Originally Posted by
aprilm
Thanks for the replies! Santiago - going back and reading the article helped out, thank you. I'm still slightly confused, but I think it'll just take more experience for me to learn when to use what brake.
Trust me, this hasn't discouraged me in the least. I'm accustomed to flying off horses, so falling off a bike is a walk in the park.
I always think of "misfortunes" like this as learning experiences, and honestly I'm sort of glad it happened--I finally got my first crash (since I started riding seriously) out of the way.
I think so... we got the handlebars and saddle aligned again to the point that I could ride another lap around the trail, but it still needs an adjustment. Nothing too major, I don't think.
My shoulder and elbow are killing me, though.
Practice. Practice. Practice...and ignore advice from anyone that says you should only use your front brake. Sheldon's article is almost okay for road riding or fixed gear riding but is just plain wrong for most mountain bike situations. For mountain biking, you really need to use both brakes and learn how to position yourself over the center of the bike.
Here the practice part: Find a nice, long, low traffic dirt road with maybe a slight downhill. You want a dirt road because you're going to do some skiddin' and you don't want to mess up trails. Get the bike up to a speed that you feel comfortable with but fast enough to need to stop. Then go through these exercises
1. Apply the brakes hard enough to skid. Get used to the feel of a skidding rear wheel first.
2. Get up a good speed and mash on the brakes. Get the rear wheel to skid and then slide forward on the bike towards the bars. The idea is to skid as far as you can. Really lay down the rubber. Have fun.
3. Now that you are comfortable with skidding, get up a good head of steam. Mash on the brakes, hard! But this time, straighten out your arms and move you weight back and down on the bike. The idea is to stop quickly but not skid. The further back you move the harder you can squeeze the brake. If the rear starts to skid, ease up on the rear brake. You want to keep the wheel turning because you'll stop better with a rotating wheel than a skidding one. You'll quickly learn how much pressure you have to squeeze
both brakes to stop the bike.
Go play around but please don't do the skiddin' thing on trails. Tears 'em up!