Video: How To Actually Learn New Skills On Your Bike With Ben Cathro - How To Bike Episode 1

Jun 24, 2021
by Pinkbike Originals  


HOW TO BIKE

EPISODE 1



Welcome to Ben Cathro's new series: How To Bike. In this ten-part series, Ben is going to break down fundamental bike skills and techniques that will make you a better rider. Whether you just took off those training wheels or you're getting ready for your first race, there's going to be something for everyone.


We'd like to extend a huge thank you to Santa Cruz Bicycles, Deity and POC who supported this project.


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107 Comments
  • 147 3
 Yes! Been looking forward to this, Cathro is a great coach.
  • 80 0
 Cheers dude, everyone crushed it on this.
  • 21 0
 @ben-cathro: dude you're a literal godsend, after an injury I'm literally slower and less confident than a kitchen toaster, great video!
  • 29 0
 @theoskar57: speak for your own toaster, mines super confident!
  • 9 0
 *Ben looking forward to this
  • 3 0
 @rudders20: all you need though is a fourteen pound lump hammer and your toaster will be in 3000 pieces
  • 2 0
 @Danmcdan: That's first degree toastercide.
  • 3 0
 @gibbon-on-an-orange: Muffin anyone?
  • 1 0
 Having problems timing my unclipping, then spinning any suggestions?
  • 5 4
 What sort of bitter ass haters downvoted this? Downvote me you nerds.
  • 2 0
 @Danmcdan: "Nothing" *assumes your quoting the AI toaster from Red Dwarf*
  • 45 0
 This is awesome! I can't agree enough about the need for regular practice and relatively short sessions.

I've been doing the Ryan Leech courses for about 9 months now, it's taken me that long practicing 3 or 4 times a week, 30 minutes a go to learn bunny hops (and manuals partly along the way) to the point where I can now hop about 18" with really good technique. Why so long? If you're older and work behind a desk (like me) it's not just the technique you have to learn, you also have to train your body for both the strength and flexibility to be able to make the shapes needed. It's a long haul commitment, but so worth it.

Positive reinforcement of success helps the neural pathways build faster too I think.
  • 15 0
 Nice one on the regular practice! It is the main thing that will get you there. Everything else just helps you succeed faster and with more smiles.
  • 9 0
 @ben-cathro: The regular practice thing has been a revelation to me. I never stuck to things as a kid (apart from attempting to do ever bigger skids), but this 9 months of seeing a skill developed has made me realise that all the things I think I can't do (playing a musical instrument in particular) are right there for the doing now I know how to learn. All hail the transformative power of riding your bike. And commenting on pinkbike.
  • 3 0
 Sounds like you've had a positive experience with Ryan Leech's courses. I've been eyeing them up for a bit? Worth it I'm assuming? Congrats on the progress.
  • 4 0
 @dr-rock: They've been great for me. He breaks everything down into miniscule steps (the bunnyhop course is about 30 separate video lessons for example) which really helped me. It allows you to do the slowing down of the movements that Ben talks about in his video.

The best bit about it is that you can post videos of you doing the lesson and get coach feedback and also that the facebook group is a really positive place with lots of people also taking months/years to learn things (which makes you feel a bit less terrible!).

Really excited to see the rest of this pinkbike series too, it's great to see one by someone who's spent a lot of time coaching normal punters.
  • 3 0
 @dr-rock I did the wheely course that he released for free last year and there was a couple of things he mentioned that I had never heard before and as soon as I used the techniques my wheelies improved tenfold.

If you're umming and ahhing about it but you do have the money and time then I would say no brainer; go for it.
  • 4 0
 @dr-rock: his material is great and so is the learning support. I've got wheelies better now then ever thanks to his course.
  • 1 0
 @lightningskull
@Woody25
@haroman666
Thanks for the feedback. Sounds like it's worth it.
Cheers
  • 36 0
 Learn new skills? I'm struggling to keep the minor skills I already have!
  • 48 0
 How To Relearn coming out 2024
  • 1 0
 I rode a road / gravel bike in 2019 / 2020 a lot. It has taken me about 6 months of dedicated MTB time to to get my skills back to where they were before I started riding gravel.
  • 9 0
 2024?!?! is Shimano producing it? (I kid, I kid) @ben-cathro:
  • 9 0
 If you're worse at more skills, does that make you better?
  • 5 0
 Every time I learn something new, it pushes old stuff out of my brain...
  • 5 0
 But every time I learn something new, it pushes out something old. Remember that time I took a home wine-making course and forgot how to drive?
  • 2 0
 oh…

