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Fri 28 Aug, 1:00 pm UTC

Beginner technique: Five common cycling mistakes

By Andrea Whitcombe, Triathlon Plus

If you want to be faster and more confident on your bike, it's not just a matter of putting the miles in and getting fitter. You also need to think about good technique and preparation.

Simple mistakes can cost you valuable time and effort on the road or the trails, but with a bit of practice these can be easily corrected, resulting in more confidence, less energy consumption and higher speeds, so you'll no longer be lagging behind your mates or limping over the finish line way off the pace.

Poor cornering technique

You want to be able to take corners smoothly and without losing too much pace, so adjust your speed as you approach the turn – do not brake while cornering.

Make sure your inside pedal is up and press down on the outside pedal. Lean the bike, as opposed to steering it, keeping your body weight centred over the bike. Always look where you’re heading.

If you're on a road or track that's closed to traffic then use the whole space: drift across to reach the apex of the corner and then accelerate out of the turn.

Sharp braking on descents

Applying light gradual pressure on both brakes at the same time is more effective when you're learning to ride than slamming them on. Braking too sharply on a descent can make you lose control.

Try the on/off technique to prevent brakes overheating. On the road, try sitting up instead of braking, as this increases wind resistance and will slow you down.

Practise on hills you’re familiar with, each time applying the brakes a little less. Also practise with experienced riders and try to follow their line of travel.

Wrong gears on climbs

You must be in the correct gear approaching a climb. Don’t leave it too late. If you have to switch from a high gear to a low one once you start climbing then you risk dropping the chain.

Cycling up a hill in a high gear means your muscles recruit more fast-twitch muscle fibres. Fast-twitch fibres fatigue quickly and take a long time to recover. If you change to an easier gear and higher cadence, you conserve energy and save your fast-twitch fibres for later.

Saddle too high or too low

The correct saddle height is crucial. You risk injury if it’s too high or too low, and reduce the power you can generate. Here’s a simple test: sit on the bike, and at the bottom of the pedal-stroke the leg should be almost straight but the heel should stay on the pedal without stretching.

Bike isn't prepared or maintained

Now that you’ve improved your skills, don’t mess it up with poor pre-ride or pre-race preparation. Ensure you’ve checked your bike over – that all bolts are tight and pedals are secure, chain is oiled and saddle is at correct angle.

Check tyres are free from cuts or glass and tyres are pumped up. Ensure brakes are not touching the wheel and that it spins freely. Check that brake pads/blocks aren't worn. Finally, the caliper brakes found on road bikes can get knocked in transport, so check before setting off.

User Comments

There are 22 comments on this post

Showing 1 - 22 of 22 comments

  • And number 6: if you can't reach the handlebars you are facing the wrong way.

  • Cornering Technique

    Leaning into the turn is ok but the response is slow. Most useful lesson I learned for fast precise steering is opposite steering. Turning the bars slightly the opposite way to the way you want to go will cause the bike to instantly lean into the turn. Motorcycle racers use this technique and it works. Needs to be practiced gently at first though!!

  • With regards to Careful, the technique you are refering to is called counter sterring, and on a push bike it is a waste of time as there is not enough gyroscopic effect from the wheels and is usually used to correct going in to a corner too fast on a motor bike. the best thing for corners on a push bike is to look through the corner and look at where you want to go, and NOT where you are going, the old saying look where you want to go and the bike will follow is true.

  • giner1961 and careful you are both right in a sense.

    Careful's method works well on tight single tracks when mountain biking - watch any of the Alps head cam vids on U-Tube!

    giner1961 is also right and on the road his words of wisdom are invaluable! I know that from experiance of not following his advice and learnign the hard way!

  • sorry mountain-nic and giner1961, but your wrong. The counter steering method works fine on the road. Rather than think about steering the wrong way, concentrate more on pushing the ergo/sti lever on the inside of the corner down and away from you (straighten your inside arm). It's easiest to learn riding on the hoods. It works.

  • You don't declutch in a corner in a car and it's way more precise if you pedal through a corner on flat single track stuff. Dragging the back brake means that you can put the power on without over cooking it or throwing the balance out

  • My personal experience when hitting a corner is to squeeze your eyes shut, pray for the best and when you open your eyes again if you are still on the bike and still on the track then bonus!

    Then again that might be why I don't win many races.....

  • It's in the hips.

    Just watch Cancellara's descent in the Pyrenees in this year's tour, point your hips where you want to go.

    Doing that has improved my descending no end!

  • I thought that the use of fast/slow twitch muscle fibres was to do with your power output, regardless of cadence. You can put out the same power at different cadences so spinning up hills will use the same amount of fast-twitch fibres than grinding up at the exact power output.

  • Bhima

    Not quite got it there. Although the research is inconclusive, generally it is thought to work something like this:

    Power = force x cadence

    therefore, with a reduced cadence, to attain the same power you need to apply more force.

    At lower cadences, you need to apply more force and as a result your muscles will fatigue more rapidly. If you want to produce the same power in this fatigued state, you will need to recruit more motor units. As your more efficient slow twitch fibres fatigue, you will progressively recruit less efficient (quicker fatiguing) motor units(if the theory of progressive motor unit recruitment is correct).

