[Closed] Light hands, heavy feet

pinch flatted a tubeless tyre yesterday

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Ride clipped in, then your feet wont bounce off and you can stop focusing on heavy feet / light hands.

Ride more, think less.

Although light hands, heavy feet, is the central point in how to ride quickly downhill, the other key point, as you've alluded to, is that you need to vary your effective weight massively - from heavily loading to completely unweighting. Often doing the former before the latter, thus allowing you to pump, hop and jump over the rough stuff. It's all hard on the legs though!

So how did you pinch flat a tubeless tyre?!!

Ride clipped in, then your feet wont bounce off and you can stop focusing on heavy feet / light hands.

Did you advise Gerald Ratner on PR in a past life?

Ride with your seat slammed for a while.
Your bad habits will go away and your core strength improve.

Ride clipped in, then your feet wont bounce off and you can stop focusing on heavy feet / light hands.

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Oh.. and stop running stupidly low tyre presures.

Ride with your seat slammed for a while.

I find this is the only way to descend..

What constantly amazes and pisses me off is when I get overtaken/jumpedover by a dude on an xc bike with his saddle up..

So how did you pinch flat a tubeless tyre?!

Not sure exactly. One hole near the bead, the other on the tread. There was plenty of pressure and I wasn't particularly going for it at the time. Instant deflation. I am fairly heavy though. Seat was slammed.

Tyre was 2 rides old. 🙁

I use SPDs on my 29er but switched away from them on my Soul as I like to dab on occasion.

I've read the light hands heavy feet thing before during peoples' little reviews of skills days (I've never been on one.. obvious if you see me ride) and thought that it makes sense when you're riding in a straight line, at speed, over rough stuff, but if your riding any sort of flat corner then your weight is going to be on the front wheel. Unless you're always bombing down rough trails I think the amount of time your weight would be completely on your feet would be minimal during a normal trail.

What tyre, what pressure, how heavy? Were you braking at the time?

When it gets rough and/or fast remember to drop those heels. No more feet bouncing off pedals.

Steve, I've been working on the light hands, heavy feet thing for a couple of years. However I was finding that when pushing on hard I tended to lose the front first in corners. When I was Jedi'd a month ago Tony got me cornering with weight on inside hand and outside foot, so the weight constantly shifts about. I'm cornering a lot faster already and when I reach the limit it's usually the back end drifting out. As soon as I'm out of the corner the pedals go level and take all the weight again (ignoring pedalling/pumping).

Heels are dropped, for as long as I remember to do it. I run through a pre descent checklist before each descent to remind myself of the techniques I should be using 😉

The more I think about this, the more I think I didn't unweight when I should have, but I've never been particularly troubled with pinch flats in all my years of riding. I think I only ever had one when running with tubes and this one yesterday.

I may have been braking a bit, I was coming to the end of a run, but not full on.

Tyre was a Conti Rubber Queen UST 2.2, not sure of exact pressure, but there was minimal thumb squidge, I'd added more air earlier.

In my experience the thumb squidge test needs regular recalibration with an actual pressure gauge, otherwise what you think is the right pressure tends to slip downwards, often by a surprising amount! Have you been hardtailing for long?

Hardtailing since forever. I've never actually ridden a full susser.

I guess I should get in the habit of using my track pump to get a better idea of pressure, I usually stick in 30-35 initially. Thing is, when I first put the tyre on I give I plenty of pressure after sticking sealant in. Then let some air out on my soft local woodland trails, then ended up putting more pressure back in on the climb at Glentress, maybe not enough.

I guess my thumb calibration may have been somewhat thrown out as I just switched from a 2.0 to 2.2 out back. But running 2.0 means I'm fairly used to high pressure on the rear tyre.

35psi on a tubeless tyre?

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I think it's a combination of technique and fitness. The better at something you get the easier it becomes. I'd make skiing analogy, when you first start it's really hard work to ski a nursery slope, the better you get the harder runs you can ski and those runs require less effort. I think biking is the same. On trails which I know I'm confident on I can ride easily with relatively little effort but there then comes a switch over point where I am using a lot of effort (over tense) to ride something more challenging.

Oh **** off Continuity you smug ****.

35psi on a tubeless tyre?

Seems like a very reasonable pressure, what's up with it?

OP - as GW said, put your saddle down and leave it down all the time for a while, build your strength up. You're only getting tired because your body hasn't strengthened to it it.

As for the pinch, most probably too low of a pressure from not using a gauge. There is techniques you can work on so as soon as you hit a sharp edge, the impact can be cushioned. You can "bump jump", some kind of manual to edge absorb to pump backside and many other things, but get what you're working on currently natural first.

Oh * off Continuity you smug *.

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Continuity, has GW employed you to make himself look like less of a ****?

There's a big difference between 30 and 35 psi. There's even more wiggle room when you figure in the air loss, especially when it's new (even though it's UST - I have the same tyre on the front and it drops a fair few psi a week, starting at only 25 psi). A 2.2" tyre will feel firmer at the same psi as a 2.0" tyre, thus throwing off the thumb gauge.

When I'm hitting rough stuff that could cause rim dings, I try to keep off the brakes (brake in the smooth bits in between), particularly the back brake, I get lower, and I'll put weight into the bars (but from behind, wrists dropped), to let the back wheel roll more easily over square edges. And then back to light hands, heavy feet.

For tubeless RQ 2.2s on Flows I'm finding the twice your weight in stone, in psi, for the front, a few psi more for the back, formula, works pretty well. But I try to be relatively smooth.

The tyre can most likely be patched so that it can be reinstated as a tubeless. The ding on the rim will need checking but may not be a show stopper either. I have had good results with vanilla tube patches or a small patch of old inner tube. I use vulcanising solution for both but some use superglue.

As has been said it is not just weight back and heels down. Given that this is a hard tail you will need to lighten the back end a bit by un-weighting when clattering off the rocks. Much as you will try to lift the rear wheel when riding up a kerb. Getting the seat post out of the way will also be a great help in allowing you to move about on the bike more easily IME. It is still good practice to lighten the back end on a full suss as well but the bike will compensate better if you don't.

I'm about 15 stone, so that seems about right. I'll see if I can repair the tyre and give it another go tubeless. I think I mostly need more practice and better fitness.

Based on the suggestions here, I know pretty much what techniques I should be employing, but need to get better at putting it into practice on the trail.

Cheers

Sounds to me like too many people are thinking too much about their riding and forgetting to just ride the bike.

Sounds to me like too many people are thinking too much about their riding and forgetting to just ride the bike.

Sounds to me like too many people are making assumptions about how/what other people ride.

I have plenty of opportunity to 'just ride my bike', bikepacking in the Cairngorms for example, but sometimes, I like to work on my skills/technique too. 🙄

Should have made it clearer, (cheers Dean) I meant slam your saddle and leave it slammed for quite some time.
It won't take long to instinctively weight the bike correctly, trust me.

Ignore skills course catch phrases unless specifically being told to follow them after assesment and being taught how and why a good instructor.
There are too many tight/lazy bastards these days trying to teach themselves to ride through poor parrot fed online forum info from shit riders high on the buzz of their first skills course.

Sounds to me like too many people are thinking too much about their riding and forgetting to just ride the bike.

Most people who say this are bitter that others are putting effort in to get better/faster and thus making them look worse...

Tubeless patch kits have a thicker than normal patch, Ive used a few right on the bead and they hold up fine.