How To Ride Advanced Technical Drops | MTB Skills

Riding drops on your mountain bike can be a scary! And sometimes small drops can be very intimidating if they are technical. Rich Payne shares a few key techniques for hitting drops, perfectly, (almost) every time!
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[@gmbn]

How confident are you with riding drops? Which situations do you struggle with and need to improve? 🤔 Let us know 👇

[@racerdaveracerdave]

Major props to you and anyone else who can ride those things. I know my limits and they're nowhere near that high.

[@maxdesancha6025]

This video is great! I just started mountain biking last week and am going to bike park Wales on Saturday! Now I'm ready to do 50 shades of black! So excited 😁😁

[@bhodson7954]

A few more sequences at 100% speed would really help visualise the speed needed for each drop. Having said that, the slo-mo is great for showing body position and balance.

[@rupedog]

Good vid... Really was a good overview of tech drops. I find them hardest when there is a sketchy run in, like the left hander over a janky rock to 4ft log drop, on Cole not Dole at bpw.

[@ryansmith7974]

I've been rebuilding my drop confidence after a huge fail, its not easy because of the commitment it takes. The most important part is commitment to the drop, you can't the speed needed to do a drop and then try and roll it or the other way around. Wade Simmons did a Pick-A-part video on drop fundamentals thats helped me a lot. Cheers

[@dazmtb]

Awesome video 👌🏻

[@dxnproductscom]

Love this, looking forward to part 2 :)

[@TheBikeRoom]

I'm usually one of those standing near the ledge of a drop with other mTBers all sizing it up and talking the talk, and then walking away with the first rider whose ego is willing to take a hit, always mentioning the job on Monday morning, cost of living crisis and not wanting to damge the bike etc. Although I have it recorded on my KZbin channel when I finally did the Bonneville drop haha was I stoked?

[@GraphSol]

Enjoyed this, some gnarly drops and excellent riding, but was expecting more natural terrain. Like drops in technical rocky or rooty sections, or drops with little or no run up.

[@clascaulfieldjr3653]

If you’re new and practicing on smaller drops, how can you tell if you’re doing it right? No matter what, I always hit my front tire first but I’m able to keep control.

[@Hipp0campus_1]

try playing around on a drop you're familiar with. Modulate how much you push your front wheel over the edge (and thus keeping your weight back), to land with front, rear or both wheels.

[@ashleytombs]

I’ve said this many times drops with blind And sniper landings are so technical most of them are blind as hell makes them really technical to do and takes years of practice to get them perfect plus Boner logs are really technical. because they are uphill takeoffs. so you have to go a little bit faster than you would normally and you don’t want to be coming Too slow on those because never mind making it to the landing just going off the edge is a long way down

[@ExplosiveNotes]

2:33 So best to be on gravel bike when riding that drop, right? 😁

[@Cous1nJack]

This only works the second time. How do you ride unseen

[@AdamAllaker]

Hang on. Pretty sure that the correct drop technique is to always push the bike forward and away from you as you leave the take off. Pulling up and manualing off leaves you prone to all sorts of horrors or has Ben Cathro got it wrong in his how to bike series?

[@michaelbadura5897]

I would guess he talked about pulling up due to the drop already tipping you forward. The entire run up to the drop is down hill. If your bike is already angled down and you pushed on the bars, you would end up in a wicked endo or OTB!

[@treebeardmtb]

The really weird thing is that Rich is clearly doing the standard drop technique that Cathro teaches, but keeps going on about pulling up and doing manuals. Another thing Cathro said in that series is that people who jump well usually have no idea how they do it - clearly that applies to drops too!

[@rorybissmtb]

You can just choose which technique to use on a drop depending on if its fast or slow, whether you bunny hop or manual or squash it

[@boriscima8134]

nope you need to push foward and not push down

[@jamesmarsden9348]

I have trouble with my feet coming off pedals on drops, obviously poor technique but I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Any help/advice would be appreciated.

[@frank8278]

heels down

[@haldclark]

Maybe jumping with your legs? Try lightly shoving the bike *forward* using your legs and arms, almost like you're just shifting your weight toward the rear wheel. Your feet should not leave the pedals.

[@treebeardmtb]

To really lock your feet into flat pedals, you can do something called the foot wedge - drop the heel of your front foot and the toes of your back foot. That's more for blasting through rocks and roots though. On jumps and drops you shouldn't need to do anything drastic if you're doing everything else right - check out Ben Cathro's How to Bike series on Pinkbike for that.

[@alecwhatshisname5170]

Pull the bars upward with a bit of forward lean while standing up on the pedals. Increases the pressure and thus friction on the pedals.

[@bustinnuts4027]

I’d really like to see you explain the GBU qualifier drop, I been looking at it and it’s scary to be but I want to attempt it sometime in the future but it would be nice to hear the correct technique

[@prusak26]

You mean the one with a 90° left just before it, and numerous ruts cut into the landing?

[@bustinnuts4027]

@@prusak26no I’m not that good 🤣 and they have done a video showing that one before I’m on about the new qualifier drop right at the start of the trail as you drop in

[@Bazhossle.]

Mate don’t overthink it, it’s nothing - literally a foot down of air

[@bustinnuts4027]

@@Bazhossle.just trying to build the confidence because that would be the biggest drop I done

[@OmnieStar]

I thought red was the pro lines?

[@Soelleman]

"Gauge your speed". I often hear this but I would love to know what that actually is. Is it 15 km/h, is it 25 km/h or are we talking 50 km/h? How can you figure it out first time you meet an obstacle - without being worried about having to find out you were too slow and therfore end in a bad situation.

[@dirttrackdieter]

Taking drops always at 50km/h .. thats real fun

[@fredclements5474]

hiii

[@rupedog]

Once u can ride one drop properly (and NOT by hopping off the end), you can ride any..... IN THEORY!!!! 😮 The mind monkey is your nemisis

[@itfc3]

you say pull up. Blake says never pull up. so which is it ?

[@robwhite164]

Lol world of Payne.

[@richardpayne5176]

Never a good place to be 😉

[@nothingpretty]

more like "a world of pine" amirite? amirite?!... never mind.

[@Skizm_admin]

Asking for the 10th time. What happened to the POC HELMETS??

[@BigSmartQuiz]

GMBN are not sponsored by POC anymore for helmets, simple.

[@ManeMtb]

Why is no one ever mentioning/commenting a no speed drop (don't know what is the name) - that Dale Stone/Dangerous Dave often use. Basically like a pull up from standing still into a drop, now that is easy to mess up 😀

[@devincook3278]

Squash it? You ride moto Rich. I was expecting a nasty scrub!

[@adrianjayne6580]

FIRST :)

[@liamhuxhold3235]

nice

[@garyherndon4722]

Can never watch your videos with headphones or earbuds. Your background music is distracting in almost all your videos, GMBN, GMBNTech, AskGMBN, etc. Too bad you can't find something else for your sound mixer to do. I wouldn't want to see anyone lose a job.

[@heinrichkleist3473]

Note on the colours: in Whistler it would go blue, black, and then red for the so-called pro lines.

[@alecwhatshisname5170]

In the US it’s green, blue, black, and double black