In Trail Tips Episode 3, Nathan shows us the right way (and the wrong way!) to tackle awkward obstacles while riding up a trail – Things like rock faces, logs, roots and your riding buddies that fall off in front of you (joke).
When riding along a flat trail or climbing up a hill, some riders fall into that default setting – they have the seat up and they’re in a really light gear spinning up a gentle climb. Suddenly they come across an obstacle and they just go a little bit faster into it. Sometimes they may get up and over it, but it really limits the possibilities for getting over the obstacles.
Another common problem is having your weight too far forward, trying to lift the front wheel but it just slams straight into the rock and you end up hurting your ribs on the handlebars or worse. The other extreme is when you lift the front wheel up onto the obstacle, but you keep your weight over the back and the rear wheel just slams into it.
In all cases, we really need to focus on helping the bike over the obstacles to keep the bike rolling on up that trail. The first obstacle Nathan demonstrates is a small rock step. It’s still pretty tricky – you’re not just going to roll over it and let the bike do the work. You have to put some technique into it to help you get over it. It’s usually a good idea to shift up to a harder gear, drop the seat down a bit, just to get it out of the way, making it easier to move around on the bike.
In Nathan’s opinion, you cannot have too much speed for this, as we’re riding uphill, it’s only going to make it smoother and easier for you to get over the obstacle. So you’re going to want to have your weight over the center of the bike, pulling on the bars a little bit as you’re looking to land your front wheel just on the top of the rock. Then move all of your weight forward quickly to really help the back wheel roll up on over the obstacle.
At the moment your front wheel has just touched down on the top of the rock, we’re still moving forward, so it’s pretty obvious that you cannot keep pedaling without catching a pedal on the rocks. So it’s important to already have all the momentum you need and then get your weight forward so that you can help the back wheel up onto the rock, allowing you to pedal on up the trail.
The next level of difficulty is when the rock is too big to get away with just lifting the front wheel and just moving our weight forward to roll over it. We actually have to lift the back wheel up onto the top of the rock. It’s the same technique as before, with the saddle down and in a slightly heavier gear to get the momentum going in. We’re going to pull back on the bars to lift our front wheel up onto the edge of the rock. Then the key moment is when your front wheel is on top, you’re going to really change your weight shift from the back, throwing your body forward and then scooping your heels to lift the back wheel up high, so that it can land on the top of the rock and you ride off. If it’s a much bigger rock, we can’t just roll the back wheel up onto it. We’re going to end up hitting the chain ring, hitting the bash guard and just stopping dead. We’ve really got to lift the back wheel up on top of the rock.
Finally we have a pretty extreme obstacle to get up and over. It’s not too often you come across something like this on a trail, but Nathan loves the challenge of these trials style challenges.
The key is not to put your front wheel too high and not to put it too low. If we have it too high, the back wheel is just going to hit the rock and bounce off. If you hit it too low, it’s going to kill all your momentum and you might end up even going over the bars.
So it’s all about the sweet spot, just above the step where you’re hitting your front wheel, lifting that back wheel to try to get it to land in the same place your front wheel hit. Then we don’t have any space to pedal, so you have to use the brakes and add in a thrust of the bike, keeping your weight where it is to get the bike on top for a bit more traction. That’s a lot of things going on and it takes a lot of practice to get this one right!
Nathan races for Vitus/First Tracks and also runs guided MTB holidays in the south of Spain:
