But sooner or later on the trail you’re bound to encounter some drops and as a coach what you want is for your riders to be able to safely get past those drops because that’s the fun stuff getting down drop safely is all about body position it’s about where your
Center of gravity is and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with taking pretty much complete beginners and teaching them to write down things this steep as long as they can get their body in the right place so we’ve got two different approaches two drops the first one is the one that’s suitable for
Beginners and that’s where they’re approaching in the attack position and as they get to the drop they’re looking to get their weight back as far as they can so it goes right back to our original weight shift session and at cone of movement if they can get their
Bum on to the back tire well even if the bike stalls temporarily they’ve still bought themselves enough time to roll on through without going out over the bars so getting the weight back worst-case scenario they decide they don’t want to be there anymore and they just step off
The back of the bike sit on the floor and everybody’s happy once they get a bit more advanced then we can introduce a much better way of getting down drops so we’re still looking to roll down these drops we’re still keeping both wheels in contact with the floor but
Instead of getting the weight right back instead if you can focus on getting your learners to get their weight as low as possible it means they need to drop that seat right down out the way and really take the weight down onto their quads and by
Sustain down low and having a low center of gravity it performs the same function as having that weight right back so the second techniques only really suitable for people once they’ve got a bit more experience a bit more confidence on the bike and the reason for that is because you’re asking them
To bring their weight further forward so they’re gonna be staring straight into the teeth of the drop so instead of getting their arms back and straight like this they’re gonna get their head low about 15 20 centimeters above the stem here and it means they’re really gonna have that elbow sticking out so
When you’re coaching this you really see the points of their elbows the big advantage with this technique is when you get on to long more sustained technical sections or big steeper drops well by having the weight here instead of here it means there’s more pressure on the front wheel which means they can
They’ll effectively use their front brakes so they can use both brakes and also means that they can corner as well so whereas when you’re back here there’s no pressure to actually corner effectively or to brake effectively when you bring the weight forward like this amusing and actually perform all those
Functions and also puts you in a really good position to do there was a central cone of movement skills now we’ve looked at rolling drops and how to get down steep sections on the trail using your bodyweight shift to keep your center of gravity in the right place but there’s
Times when you don’t want to have to stay on the brakes and slow down to actually get off a drop in the trail and that’s when we need a completely different technique altogether and this is what we call the manual drop technique so whereas with the rolling
Drop you’re going to use your brakes you in a slow write down to allow your wheels to stay in contact with the floor with the manual drop what we’re looking to do is we’re looking to launch the front wheel out into space just long enough for the back wheel to reach the
Obstacle and then the bike is gonna be nice and flat in the air and you can align it with the down slope as you land the manual drops quite a committing technique so you’re going to need speed in terms of the bike setup the seats definitely weigh down because we’re
Going downhill and we’re going downhill fast and in terms of gearing well the chances are you’re already gonna be in a good high gear because you’ve been pedaling away and then it comes down to the key coaching points your riders are going to go from their attack position very very
Rapidly into a position where their arms are straight and the body weights going backwards it is essential that they manage to get their arms from bent it’s a fully straight because a bent arm come mean they land an angle and they’ll be shooting off into the undergrowth before
You know it so bent to straight with the arms which simultaneously pushes the body weight back and that actually allows the front wheel to be pushed out into space long enough for the back wheel to reach the edge of the obstacle other essential safety points they have
To have the brakes covered you’re doing this at high speed you’re going off an object you definitely need to have those brakes covered so that you can react as soon as you land so in order to perform your manual drop technique you’re going to need to be in that advanced attack
Position so that means head low to the stem elbows bent and ready to really rapidly extend those arms out in front of you you’re gonna feel weight in your quads because you’re having to crouch down low for this and then it’s a very explosive move so into the drop and
Then fire it out in front of you like this whenever you’re coaching this technique it’s really important to what you’ll write as head and make sure it doesn’t start popping up like this the head needs to stay in the same position and the back needs to stay nice and flat
And so the body stays in a fairly horizontal plane as they go off the drop if they do find themselves lifting their head then what that does is it brings the bike up and they’ll find themselves landing in this position and quite often the back wheel will then pick up speed
Throwing them out in the back and that’s definitely not where they want to be the other reason you might need to do this manual drop technique is if the drops too big to roll and how do you know whether it’s too big to roll well as a
Basic guide if the drops bigger than your front wheel then the chances are as your bike comes down off it instead of rolling on forwards it’ll tuck under and the front wheel goes backwards which is a guaranteed way to send yourself over the bars so if you find a drop that’s
Bigger than your wheel that’s when you need to have this manual drop technique in your arsenal in order to carry on safely through