  • 5 0
 @bykeco: So here I thought the Simpsons episode you're quoting ("Secrets of a Successful Marriage") was ripping off a joke from Married with Children--the episode where Kelly Bundy forgets something every time she learns something new ("Kelly Knows Something")... and when I looked them up, the Simpsons episode had an original airdate of May 19, 1994, and the MWC episode had an original airdate of May 22, 1994, just three days later. So maybe the writers of both shows were hanging out together, because if one writer copied another's joke, it must have been before the episode went into production.
  • 1 0
 @punkard: Only if you improving, if you stop trying to get better, your going to get worse
  • 2 0
 @kcy4130: I'm pushin' 70 now, and I find that sometimes learning a new trick actually brings back old tricks that I forgot all about.
Usually happens, like Ben said, overnight.
  • 18 0
 Fantastic video. Talking gear is OK and wastes away the hours, but skill building is the deep fundamental thing that makes activities (not just biking) kickass. This covered what's needed to build a skill well, from understanding how to break something down into individual components, to avoiding mental fatigue.

Nice work gentlemen. The crankflip could be swapped out for any skill (from popping manuals to trick-shooting a bow or kicking a football), and the content still holds true.
  • 5 0
 Kind words my man! Hoping some people take inspiration from it. I want to learn fakie front while slide reverts. I need to make a plan.
  • 3 0
 @ben-cathro: just started learning those the other night! It’s wild and will take some learning for sure. You got it!
  • 2 0
 @ben-cathro: Can you back flip?
Fakie front is a back wards back flip!
  • 16 0
 Pikebike, whatever you are paying Ben and team for this content please at least double it. @ben-cathro is such an articulate and entertaining presenter, analyst and coach. We really enjoy absolutely every piece of content he puts out. Cheers
  • 16 0
 Oh my days, Mike Boyd and Ben Cathro!? A collaboration I never knew I wanted so much. Great video folks, looking forward to this series!
  • 11 0
 Couldn’t believe our luck!
  • 9 0
 Made me think of the Rodney Mullen video where he described his learning process for some of the ridiculous skate tricks he created. He said he would break it down into progressions- or individual skills that made up the trick. He would then start one skill at a time and do it 10,000 times until it felt natural- he would then combine and move on to the next skill. I really liked his description as when you watch him you think he is just supernatural or a phenom (which he likely is) but when you hear his process it reminds you that you may never skate like Rodney but anyone can build basics over multiple practices and then combine and build from those. All about growth and insightful repetition! People bring attributes (like Rodney having the mental rigidity?/drive/brain to do tricks 10,000 times!) and genetics to it that may make it easier to learn but we all have to learn and we can all improve.
  • 2 0
 Rodney mullen was insane. Anyone who hasn't seen it should watch his documentary on YouTube. That dude did stuff people can't even do these days.
  • 2 0
 @DylanH93: My favorite are the stories from the other skaters of the era when street skating was blowing up. They would be on road trips and Rodney would just run away from the team and they would find him practicing kick flips in a parking garage after a few hours of him missing. Guy had a special brain for sure- reminds me a lot of Alex Honnold. However, I do think he had such a technical brain that it was able to break down how he learned things. This talk he gave is so cool for his learning theory and how we can all learn things better- www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEm-wjPkegE
  • 12 0
 Make peace with sucking best advise ever
  • 7 0
 I've really got a lot out of the Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyle
www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Talent-Improving-Skills/dp/034553025X

He studied pros in a lot of different fields and provides tips and advice in the categories of Getting Started, Improving Skills and Sustaining Progress.

A few of the many take-aways:

* Recognize Hard Skills and Soft Skills; you learn and perfect them differently
* Avoid flow and do what doesn't come easy
* Displace bad habits with good ones as it's hard to change bad ones
* 5 minutes per day > an hour per week
* Stop before you're exhausted.
* Practice immediately after performance, and end on a positive note
* Blue-Collar mindset: inspiration is for amateurs; pros go to work every day, whether they feel like it or not.

