How to Brake When Mountain Biking

Video Transcript

I'm Aaron Phillips with Expert Village and let's talk about braking and cornering and shifting for the beginner mountain biker. Brakes are your primary defense as a mountain biker against making contact with the ground. You want to keep the rubber side down and the brakes are the best way to do that. So your front brake is on the left, you got your rear brake on the right. This is a V brake also called a rim brake or a liner pull brake. They are pretty common in mountain bikes but they are being changed out more and more by disc brakes. Which include a rotor on the side of your wheel and a assembly to brake the rotor much on a car or a motorcycle. Now regardless what kind of braking system you have the left brake aka the front brake is the one with the most power and it is also the one that can do the most damage to you. You want to be careful with that front brake. The rear brake is sort of a drag brake not that you want to drag your back end you want to avoid skiting. If you are braking well you are not skiting. If you are braking well you are using your tires to kind of hook you in to the terrain as much as you are using the brakes themselves. The front brake though is refer to the fine tuning brake. If you give the bike too much front brake guess what happens? That, but a little bit further. You get what is called a indo and that is no fun that results in broken collar bones, that results in your helmet saving your head from a concussion all kinds of other things that we rather not have on your typical daily ride.

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