FEEL MORE CONFIDENT ON YOUR BIKE INSTANTLY 

I was legally blinded a few years ago and now not being able to see far enough down the trail has seriously slowed me down , but thank God I can still ride trail 😊

Breaking the bad habit of leaning back while descending is a game changer. I went to a week long mtb camp last year and that is one of the major things they look at when dividing the students up into intermediate and advanced groups. Obviously there is a psychological barrier you have to break but definitely worth the effort.

Hi, I'm new to MTB and this year, I purchase a 2023 Specialized Stumpjumper Evo comp alloy to learn how to ride in our Arizonan desert. This is my attempt at a healthier body and mind as well as a love for the outdoors. I've ridden for years on very mild terrain in the midwest with a hybrid bike so I consider myself very new to the new terrain and I have noticed that I get a bit scared on minor jumps. I am hoping to get out more often now that the weather is milder and after watching a few of your videos, I feel a bit more confident. Thanks for posting your knowledge and allowing new folks like myself to learn and adapt. My 10 year old want's to get into this as well so I am slowly building him a hardtail Rockhopper.

The natural instinct on steep slabs is to move away from danger and get too far back. Then, you lose your arms and legs bc they are not aligned over the suspension. You are just rolling through and hanging on for dear life. Great demo of how the legs and arms are the main suspension and the fork and shock are just assists. "Keep the weight on your feet and balanced" is as good as i have heard that explained.

Wow. When rolling steep stuff I have always activated my dropper and shoved my body back and down as far as it would go, so that my butt is almost touching the rear tire. And I always have a little heart-attack moment when my butt is "bucked" up and I almost go OTB. But I keep doing it because "this is the way". Thanks for addressing this. It's probably a lot less scary using your method 🙂

This is EXCELLENT! Thank you. The tiny clip from 2:38 to 2:42 is the best demonstration of body position I've ever seen.

Thanks for the tips. I death grip into berms because its the only way to keep myself from braking in them. Definitely need more practice but concentrating on one smooth turn without corrections should help.

Number two and "the popping" of the drop are very very important tips

Excellent tips !!

Been casually riding since the 90s but the drop thing has always spooked me. I mostly do rolls and have done drops, just got lucky because I was riding fast enough but actually intentionally doing them was an issue. I've seen plenty of videos explaining being low, more than too far back etc but the best explanation was yours showing how you effectively speed the bike up by pushing it through. That's probably the most clear explanation of the technique I have heard. Thanks.

Thanks for the info, lots of great stuff. I find my best rides in the gnarly stuff is when I don't think too much, just react. Even better is when my finger slips off the brake levers and I don't them back on in time 😂. I also adjusted the position of my brake levers to be more parallel with my handlebars. Seems to help with my body position.

Great content! Bike is looking pretty damn sick bro! 😎

Good stuff man!

Great stuff Jeff. I had never heard the brake tip before. Instinctively I’ve always liked a finger on it

Thx for the video. Very helpful!

Thanks Jeff we love ya Brother 🚵‍♀️⚒️💪

I could not agree more with the "look ahead" point. I'm embarrassed how long it took me to figure this out. Skinny's that used to make me nervous are now easy.

Great tips Jeff! Thanks!

Awesome informative video man!

I’m guilty of getting too far back but that actually helps my confidence 😂 I guess I will work on that one. Great video

Loved the drop how-to's...thank you

That tip about drops blew my mind lol i hopped over a maybe 4 inch drop my 2nd time riding my mtb and almost pooped my pants. The way you showed makes so much more sense

thanks a lot..what i need now is trail and a bike

Nice vid Jeff, very useful!

Great tips, Jeff. Thanks a lot! One more follower from 🇧🇷

great video Jeff

Nothing but best advice from Trail boss 💪 I noticed you've included familiar drop on Old Oak trail @Norbrook trails, very cool 👌

Good refresher aswell for someone wanting to gat back into it like myself it's just choosing what bike I'm having abit of a time with just now, there's so many new makes from 20 years ago when I had my atx 2 and konas

Hi Jeff - I saw you ride at Motorama in 2000. I was there doing sport mod trials. Great to see youre still riding!

