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Mastering
Mountain Bike Skills |
Mastering Mountain Bike Skills by:
Brian Lopes and Lee McCormack
Finally, a how-to book focused on freeriding. There are lots of riders out there
who, like me, are craving good information/guidance on how to crank their riding
skills up a notch or two. Let’s say the thirst for info is there but there
are very few fountains. So when I saw this book lying in one of Cam’s
heaps of riding gear and bike parts etc. which are patiently waiting to be tested,
I quickly volunteered.
This book is aimed at the intermediate rider. If you want to go faster and bigger
then most everything you need is in this book. A lot of the skills that are
explained in this book - pumping, high speed corners, jumping etc would be lost
on a beginner. Lee does pass on a few great tips to beginners before moving
on: relax, lay off the brakes and have faith in your bikes ability to roll.
The book has complete chapters on bike set-up, pedalling, braking, cornering,
wheelie dropping and hopping, launching, jumping, flow, crazy situations and
racing. All great stuff, especially if you ride fast, Whistler-style riding.
In fact a lot of the photos used in the book were taken at Whistler.
The book is filled with solid, instructive photos as well as some stories by Lopes. The one above tells the story of Brian taking money from pedicab drivers by challenging them to races.
Throughout the book a lot of emphasis is put on weighting and unweighting the
bike, pumping and staying off the brakes. So I guess it is no great surprise
that those are the skills I worked on the most after reading the book. At a
place like Whistler those skills can change your riding dramatically. Pumping
the back sides of jumps, rocks or any dip in the terrain not only makes you
significantly faster but reduces the focus on pedalling so you stay strong longer
- which simply makes your riding experience better.
The other ‘teaching’ I found to make a huge difference to my riding
is the idea of lowering your centre of gravity. Lowering your head and dropping
your hips stabilizes the bike in both corners and on high speed rough terrain.
Simply look at the body position of any fast downhiller to see this technique
in action.
You can learn about dirt jumping (but not tricking), DH racing, dropping, cornering. About the only section that's lacking is the one on skinnies. You can't learn that from a Californian.
In an effort to say something negative about the book I would have to say
the cover looks very dated. When I first saw it I thought it was an old book.
Maybe even as old as the 1990s. A sharper more modern cover would I think sell
a lot better. Also, if you are a hard core North Shore rider used to riding
a lot of steeps and wood in the wet, which are relatively slow and technical,
then you will find a lot of the skills explained in this book fairly new. However
you will have to get off the Shore to use most of them. This should be no surprise
though as Brian lives in California and Lee lives in Colorado.
More importantly, what I really loved about this book was Brian and Lee’s
understanding of what freeriding is all about. Why the pushing the envelope,
the tingling nerves and butterflies and the constant push to get better is so
important. One part of the book discussing flow reads: "… Concentration
is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant,
or to worry about problems. Self consciousness disappears, and the sense of
time becomes distorted. An activity that produces such experiences is so gratifying…”
I don’t think anybody will learn to freeride simply by reading a book
but successful teaching comes from using several methods: showing, telling,
reading and of course trying. This book will definitely take care of the ‘reading’
part.
It costs $22.95 in the US and $29.95 in Canada. Considering anything ever made
for freeriding seems to cost at least $100 bucks, that isn’t so bad. Check
it out at: leelikesbikes.com.
Mike Wallace