    Make sense?

  • Ellis0

    Thank you for your comments however, my remarks where with regards to counter steering and not how to corner, i feel with 25 years of cycling under my belt and 10 of these spent racing 3 of which where at top level i know how to corner, and corner quickly and at speed. i won a few races due to my ability to decend & corner quickly

  • For cornering - pick your line and stick to it.

    If you have to do really tight cornering quite quick (I'm talking 90° turns in about 6ft radius: traffic weaving) then you need to be up off the saddle, turn the wheels and throw the bike round the corner in such a way that your head is almost at the centre point of the circle you are arcing out with your wheels.

    Sharp braking in the city is fine, as you will inevitably need to do it when slipstreaming a large vehicle, and it is good to learn to come to an abrupt stop without letting the back wheel skid - stay off white lines if you're playing this game though, and especially learn what a bus sounds like when it is about to start slowing down so you can react before the brake lights come on.

  • Agree with NapoleonD - it's the hips that make for a great descent (and confidence!) but you need to 'see' the racing line and KNOW that nothing is coming the other way - like the overhang that Cancellara just dodged!

    There is no supporting evidence that says the gyroscopic effect plays anything but an insignificant role in cycle stabilty. Great physics... lots's of links out there. A sfar as I'm aware the question is still open?

    As a far more inexperienced rider than almost all here here are my tips, IMHO:

    1. know the road.

    2. Be realaxed and confident.

    3. Steer with the hips.

    4. look where you want to go - not where you think you may end up (I speak fro sorry experience!)

    5. Practice, practice, practice - it's huge fun!

    N

  • Oh no wonder I couldn't reach the handlebars when I first brought my new bike home, then I logged on to bikeradar.com to get some ideas and read the comment of WeAreACC and then realised that I had been facing in the wrong direction all along! Thanks WeAreACC for a good tip & advice.

    As far cornering is concerned guys, ignore MrChrisP's advice; i shut my eyes on the corner but when I opened them, I was neither on the track nor on my bike!!!! Beware of such misguiders.

  • Count3ersteering is *not* opposite lock, it's slight changes in pressure on each side of the bars. It can be done with heavy pushes, but the results will be much more violent. This technique is taught to moto riders to very rapidly change direction in an emergency. Generally, light pressure is the go.

    Countersteering works on all two wheeled single tracked vehicles, BMX, road, mountain, cyclo. moto, etc, as long as you are going fast enough. Fast enough isn't particularly fast, probably around 16kmh (10mph). Pushing lightly on the bars in the opposite direction to which you want to turn initiates the lean in the correct direction. We all do it naturally as part of learning to ride, and it ends up being subconscious.

    This quick test can be dangerous, so taking full responsibility for your own actions, try turning using leaning only - no hands on bars. Then try with hands on bars and feel how much easier it is. Think about what you are doing with the bars. Realise that you *are* countersteering. Slap head.

  • It should be said that the cadence-force-fatigue up hills relationship is quite a personal one. I can 'thug it' up short hills--off the bike am quite good at lifting & carrying stuff--but actually find it more tiring to have my legs spinning round with no apparent load on them.

    "Slipstreaming large vehicles" in the city? Oooh, in 10 years of cycling in London--no thanks.

  • I watched as my lad, who was just starting to ride on his own, turned the bars one way and steered the other. He was shocked, somewhat!

    I guess he had not got the sub-consious bar-turning bit programmed into his head at that early stage of his riding carreer so was caught out by counter steering.

    I recognised it as I have done a bit of motorbiking.

  • From my understanding, there are two camps with respect to Counter steering (at anything over say 10mph).

    these are...

    1) The Counter steerer group

    2) the others, who have no idea what makes them turn, but have firmly misguided thoughts that leaning or possibly even voodoo has some influence, but who are actually counter steering very slightly but dont realise.

    A grasp of this concept would prevent lots of injuries of both motorcyclists and pedal cyclists from either going straight on into a brick wall or drifting wide around a bend and going head on into a truck....

    Counter steering is about applying a small amount of pressure to the inside handlebar, not big movements. As you go faster the force required increases, if you need to lean the bike over faster to turn in more quickly you would also apply more pressure. To go to extremes the force required to lean a motorcycle over at race track speeds (say 100+) is actually quite high.

    With all of these things though all movements incuding braking should be smooth and progressive.

  • I have a little trick for cornering which i have crossed over from riding motorbikes. When wanting to turn left for example gently push the left bar forward, this makes the bike lean to the left and corner without having to use your body weight so much and keeps things alot more stable. obviously the the opposite for right turns. Seems crackers but with a bit of practise can be a real aid!!

  • You should all just go to a Solihull CC kids session on the Tudor Grange circuit, the coaches will have you cornering like Cancellara in no time, even 6'3" me, Captain Co-Ordination.

  • You tell'em Matt. Might go for a little lesson myself.

  • I'd recommend dragging the rear brake when cornering slowly, means you can keep pedalling to ensure you've got drive but you can control your speed.

    Counter steering (as it's correctly named) is only useful when going fast, it doesn't really have it's place in MTB, it only works on a mororbike becasue of the centrifugal mass of the wheels, so nah!

    All tech picked up from riding my bad tempered Itallian mistress

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