Dare to Dream e-Coaching | Bike or Body? | Start Up Advice | Too Old? | Big Mistake | Understanding Pain | Cornering | Fitness Measurements | Professional Braking | Motivation | Overtraining | Bike Fit | Better Coaching
Professional Braking
Most cyclists, including most pros, don't know how to use their
brakes properly. They tend to either be braking as hard as possible
or not at all. Most of the time they tend to be over braking.
There are two problems with over braking. First, you have to
understand that the tendons, which pull your fingers down on the
brake levers pass through the palms of your hands. In cycling, this
has a tendency to create a problem.
When braking, the body's weight shifts forward into the handlebars.
This causes the handlebars to transfer that pressure to the palms of
the hands and against the tendons, which pull the fingers down. This
has a tendency to do what we call shortening these tendons which
causes the fingers to pull down even harder, which increases the
braking, which shifts your weight more forward into the handle bars,
which applies more pressure to the tendons in the palms of your
hands, which....
Obviously, this creates a bad cycle, which can only be broken when
your weight starts to come back out of your handlebars releasing the
pressure on the tendons, which pull your fingers down. Since this
cycle is normally broken only when you have slowed down enough that
you are almost stopped and your body weight comes back out of your
handlebars and into your saddle, then you only want it to happen in
the most dire emergencies for which you must stop immediately.
Second, when your weight shifts forward into your handlebars that
much, it destabilizes your bike causing you to lose control and
forcing you to either pull very hard to the outside of a corner or
restricts you from doing anything but going in a straight line. You
lose the ability to maneuver until you slow enough for your weight
to properly return to the saddle where it belongs. Even for most
emergency situations, you don't want this to happen.
For most emergency situations, you want to maintain control of the
bike so you can maneuver through the situation. To do this, you need
to learn how to properly brake.
You do this by what I call caressing the rims with the brakes. You
apply the brakes just hard enough that you barely feel your weight
beginning to shift into your handlebars but not enough for it to
begin "shortening" the tendons in your hands. This means that most
of your weight is still in your saddle and you can still maneuver
the bike. You will find this to be a very valuable tool in a number
of ways.
You need to practice this braking while on training rides. You can
practice it several ways.
First, you simply apply pressure to the brakes while continuing to
pedal so you can feel the speed change with your legs. I call this
pedaling through your braking. You practice different braking
pressures to see how much braking pressure you can apply before it
shifts your weight into the handle bars enough to effect your
control on the amount of braking. You need to get very good at this
so that it becomes instinct.
Second, any time you come to a stop such as at a stop sign or light,
continue pedaling through your braking. This also teaches you to
better control your braking. Learn to increase and decrease your
braking action while stopping.
One of the places where improper braking causes the most problems is
in a pack or a paceline. It is very common for a rider to run up on
a wheel, grab his brakes causing the bike to over brake, he loses
too much speed and opens a gap in front of him, jumps to close the
gap, and as soon as he is about to over run the wheel again, he
grabs his brakes too hard again. This is a common cause of accordion
effect and crashes.
There are two proper things you can do to prevent this. One is
proper braking action and the other is proper pedal action. If you
do find yourself running up on a wheel, pedal through the braking
action while caressing the rims with your brakes. This permits you
to feel the speed of the bike and let you better control the
decrease in speed until you have brought the speed of the bike down
to the speed of the bike in front of you and not opening a gap.
It will keep you from dropping below the speed of the bike in front
of you. As always, practice while training. This can also be a very
valuable tool while descending in a pack. The pedal control
technique is the prevention of the problems in the first place but
it is also very important for you to practice both techniques
because there will be times to use both.
The pedaling technique is to simply decrease the pressure you are
applying to the pedals, as you get closer to the bike in front of
you. This causes your speed to gradually decrease to the speed of
the bike in front of you as you close on it. You want to achieve the
speed of the bike in front of you just as you reach the point where
you want to be behind the bike in front of you. Again, practice
makes perfect.
Learning to better control your braking action by caressing your
rims will solve some of your cornering problems. Most people will
tell you that you cannot brake at all in corners. This is because
they never learned how to caress their rims and have a tendency to
over brake. Remember that over braking shifts your weight forward,
which destabilizes the bike in corners.
For proper cornering, you need to have your weight properly in your
saddle and not in your handlebars. With braking, you can only
achieve this by caressing the rims.
One particular situation that roadies face with this is when they go
into a blind curve and find that it has a descending radius. This
means they may be going the right speed for the first part of the
curve but too fast for the rest of the curve.
I have found that by caressing the rims, you can maintain the
stability of the bike and decrease the speed of the bike to match
the decreasing radius of the curve because you really only need to
decrease your speed a little to match the decrease in the radius of
the curve. This is very important on down hills where, if you lose
too much speed, you can lose minutes and crashing can cause you to
lose months of racing from broken bones. You must develop this skill
to a fine art. Your braking must be smooth and steady.
Another very important rule is to use both brakes in braking. Just
using the front brake destabilizes the bike and you tend to find
yourself going over the handlebars. Just using the rear brake will
cause your rear wheel to lock and lose traction when your weight
shifts forward off of it. This skidding will cause the rear wheel to
pass the front wheel especially while going down hills. It makes for
very exciting riding and can brake bones.
Believe me, you don't want to find yourself descending some hill
backwards. No fun.
Looking for more common sense advice on professional riding? I
devote 15 chapters to pro riding techniques in my book
A Better Way To Train.
Back to Top
