Tip - Proper Breaking

During last weekends ride I actually witnessed two blowouts and saw about two others fixing flatted tires after or on the descent down Howard’s Gap Road. I really don’t know why the two flats I saw being fixed happened but the blowouts were the result of improper braking technique while descending. The problem is that most people don’t really understand proper breaking or when to brake. They either brake to hard or not at all.

When braking your body weight will naturally shift forward, as you do this you place more weight on your hands and arms causing more tension in the hands that make you pull the brakes even harder, which makes you slow faster, shifting more weight, and the cycle continues. One of the biggest problems with this is that you lose the ability to steer or have to take a corner very wide limiting your choices until you are nearly at a stop. The other issue that arises is that you also lose traction on the rear wheel and it becomes easier to lock up the wheel causing a skid with its subsequent lose of steering control.

One other side effect is that constant hard braking will overheat rims. The increased rim heat will also increase tire pressure on a usually already over-inflated tire (more on proper tire inflation soon) causing a blowout and possibly a crash. This is what I witnessed down Howard’s Gap.

You do this by feathering 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 placing increased pressure on 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.

Do not wait until you are descending that mountain pass on your dream cycling vacation. 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. 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 instinctive.

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.

In a paceline learning to feather your brakes will prevent the accordion effect that we sometimes see. This is when you overlap wheels then brake a little too hard, a gap develops and you bridge just to overlap again and the cycle continues. Pedaling through your braking will help you maintain a more even speed and keep the paceline tight and moving forward.

Learning to better control your braking action by feathering will solve some cornering problems too. Many people will tell you that you cannot brake at all in corners. This is because they never learned how to feather their brakes 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 feathering your brakes.

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 break bones.