Great info

Awesome tutorial! Love how you break things down. Full disclosure...I'm not a mountain biker, but I'm here to help support your channel after I found out that you help kids. Found you from the video you did on you van, which is beautiful by the way. Thank you for what you do! ❤️🌵☀️⛈️🌈☮️🐎🐕

Good video thanks all the best from scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Just learning, great video for us old timer first timers :) thank you

very informative jeff…

Great video. If you haven't already covered hydrauli brake vs v-brake could be a good topic.

Can confirm that I did all of this at some point, except for the wrong pedal in turns. Great video.

That is very relevant. Thanks.

Thank you!!! I think I don’t look far enough ahead on the gnarly trails 😅

All great tips👍👍🔥🔥

thx, great Video 👍 Greetings from Germany

Good stuff

Nicely done

Great tips video Jeff. Thanks. Have you done a video covering pedal timing when sessioning a rocky climb or through a rock garden to minimize pedal and crank catches? I'd love to see it.

Very informative

Super ideas listen to him I'm 68 years old and have a lot of riding off road is thee most fun.

Great tutorial

Thank you.

I need one of these classes. Just from this short video I do at least 3 of the 5. In my younger years of riding MTB (early to mid 20's) I was fearless. As times changed and not riding as much my confidence has dropped, A LOT. You know, it's the fear of dying that changes what and how you ride. Lol🤣

Great video. Sensible tips.

Hi, good video 👍. Can I ask what bike brand you are riding ?

See you in Sanford nc this month

Great video Jeff, thanks. I struggle with keeping my eyes up the trail, especially when the trail gets more technical. When I realize what I am doing and make myself look up the trail everything works better and I usually carry more trail speed. Do you think riding with other (maybe faster) riders helps with this? I always end up riding solo, I think that effects my habits of looking up the trail at a rider in front of me.

Very nice video indeed

I like that you said when the course is either "long enough or loose enough to warrant dropping a pedal" when mentioning dropping a foot when cornering. In NICA we train our riders to keep pedals level through turns. There are some situations where you'd need to drop a foot but most of the turns I feel like you get better traction when you're level. It's a lot easier to teach too.

i agree the hooping going down +1 boss

😭 I’m guilty of 5 of 5… thanks again.. the algorithm brought you to me 💪🥂

"Today is gone be an awesome day" ... Lookalike to Sam Pilgrim ... But! Super Video and a great and correct Teaching! Really great. 5-Stars!

looking through the turn is something i admit felt totally wrong - i always wanted to keep my eyes on my front wheel to see if i was going too low or too high.. once i started looking further into the burm and trusting that i was in the correct position - with some experience and more burm practice i have def improved stability and speed. that's one learned skill i think is prolly most important on this list.

great video as always Jeff. does pushing front wheel down the roll works even for bikes with steeper forks angle, like XC bikes? or it works only for slacker bikes? btw, if you find the time, do a video for tips for taller riders. most tips comes from people who are shorter and lighters. you and I are about similar in built, so it would be great to hear your tips for taller, bigger, heavier riders. especially on brake set up. keep up with the great work!

I need some skills training but first I need conditioning. I'm wined on very short rides. Maybe in the spring I can look into skills training

Cabin drop. I miss you. 😢

wrong foot down is a funny one😂

Nice tips Jeff. Where is that trail at 5:30 on the video?

Salamat po

Nice tip on starting position on drops. I regularly hit pretty gnarly stuff but you made me realize it might be helpful to approach drops in a much more aggressive and deliberate stance than I'm used to. My bike is a bit on the big side for me and I often feel a little stretched, I've never considered this but the chin over bar is going to give me much more room to maneuver

💯

Your balance is insane! Awesome video

With the brakes, I think you missed the biggest, number 1 thing to do just after a bike check... get the lever angles correct. Ergo = comfort = less performance anxiety when $%*# happens. Side note, love the bike frame, is that steel? As a 6'4" rider, I ended up on a Cannondale Bad Habit 1. I wish it was steel but so far so good. That steel bike just looks bullet, and bomb, proof.

