I just finished my 5th ride. I'm having so much fun with XC riding that I can't stop thinking about it. Since my last ride I have been devouring any content online that I can.

I read and heard in videos about confidence braking. For me right now, controlling speed on the downhill phase is important because my scrotum hasn't developed a thick sheath just yet.

I feel like I need to keep a light grip on the hydro disks (which are awesome) as I roll down so e of the steep stuff. I'm looking to keep traction and I rarely skid, but I was thinking about how much braking I'm doing and thought it was with the question - I'm not ready to bomb these sections. I will figure out the handling in time. What's a good "you shouldn't need to always have the brakes on a little" timeframe?

Thanks in advance for your info/experience with confidence braking.
ZmanT

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Sounds right to me. Some sections are unbombable. Even the pros need brakes.
The ability to gauge an appropriate speed improves with experience. But mistakes happen.
Eventually, you may just cover the brake levers with one finger (index or middle) in case you suddenly need to brake.
Crashing is part of mountain biking. If someone tells you otherwise, they probably never really got into the sport.
Enjoy the learning curve, and the little bumps along the way!

It's great that you're enjoying the sport. I personally still keep one finger hovering over the brake levers (I one finger brake anyway) when decending if I think there's a chance I'll need to hit the brakes. If it's a section I'm familiar with then I won't have them out at all. As far as confidence braking, like others have said there are some hills where you just have to hit the brakes. When I use them though, I like to use them only to slow down to the speed I want and then let off again versus lightly applying them all the way down the hill. You may have to do these several times down the hill but you'll have better control when not applying the brakes. It's a similiar concept to braking when you approach a corner...slow down to the speed you want before you hit the corner and then don't brake once you enter the corner.

None of our scrotums have a thick sheath yet!! If that bothers you, wear a cup or jock strap. I wore one for baseball and felt practically invincible. I was reminded that is not true when I took a terrible pitch to the tailbone (how they missed that bad remains a mystery to me today). If you want to wear all the chest protectors in the world you might as well not mountain bike because well, let's be honest here: NO PAIN NO GAIN. Good to know that your getting out on the trails though! Practice practice practice!

Josh

all right - thanks for the responses

it sounds like as long as I'm comfortable, i'm not doing it wrong

as for the scrotum, it was a poorly executed attempt at a metaphor that was meant to say something like "i haven't developed the nads to take on some of these steep downhill sections without constant light braking" -

the key is to ride more, and i'm totally up for that!

Good advice here. Brian Lopes talks about this in his book. When you're first starting out, everything seems very hard and even though you ride the brakes a lot, and still feel out of control. New trails give somewhat of this feeling too, but it's considerably less, once you're an experienced rider.

Once you start to master techniques, starting with picking a good line, you'll be able to ride faster and less on your brakes. He also talks about intentionally NOT covering your brakes on trails you know so that you don't ride them.

Fingers on the brake levers can be a bad deal in my noob crashing experience. I was riding a very easy trail that had a lot of roots in one section on a rigid 29. Colin knows this trail, the Meadows.

I'm not totally sure cause I have no video, but I think as I was bouncing through these roots with my fingers on the levers (lightly) that I came down hard and grabbed the front brake, locking it up and sending me superman/bulldogging into my bars. Wound up breaking the front axle and the mag caps on my carbon forks.

I keep my hands on the grips only now unless I am shedding speed for some reason.

JOWilson, that may be a top 5 right there.

I've done something similar, once. Hit my helmet on low branches and it actually started to yank me backwards off the bike. I grabbed reflexively... oops, was covering the brakes. Instant endo.