Using the Front Brake

At this point you should start experimenting with using your front brake to increase your stopping power. Just like a car, your front brakes represents significant braking power. And with proper changes in your riding position you can use that braking power.

The thing to consider is your balance. Under normal conditions, using your front brake to any significant degree can easily mean flipping over the handlebars, or at a minimum causing the handlebars and front wheel to go out of control and cause an accident. To minimize the chances of things going wrong, you can lower your upper body by bending your elbows and thereby lowering your center of gravity a bit. If you are going very fast or down a steep hill and need to stop very quickly, this is easily done. Stand out of the saddle and lean back over the rear tire. With practice you can actually put your entire lower body behind the seat and in extreme situations even nearly drag your behind on the rear wheel. In these cases you can use the front brake very hard and drastically increase your braking power. In fact you can probably 'stop on a dime' as they say.

You can practice these maneuvers while riding on wide, smooth, flat trails. Practice makes perfect and you'll find you can certainly stop very much more quickly when you have to.

Just remember that you must NEVER lock up your front brakes. It is not wise under any conditions. Of course locking up your brakes is never a good thing because it increases the chances of damaging the trails, something none of us want.

Another nifty little trick you can start working on is to use the front brake to change your balance on your mountain bike. As you come into a corner, a quick tap on the front brake will change your balance a little bit and change your angle of attack on the corner. Let's say you are coming into a corner without a berm on the outside. Instead of braking to drop speed so you can make the corner, instead you can simply tap the front brake and change your angle of attack to the inside a little bit, making the corner while maintaining your speed. This manuever can be used at any time you are turning to change your angle of attack to the inside of the corner. It is also useful when a tree is positioned in the middle outside of the corner. If you're coming in too fast, just tap the front brake and you'll make the corner more sharply without significant speed loss.

You should certainly practice this on wide, open corners to get the feel of the change in balance before you put it to use. A harder tap on the front brake will generate a stronger change in balance. Be careful, practice this a lot.