Level pedals in corners is where to start.

Best channel on RU-vid (even though I’m really good at bikes so I don’t need your advice)

Hey man I had a question. If you corner left, should you keep the pedal towards the left or the right and vice-versa

Do you have eney tips for going round burms with confidence

What bike is that? It looks sick! 😍

Recognize the KVSP shots!

For some reason i feel safer doing a quick little pop off a drop, prior to getting the front wheel out and down. I know its wrong, darn it. The other day i did the Drift Drop at Trowbridge Forest in Thunder Bay. It was my biggest drop ever, im guessing 6 to 7 foot. (It was way over my husbands head as he rode under the dock.) I wish he could have seen what I did, but im sure, like usual, i gave it a little pop. I landed a little hard, but even and gave it a big ole, "YIP!"

👍👍

I've always pushed my bike forward off drops. I thought I was just throwing my weight back.

Should you keep ur finger on the brake when doing jumps?

If i was going into some chunky drops I and had my chin over the handlebars and bodyweight under the pedals, might i go over the handlebars?

Lee likes bikes? Joy of bike, might ask the question... but it's it safe to land a drop with arms locked out when you're still learning? Why is there so many different opinions on how to do a drop safely? I like the , "roll and pray this time isn't the time go over the bars"

been riding for decades and learned all this by trial and error, we had no how to vids in the 80's. sure would have made things easier.

What bike are you on?

Man that roll in at 2:35 looks like a oklahoma trail. Is it?

Heppy fan . Heppy the best.layk strit daunhil connandale you layk.🎉

I always been torn between size,,, Small or Medium.... His bike seems extra small on him, it that a big advantage to do tricks? I meant to get a small on XC bike but ended up getting a medium because sales guy insisted.. I am 5.7

Cool

Awesome video thanks! Out of curiosity, what bike is that? Cheers

I hop some drops and gardens because I'm on a hardtail. So imma take that advice with a grain of salt lol

What frame is that?

Well, thats ust like... your opinion man... O sorry, that was lebowski

Worst habits I see is people letting the bike toss them around instead of allowing the bike move underneath. The other one that makes me cringe is inappropriate use of the front brake. Easy way to fix them is removing the front brake, locking out the fork, and sending them down a stair set of doom 10x until their arms and legs soften up. I'm sometimes guilty of going to sleep on a trail and not looking more than 6 feet ahead.

I fist my grips going over wet logs and off jumps and drops so that I don't use them in these situations where I would definitely go down.

One finger on the brakes is all you need... If you have Shimano brakes. 😂

It would be cool if you did a Canadian tour with your clinics.

I'm definitely well past most of this. I will add one thing about pedal positioning that to me, seems way obvious... putting the inside pedal closer to the ground. It is mountain biking after all; there are rocks, roots, bumps, etc. And your pedal tends to be a fairly solid object when it comes to that. I've been trying to teach my wife the "always have a finger on the brake" technique. I think a big problem is people tend to grow up on crappy bikes with poorly maintained v-brakes or cantilever rim brakes with full hand brake levers. They are used to having to use all four fingers and a death grip to brake, and that's not really a place you can keep your fingers and maintain solid grip on the handlebars. So it's un-teaching bad habits. I still remember when my roomie built a bike for his dad, this thing just had Avid BB7 mechanical disk brakes. Best mech brakes I've used. His dad somehow managed to get all four fingers on the two finger Avid levers and sent himself OTB.

If you have too much free stroke pls check your brakes, unless they are tektro its normal 😂

until now, I'm still having a difficulty turning to my right at fast corners. But I don't when turning to my left 😂😂 And I really don't know why

I call bs on the weight going down steep drops. Watch the video, the guys butt goes way back behind the seat

There is no such word as heighth

guilty