document your footage on GoPro, but uploading it to youtube is a bit much, maybe."

That is not really a flat corner. About 60% of it has a natural berm going in. Could have doubled your speed by going up onto the berm early and exiting before it flattens out.

Me thinks that your outside foot is too far forward which is bending your ankle under 90 degrees. It looks like you're braking and putting your weight too far back. Get more aggressive and put your upper body over that foot more.

🤣

My worst skillset.

Ben, I like the channel but you have zero enthusiasm in your voice. This is the biggest reason I don’t watch your channel when you host. I’m serious. You have to pump up the enthusiasm. Show some high powered excitement when you host. Right now you sound bummed.