Weighting Your Feet This said, you don’t want to put 100% of your weight directly onto your outside foot in order to turn your bike, this will stand the bike up, making it difficult to lean into the turn. We want to transfer weight toward our outside foot as the bike tips into the turn. Timing is critical here, and will really make the difference between being average in turns, and really ripping on the bike.



Footwork is really the control between level feet (referred to as 3 and 9 o’clock in the video above) and having the outside foot all the way down (referred to as 6 and 12 o’clock in the video above). Footwork is a relatively new concept in mountain biking. Until about 2003, riders used to put 100% of their weight on their outside foot coming into a turn and all the way through it. For those of you who have been skiers for decades, you might remember that skis used to turn in much the same way. The revolution in footwork came almost in tandem in each sport, with mountain bikers and skiers putting the majority, rather than all of their weight on the outside foot, and transferring the weight throughout the turn.