APPETITE FOR INSTRUCTION

Hi, my name is Lee, and I like bikes. My mission is to help you live a more joyful life using your mountain bike as the vehicle.

To that end, I’m writing a series of how-to articles for the original mountain bike magazine—the one in your looking at right now. I first wrote for Mountain Bike Action as a fresh college graduate at the Mammoth Nationals in 1993. It was a trial run for my dream job—to ride and write for the best magazine in the sport. And, here we are again, 29 years later.

When I teach people how to ride, I teach them how to master their minds, emotions, bodies and bikes. The best chance we have at mastering something is making it very simple. When I first started teaching as a former award-winning smarty-pants infographics artist, I wanted to prove how cool I was, so I had a long list of items for each class. That seemed so important, cool and smart! But, that was self-important, uncool and rather unsmart.

Now that I’ve worked with more than 9000 riders of all styles and levels, I understand it’s all about simplicity. Now, instead of 50-something skills, I teach four primary skills—pedaling, braking, cornering and pumping (aka row and anti-row). Everything you need to do on a bike is a combination of those core skills. And, the most important skill for all of them is the hip hinge.

Who here loves Karate Kid and Kobra Kai? I do! I do! Let’s wax a car, shall we?

To hinge is to fold your body forward at the hips so your rear end is back, your head is forward, and your torso is level. A solid hinge does a few things for you:

• It balances your weight evenly on both feet.

• It supports your weight with the muscles that are made for that job—your glutes and hamstrings, not your quads.

• It brings your shoulders close to the handlebar, where you have maximum arm range to corner, brake, ride down things and otherwise shred safely.

Hinging is the A1 prerequisite skill for safe, fun descending.

We have three basic types of hinges:

• The low hinge. This drops your hips/torso/head as low as possible. It’s the start position whenever the bars are about to go away from you: entering a corner, approaching a drop, cresting a roller, passing through the highest part of a jump, etc. This gives you maximum arm range to lean your bike into corners, push your body back while braking, pull the bars towards you when you ride up bumps, and push the bars away from you when you ride down drops.

• The high hinge. This maintains low shoulders but straight legs. This is a great resting position on non-gnarly descents (watch World Cup XC racing). It’s also the position we pass through when we roll through the deepest part of a hole or extend into a corner.

• The crazy-low hinge. Bonus for MBA readers! When you get really low, your belly or chest will hit your thighs. When you need to absorb a tall shape, spread your knees wide and drop even lower.

If you’re going to pick one position on downhills, pick the low hinge. It puts you in a place where you can handle most anything that you encounter. When in doubt, get low—lower.

But, I don’t believe in positions anymore; I believe in dynamics. The constant movement between your low and high hinge handles the vertical components of bumps and generates heavy/light cycles for braking, cornering, pumping, hopping and jumping.

Not just for bikes. Many of us modern folk have lost proper body mechanics. Our cores are disengaged. Our shoulders are hunched, and we’re not using our hips correctly. Our hips should do most of the heavy work, but we’re tight, weak and unaware, which pushes the work to our knees and lower backs. They are not made for this work, and they tend to fail over time.

1. It helps correct imbalances in your body.

2. You want to enter left turns with your left foot forward and vice versa. Stay tuned for more on that.

Now, get to work!

Here’s a sequence to help you find your hinge off the bike. If you can’t hinge on your feet, it won’t happen on a bike hurtling through boulders. I suggest making this part of your warm-up routine. I know you all warm up before every ride, right?

This is easiest because it requires the least hamstring mobility.

Stand with your legs a bit more than shoulder-width apart.

Put the pivots of your knees above the middle of your feet. Do not let your knee move forward from this point. This will take major focus.

Brace your core. That’s an article on its own. For now, do your best.

Push your hips back while tilting your pelvis and entire torso forward. For most people in a low hinge, their thighs are at a 45-degree angle from the horizon. Your torso should be parallel with the horizon.

This is the start position for a regular deadlift. Get very good at this.

Warm up your hamstrings by doing air deadlifts. Move in and out of that position over and over. Make it smooth and easy before you move to step two.

Chase the pain: Whenever you’re descending and your quads burn, you’ve slipped out of a hinge and into a squat pattern. To fix this, push your knees back and your butt up. You’ll feel your hamstrings engage, and your quads should stop hurting.

From the low hinge, push your hips and torso upwards using your glute muscles. Go up only until your hamstrings become taut, then go back down. Do not raise your shoulders above your hips! Do not round your back! Ease in and out of this position until you can get your legs straight with your knees directly above your heels.

This is the start position for a Romanian deadlift. Get very good at this.

Most of you will find this difficult. Move up and down between your low and high hinge, and let your hamstrings open on their own. If you force it, they’ll tighten even more.

Pro test: In a proper high hinge, your quads will turn off completely. This is a perfect rest position and a critical arrow in every racer’s quiver. This lets you descend with no quad pain!

Put your feet in pedal stance. About 150mm (about 6 inches) apart, side to side; 340 or so millimeters (about 13 inches) apart, fore/aft.

Push your hips back and make your torso level, shoulders at the same height as your hips, like in moto stance.

Your forward hamstring will threaten insurrection. Yep. Ease into this.

Triangle of awesome: In a perfect world, your knees are next to each other, and they are directly above your bike’s bottom bracket. This enables the use of both glutes. Most of you are too tight to ride like this. The hip of your forward foot gets pulled down and forward, and one knee ends up behind the other. You’ll feel the extra burn on the back quad, and your lower back will hurt. You’re only using one glute.

Tell your hamstrings to buckle up!

From your awesomely triangulated low hinge, push down from your hips and straighten your legs as much as you can. At some point, when your leg is not very straight, your hamstrings will say, “That’s enough.” Stop there. Do not round your back or raise your shoulders above your hips. Drop back to your low hinge and cycle down and up until you begin to loosen up.

Goals for high hinge:

• Legs are straight.

• Hips are level and facing squarely forward.

• Quads are turned completely off.

This will be difficult. Do your best. Practice moving between your low and high hinge at home, in the gym, on your RipRow, on a pump track and on every ride. The more range you have, the more body suspension you have. The faster you can move between low and high hinges, the faster you can ride safely.

If you only try to hinge for the few minutes you descend your bike each week, you’ll never get it. You need to become a hip-dominant human—a hinger of great repute. Every time you pick something up from the ground, do it from a hinge.

When my twin girls were young, I had hundreds of Legos to clean up every night. I’d stand in the middle of the mess and pick up one Lego at a time. One hinge per Lego adds up! If you do this, your hamstrings will open up, and your back will likely hurt less. Plus, you’ll shred more joyfully.

Hinging is simple but not easy. Practice as much as you can, and I’ll see you next time for effective braking—the kind that creates as much traction as you want. Yes, we are stepping into a world of traction abundance!

Editor’s note: Lee McCormack is a world-renowned MTB skills author and instructor, as well as inventor of the RipRow training tool and the RideLogic bike-fit and skills-training system. He and his team train people in person, over Zoom and via his online MTB school. For a free month of access, use the coupon code MBAhinge. Learn more at www.leelikesbikes.com and www.riprow.com.