There's lots more but they're all easily applicable and bite-sized.
  • 7 0
 ....we looking to increase or decease the FF submissions with this? I think it can swing either way, lol
[I look forward to watching this in greater detail over lunch...nice work on the new content PB]
  • 6 0
 Success or fail, credit us with a #HowToBike tag and we’ll see if it was a positive or negative influence Wink
  • 3 0
 @ben-cathro: fantastic opening video [just finished over lunch]; learning to learn is a foundation that is so easy to overlook. You could literally take the bike out of this and replace it with a golf club and you'd have a great learning to learn golf video, the skills apply to so many things that are both physical and mental.
  • 5 0
 Visualization and consciously slowing down are huge factors of learning and perfecting anything. My drumset instructor growing up was a big proponent of both of these things. Practicing absurdly slow to analyze, understand and correct your movements is the only way to play faster (or ride faster in this case). Visualization has become a bit of a double edge sword while riding the older I get though.. Uconsciously more worried about injuring myself, lol.
  • 4 0
 So true, I didn’t realise how much I splay my feet out the way when I kick the cranks back. Wasn’t until we watched the vid back after the day. Now when I try i have to picture kicking back straight to stop it happening.
  • 7 0
 10 videos and not a single one on wheelies or manuals?! Thanks for confirming they're useless and making me feel much better about myself!
  • 5 0
 I debated for ages about whether we should include them in the first series. I decided that for most riding you don’t NEED them. I’ll rarely manual or wheelie as a necessity, it’s more a fun thing to do to spice up bits of trail. There is some skill transference of wheelies and manuals to certain kinds of drop or jump and we’ll cover it in those vids.
  • 7 0
 How do I make my wife relearn that mountain biking is all that really matters?
  • 7 0
 Everything I know about biking I've learned from PinkBike comments
  • 5 0
 same... but mostly about puns
  • 2 0
 Forget the comments, the PB AI comment bot is expanding to coaching and patent portfolio reviews.
  • 3 0
 Slowing things down has had a noticeable difference for me in cornering. Easily half of my rides are now with my daughter on the mac-ride which forced me to slow the pace down and actually provides that mental capacity to think through foot and body positioning, bike lean, line choice etc. It also means my bike is 45lbs heavier so smooth/momentum is key. I don't think I would be anywhere near where I am at without a year of 'slow rides' sprinkled in to provide the time to really work on the process.
  • 6 0
 Looking forward to the clip in version
  • 4 0
 I think it’s called an T.E. Wink
  • 3 0
 Question:

Does Ben get voted off for talking in the car while driving to the video shoot in episode 5, then gets replaced with one of the PB academy folks from season 1 as a crossover to PB academy season 2....
  • 5 0
 If it means I get to be told off by Jason in person I’m in.
  • 2 0
 Cambu jumps looking great there (and tiny, they feel massive irl lol)

I have taken massive steps i my riding by following a lot of what you said. Biggest is visualisation and breaking down trail features. I am a decent rider but my testicular fortitude lets me down, a lot! I struggled a lot of steep, tight turns and letting the bike do the work but after doing this I have been setting pbs and riding stuff I never thought I could. Its great and I can now keep up with (or sometimes beat) mates who were faster and betterer! So time spent learning has meant much more fun riding!!
  • 4 0
 I'm excited about how to jump and corner. I ride with buds on steep techy stuff and I'm right there, but as soon as we get into berms and jumps I have no idea what I'm doing.
  • 2 0
 Great video, nice to learn how to learn. Apparently trying to learn how to corner while trying to corner as fast as I can may have been counter productive. So many tips I can go out and apply. Cheers.
  • 1 0
 Just love this video, looking forward to this series. And this must be the colab of The ages! I have a question about Learning as well. When I try to learn a new trick I often go to hard and overdo it. After this I get kind of a mental block, maybe being scared, then under-try for such a long time. For instance, when I try to manual. After one attempt looping out I can barely lift the front wheel for the rest of that ride.
  • 2 0
 I get that too. The strategy I came up with to deal with it was to deliberately do an exaggerated move to reset the 'range' of the motion in my mind. So, for wheelies I consciously pull up/pedal harder/lean back further than needed and go off the back to reset in my brain where the back of the float zone is. For bunny hops I do meerkats (pull the bike as vertical as possible but don't pull the trigger on the jump up). For manuals I'm trying to come to terms with hopping off the back, but I haven't managed to be brave enough to do that yet!
  • 9 0
 @Woody25 is bang on with his comment. Mental blocks are more often than not fear related so you have to figure out ways to overcome it. The easiest way is by building a figurative safety net through two drills.

