How to ride in wet and muddy conditions (video transcript)

what are some techniques we can use to stop us crashing, stop us wheel spinning, and stop us making silly mistakes?

so the first thing we want to do when we're riding in wet and slippery conditions is we want to ride in a predictable manner for the bike. so what that means is no sudden and sharp turns and no sudden and sharp breaking and no sudden and sharp acceleration. so what we want to do is we want to try and keep the bike as straight as possible. if we're going around a turn we want to make it as wide and turn as gentle as possible so we're not losing Traction in those conditions and when it comes to braking we don't want to stamp on the brakes. and when it comes to the accelerator we don't want to accelerate really aggressively.

okay so the next thing we want to do when we're riding in wet and slippery conditions is we want to try and ride in a taller gear. when you're riding in low gears the wheel is going to spin a lot faster and you're just going to wheel Spin and go nowhere so if you're going at a speed where you'd normally ride in gear one: try riding gear two. if you're riding on a really fast straight and you'd normally be in gear three: try gear four. that's going to prevent the wheel spin. what you want to do is aim to ride in a taller gear and that also helps with the suspension of the bike as well when you're in a higher gear the suspension will work a lot better underneath you.

so I've already alluded to the fact that we don't want to break too aggressively but what does that mean in practice. so a lot of people, especially beginners or people who have been running for not very long, they're very used to just slamming on the rear brake - it looks cool, it feels fun. the rear wheel slides out and if you get a little bit better you can start to control that. but when we're in wet and muddy conditions that is a complete no no because you're really going to lose traction if you stomp on the rear brake and really just going to spin in a 180 or 360 and you're probably going to fall off. so what we want to do with our brakes is we want to use the engine brake to initiate the slowing down process. we want to go down a gear first and the engine will slow the bike down and then when it comes to the brakes we want to use the rear and the front brake together and we want to use them gently. so we don't want to stomp on them and come to a sudden stop because we're going to spin out. what we want to do is use the front and the rear gently engage them and we want to use a little bit more front brake than we do rear brake especially in wet conditions because that's going to stop us going sideways.

the next thing to help you ride in Slippery conditions is your body positioning and if you've watched any of my past videos you know I'm a big get your weight over the front kind of guy. when we're accelerating we want to have our head forward and when we're in the attack position we want to have our head in line with the crossbar. but actually I'm going to contradict myself a little bit now. so when we're in wet and slippery conditions it is useful to get a bit more weight over the rear tire because we really need to get that extra bit of traction. if you've watched my sand riding video I say the exact same thing we're just going to wheel spin in wet and sippery conditions just like in deep sand so what we want to do is in Corners we want to sit right at the back of the bike. and also when it comes to hill climbs there'll be times where you'll stand up at the beginning and then you might want to sit down and put the weight over the rear just to get that extra bit of traction on the rear tire.

the final thing to help us ride in these conditions is our line Choice a lot of people will just take the line that everyone else is taking or the smoothest line but when it's wet and slippery if the ground becomes too compact that makes it even more slippery where everyone else is going is often not the best line. what you want to look out for when we're riding in these conditions is the darker soil. darker soil tends to be more grippy and have more traction if the ground is really hard and shiny then there's very little traction on that line so we really want to look out for little sections and little parts of the corner where we can find more grip to help us keep our momentum up if you keep momentum it stops you from accelerating breaking and that's really going to help you in these conditions.