1 - Get real familiar with your back brake. When you lift the front as you reach the “peak” of the lift smoothly apply the rear brake to bring the front wheel back down. Keep doing this to reassure you that it will save you if you overcook it. Lift higher and higher while still immediately applying the back brake to bring it back down. Your goal is to safely build until you get to that balance point and from there start to pull the back brake less and less so that instead of bringing the front wheel immediately back down you pause it at the balance point. Eventually you won’t need the brake but it helps to begin with.

2 - You shouldn’t need this with good brake control but you can also familiarise yourself with bailing. Begin by just jumping off the back of the bike while rolling along. Keep a hold of your handle bars and land astride your back wheel. You can then build to jumping off the back when attempting some manuals. This can be hard to practice so you can get a similar feeling by riding the front wheel up a sharp transition to mimic a manual and jumping off the back. Hopefully you won’t need this but it should put your mind at ease if the mental block is relentless.

Good luck!
  • 1 0
 Excited for the rest of the series, after watching epi 1 I can see Ben is a really engaging guy. It never hurts to hear about the basics from someone else- a little tweak in perspective can help you improve no matter how long/short you've been at it.
  • 1 0
 Awesome series here! Ben is a hell of a teacher, his race line breakdowns are so interesting. I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Whenever I get on the bike I just head out to the trails and ride. Really need to start devoting time to practicing the fundamentals.
  • 1 0
 Wow, what a great video to start the series! Very impressed with the knowledge presented here. There's a lot of good research coming out regarding motor skill acquisition and learning, as well as the importance of "play" in our development as humans. Cudos to Ben and company for highlighting some of these ideas and techniques.
  • 2 0
 Cathro and Boyd - the Collab returns! Excellent to see Mike in the vid; I mean we should have seen it coming with a series about learning!
  • 4 0
 Quality content, Thnx PB!
  • 2 0
 So what i understood: i need that megatower to learn nee skills. That old Bronson is holding me Back
  • 1 0
 @ben-cathro i know its not really important like you said, but I'd actually love to learn how to manual properly ha. Gotta keep up with the fireroad steeze y'know.
  • 1 0
 Mega! been a fan of Mikes youtube channel for a while so it was a nice surprise to see him pop up on PB! ps. His manual learning vid is ace!
  • 3 0
 11: post ride tailgating
  • 1 0
 This is a skill I'm always tuning...
  • 2 1
 This is a progressive idea to keep people engaged, and it looks really well-done so far.
  • 2 0
 Should have been a video /s
  • 2 0
 This should be an unlimited series
  • 1 0
 Damn Ben... why you gotta call out us douche bags like that? I'm just trying to help my friends with tough love.
  • 1 0
 wait hang on, are you resting your bike on your mech at the beginning of the video?
  • 1 0
 Leaving Jumping for last...gotta keep the content coming in for Friday Fails.
  • 1 0
 this was great!! Looking forward to more.. man we're lucky to get grade A solid content like this for free
  • 1 0
 I really enjoyed this. Production value, content, and presentation was excellent. Looking forward to the rest of the series!
  • 1 0
 Prologue lesson - how to find a decent bike to ride for lesson 1 in today’s bike market.
  • 1 0
 Who do yall think is the best pinkbike presenter and why is it Ten Cathshaw?
  • 2 0
 Looks like a skills session.
  • 2 0
 Fantastic video! So excited for the series. Cathro is the boi!
  • 1 0
 Thanks Pinkbike and Ben for listening to your fans and creating instructional content for this hungry crowd
  • 2 0
 Was Mike interrupted half way through learning soccer?
  • 1 0
 Stoked to hone in some skills and learn new ones.
  • 1 0
 Looking forward to this segment!
  • 1 0
 I hope he doesn't break down.
  • 1 0
 Thanks Phil, you are light years ahead !
  • 1 0
 Speed is a byproduct of accuracy
  • 1 0
 Motivated me to go out and be a dafty right now.
  • 1 0
 Really looking forward to the rest of these. Nice work Ben and team.
  • 1 0
 Great vid! Looking forward to the rest!
  • 1 0
 Is this you riding over in Cambusbarron? Great video as per usual.
  • 1 0
 Ok, and now do it with clipless pedals Wink
  • 1 0
 Cant wait for this to begin!
  • 1 0
 Enjoyed that Ben - looking forward to the next one :>
  • 1 0
 Yes!
  • 1 0
 Noice!
  • 1 0
 nice new Conti tyres Smile
  • 1 0
 That was great!
  • 1 0
 really good video!
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